@tylermunns: A cheap way to get one of the best pressings of Pet Sounds is in the Reprise Records original issue of The Beach Boys (jokingly called Carl & The Passions) So Tough album from 1972, which was a double: the new album and a reissue of Pet Sounds, the two discs housed in a gatefold sleeve.
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Reprise did that to help sell the very mediocre So Tough (which imo contains only one great song: "Marcella", written by Brian and Jack Rieley). Carl had produced an album by a South African band named Flame, and when Dennis Wilson broke his hand The Beach Boys brought in Flame members Ricky Fataar (who plays George Harrison in the great mockumentary film The Rutles) and Blondie Chaplin. The two guys really helped The Beach Boys on stage: they became a good live band, doing shows with The Grateful Dead and Chicago. I saw at them at The Fillmore (or was it Winterland?) in ’72, Dennis at the front of the stage playing one-handed electric piano, Fataar playing drums. They were REAL good, much better than when I had seen them in the Summer of ’64 (my first live concert, at The San Jose Civic Auditorium). So Tough, though, is one of their worst albums: only four songs on each side, a likely indication of bad songwriting.
Sunflower is a great album, and Surf’s Up is imo a must-own. Holland is spotty (Fataar and Chapin weren’t the best songwriters), but is worth having I guess. Smiley Smile---the album that was originally to be the infamous aborted Smile, a collaborative effort by Brian and Van Dyke Parks---is about as odd an album as I have ever heard, and I love it. But the recorded sound quality is atrocious, not even close to being hi-fi. Very dark, spooky. I discovered in in 1968, and found it mesmerizing. Still do. I have my original Capitol mono pressing, a UK E.M.I. pressing, the Simply Vinyl reissue, and both the mono and stereo reissue by Analogue Productions.