Morning coffee with Beatles and a hole


We are listening to random LP picks.

"The Early Beatles" is one of the early US releases with that funny John/Paul on the right, Georges guitar on the left and nothing in the middle. The push for stereo must have been a big deal. Me, these albums to me would be more  convincing left in mono.

May as well push your speaker together for a lot of these early LP's. Thankfully, the music lets you forget about audiophoolery.
tablejockey
"Expect to pay dearly for them in very good condition. VERY dearly."

=unobtanium. That's why I settle for a regular clean press. Still cheap, and not too hard to dig up. I  try and look for an artists native country pressings. Brit(maybe my favorite) anything usually means more cash.
By "regular clean press" do you mean mono US LP's from the 60's? The U.S. LP's have different song inclusions than do the UK LP's (up until Sgt. Pepper), and pretty substantial poorer sound. The 2014 boxset was a real gift for those wanting the UK's in better-than-original U.S. LP sound. Mastered from the original tapes, all in mono.
 "regular clean press" do you mean mono US LP's from the 60's?

No, just the  stereo press. I have a couple of the RI mono's. They are nice. I just never felt the urge to get the entire catalog.

The Capitol Records engineer who prepared The Beatles recordings for the 60’s U.S. LP’s added gratuitous electronic reverb to the copy tapes he received from Parlophone. You really haven’t heard The Beatles early albums until you hear the UK versions. Rubber Soul and Revolver are really good albums.

Capitol Records are notorious for their 1960’s "Duo-Phonic" LP’s. That was their attempt to create "simulated stereo" from mono tapes. They added their regular reverb, but also created a slight phase difference between left and right channels, and then equalized the two channels differently---one with the high frequencies filtered, the other the bass. They sound atrocious!

Capitol did that to all The Beach Boys albums up through and including the Wild Honey album (except for Surfer Girl, which for some reason was a true stereo recording. Analogue Productions has put it out on a fantastic-sounding LP, as well as most of the other BB’s Capitol albums, and even some of their Reprise ones. Paul McCartney still considers Pet Sounds the best album ever recorded and released), as well as other Capitol artists.