Thanks. I was afraid of that. Nice separation on the three different issues I've got, but too often the lead vocals are either hard left or right--which annoys me no end--and tends to, on some tracks, bury the vocals a bit.
Those stereo mixes really suck (some of them). Now that the catalog has been sold to a major, the monos might as well be in the trash...
I Fought The Law: The Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four has mostly mono single mixes, including the original take of "Take My Word". Unfortunately, it's line-up is rather poorly chosen: "Phantom Dragster" is here, "Never To Be Forgotten" is not. Only "She's My Girl" is stereo, everything else is in nice mono. The mono "Don't Ever Let Me Know" is worth the price of admission. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...f=sr_1_9/103-6538153-2581409?v=glance&s=music
I wasn't aware the catalog had been sold. Who bought it? But yeah, it's hard to believe that any major label would ever issue the mono mixes. Maybe lease them to Sundazed?
There are some mono tracks out there - find the Rhino 3" mini single for 4 of them... Are the Ace discs from awhile back all stereo?
I now seem to remember reading about this release--it was sort of a "companion" to the "Never to be Forgotten" set with different mixes. Thanks for the tip--I'll look for it. But I sure agree with you--if the purpose was to release mono mixes, an 18-20 track CD including all non-surf/drag stuff from the two original LPs would've made much more sense.
I think most if not all of the tracks on the two EL PASO ROCK , early recordings of Bobby Fuller on the Norton label are in mono. Been a while since I listened to them. There are a lot of earlier but equally kicka** [edited by Dave] versions of tunes he later rerecorded for the Mustang label. At any rate you can't go wrong with any version of any song by the late great Bobby Fuller IMO.
Big problems on the CD mastering of that early stuff (in the semi-fake looking Scotch tape box). They took the nice mono tracks, and FOLDED THEM into mono after being played back on a stereo machine, thereby throwing most of the songs out of phase. Like, hello? Mastering 101 class is calling whoever did that...
I always thought that they sounded a little funky. Obviously it would have been better if they had been played back on a mono machine, but would not folding them have resulted in a much better sound or just a different flavor of phasing issue?
Well, they didn't have to play back the mono tapes on a mono machine, just pick ONE channel of the stereo machine and use that, it would have sounded fine. When you combine TWO channels of mono using stereo heads that are not aligned, you run the risk of screwing everything up. Some mastering consoles wrongly have a MONO button that is a L+R. This is such a no-no. The mastering console I use has a button for "left channel", a "right channel", etc. Sigh. Oh well. Life goes on...
Did Norton make the same mastering mistake with the El Paso Rock sets, or just Del-Fi with the Shakedown box?
Isn't the commerical CD of Sinatra's "Songs For Swingin' Lovers" done the same way as well? There's some phase cancellation on the top end, as I recall.
that's been on my wish list for a long time--cool looking pkg. at least I know now, the sound sucks. doug
So, if I want to needle drop a mono LP to my PC I should sum the channels but if I want to convert an old mono cassette to digital (via my stereo cassette deck) I should use one channel only and split it for the stereo line in on the PC. Is that the rule of thumb??? Thanks for your guidance and inspiration.