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In May 2009 a record on Ebay was for sale described as a test acetate
from Townhouse Studios London. It was a 12" and had Townhouse Studios labels with handwritten song titles. The
label is light yellow and has "The Town House, 150 Goldhawk Road, London W12, Tel: 08-743 9313" printed on it
with a picture of a building. The seller wrote me this "It is housed in a generic white card
sleeve as used by studios and cutting facilities. The sleeve has
very slight wear and little piece torn out on the open side, not
surprising having sat around on an office shelf for nearly 30
years. The label on the other side is exactly the same
handwritten track names of Leaving Here/Stone Dead Forever
plus the word Motorhead written in the same place. My guess is
that it was never played as it would have been normal for just a
few(3/4) copies to be cut and this one just never got used".
However, in April 2012 I read a worrying article in Record Collector where it was noticed a Townhouse Acetate had been sold on Ebay
by Sex Pistols, a 10" of God Save The Queen. "The price of the 10” Town House God Save The Queen acetate was quite
staggering considering that all the evidence points to Town House Studios not existing until 1978 or 1979 (built by Richard Branson)
depending on which research material one believes. Unless I’m mistaken, that means the acetate would have been for a later
Virgin repress, a year or two after the A&M single of March 1977 and the Virgin first issue of May 1977".
This made me a bit curious about Town House acetates so I started google "fake acetate townhouse" and got some hits.
For example, I found this information about a Cure Townhouse
acetate: "This is a possible fake, although the record was not inspected in person. The record was listed on eBay from the
seller "soarecords" in Italy. The winning bidder, before paying, asked for high resolution scans before paying.
When the buyer mentioned that he wanted to be sure that he wasn't getting a fake acetate, and asked for high resolution scans,
the seller abruptly cancelled the sale and said "hi, doesn't make me waste time with absurd histories, I prefer to annul
the sale." In my opinion this is the behavior of someone who either knows that they are selling a fake and are trying to
prevent a Paypal claim, or they have sold fakes in the past. An honest seller would not have a problem providing good pictures
and known item history. Also, this seller (soarecords) is listed for selling a fake Beatles acetate: At the time
the "I'm Cold" acetate was purchased, soarecords was selling another Beatles acetate with a suspiciously low
buy-it-now price. The seller has sold many other acetates by different bands including Beatles, U2, Pink Floyd, Elvis,
Michael Jackson, and others".
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