Canada LP sounds great, more open sound, more clarity, no azimuth issues, but unfortunately without the footsteps...it was pressed on very thin vinyl. I personally prefer the original Tetragrammaton LP and I was able to track a near mint copy
I agree. It's still a very good album, but they branched out more on the other 2 with more classical directions including Jon Lord's string arrangements. The Book of Taleisyn is my favorite of the 3 and "Anthem" is my favorite Deep Purple song, ever.
One year ago and I have some news regarding my initital posting: I compared the UK -1 / -1 pressing (a near mint copy) again with the original Tetragrammaton LP and I came to the conclusion that the original UK LP was a needledrop from the original USA LP !!! If you listen carefully, you can hear additional surface noise and some light crackling on the UK LP. I had several copies through the years, but it is always the same. On both sides you can hear the additional noises before the music starts...so I think the original UK was never made from any tape source, but a needledrop.
Ritchie Blackmore and Jon Lord were fans of Vanilla Fudge so, yes, it's safe to assume that their cover of "Help" was indeed inspired by The Fudge. The other most Fudge-influenced arrangement on the album was "Hey Joe".
I have yet to hear the 3rd album, but the first one is still pretty freakin’ great. “Hush” alone gives it a thumbs up, but the album is far more than just that one song.
SODP: EMI 1989 CD sounds good, but the end of the last song was taken from a vinyl source. Listen with headphones and you can hear a huge quality drop ca. 30 seconds before the end... TBOT and DP sound very good on the 1989 EMI CDs.
I don't mind vinyl sources. Ok, I've never noticed that, I don't listen to that album very often and never with headphones.
My 1st press Canada Polydor is thicker vinyl & has the talk/footsteps on the end of Hey Joe. Polydor Canada did a 2nd run. I have 2 Polydor Concertos. One is thicker vinyl, the other a thinner, Dynaflex- type pressing. Slightly different label designs. Makes sense as RCA Canada ran one of the few pressing plants in Canada.
Yes, the CANADA original LP (with the red labels) sounds very close, compared to the german EMI LP...but the later WARNER pressing, made in Canada, sounds different, is on very light vinyl and sounds much better, but is lacking the footstep outro...
A few months ago, I found a cheap copy of the Passport CD but hadn't played it until I started reading this thread. It doesn't sound very good, to say the least. Something about the overall sound is "off" to my ears. The drums sound terrible with no presence at all. The guitar sounds tinny. Some tracks have very little bass. This one is going into the trade-in pile.
That is disappointing. A few months ago, I paid $75 for a 2nd press UK. I wouldn't have done that had I known what you just revealed. I guess I can't complain too much- I cannot tell by listening with my fried ears.
Very informative and fun thread The OP was mentioning some static noise during Help, well, I gave a look at the waveform in the spot he pointed, on both the 1989 UK release and 2000 Remaster. Looks like it was removed for the 2000 release, IMO there are some remnants on the bottom end, but then again, maybe not. I've found stuff like this when restoring tapes from my collection and other sources, usually they are just electrical glitches, nothing really that mysterious, in this particular case it could have been inadvertently introduced at any moment into the recording/mixing/mastering/cutting stage.
I lucked into a first press Tetragrammaton Records Stereo release back in 2005. Not thinking much of it, the album sat languishing among other still sealed albums until recently when I stumbled over this thread. As it was still in shrink, I had no idea which edition I owned, be it a bootleg or what have you. I paid the princely sum of 9.99$ at Long Island Sound in the Hamptons when they were still around and at their peak. Come to think of it, many of the original press/still sealed. mint minus LPs I collected over the last 20 years came from that shop. At some point the local college FM radio station had dumped all their vinyl unceremoniously, in no specific order and it took years for that collection to be culled and displayed with prices. Often there were no prices and I had to wait to a day the owner was working to make the actual transaction. As I said this version sat till 2019, when opened, then performed a deep wet clean, removing years of Gawd-knows-what mold, mildew, mold release etc before playing. The jacket has light ring wear on the front, spine is in perfect shape as it the back cover. The liner was stained brown from pulp acid I believe, so a new rice bag took it's place after cleaning. The shrink was so fragile and brittle it came off in pieces, I could not get it to slit only at the opening, so I removed it as put it in an non-adhesive poly bag to further preserve it. Only on set of 4 digit matrix numbers in the deadwax of either side, the number 4 on the rear, along with the other pertinent info on the labels spine and jacket. Playback is a solid pleasure, even though this pressing (and all others I'm guessing ) is shy on deep bass of any sort. Mids and highs are excellent, with no sibilance anywhere, and only a tad of tape saturation is audible. Surface noise is excellent, the only noise present is a tad of surface noise between tracks as the stylus travels thru the bands. The ending footsteps and door closing are present at the end, of Hey Joe. The overall sound has that quaint 60's unpolished raw feel without what you call phasing issues, (intentional or otherwise), especially on heavy organ solos. Tape hiss is present if you listen hard, or your system can resolve it, but nowhere in annoying amounts, I've heard worse. The overall sound is quaint and unpolished, just what you'd expect to hear on a freshman release from a talented band in those heady days of Psychedelica. The recorded material is well picked , well composed and well played, execution by the band members is more than noteworthy. It still impresses after all these years, especially comparing to today's over polished releases and the ever maddening loudness wars. Shades was definitely a crossover point for music, the cult classic of it's days, previewing "Shades" of things to come from Messrs Blackmore, Lord and Co. Once you get used to Shade's inherent lack of bass, it becomes the classic listen we know it for. There isn't tons of echo, reverb or other recording tricks used, even for the stereo version, just good old fashioned performances and a mix that is quite good overall. Initially I believed some copies may have had more bass than others, and that mine was inferior, however this is the way it is supposed to sound. I had a beat up hand-me-down down version in the early 70's, ..the sonic flavoring and mix minus the vinyl wear and damage is identical. My cousin bought that version brand new. I can only guess how poor bootlegs and poor copies using a needle drop copy as master would sound. What I've done is copy the LP 1:1 to 2 track 1/4 inch tape at 15ips. This gets around the need for noise reduction as well as preserves my copy from any additional wear on the grooves. Any copies I make are from my 15ips copy, the cassette for the car, even a CD l version I tweaked the EQ in the digital domain. I may do the same and make another open reel and cassette copy with added eq, since about the only thing that would make the performance sound better is more low frequency reinforcement. Mids are clean and clear, as well as high frequencies. Copying to tape adds some helft of it's own inherent in the process I'd imagine only the tape masters shown throughout this thread are the last word in fidelity. That said a first pressing off the original tapes should get you pretty close to the mark unless TetraGrammaton used poor equipment when making the master-mothers/pressers/stamper from the tapes the band brought with them to the US their first trip.
I have a passport CD too,The Book of Taliesyn ,you can hear clicks in places,so this sounds like a vinyl recorded to tape then transferred to CD. I read earlier someone saying the later remasters were from the original master tapes from a collector who was found to have the tape in the 90s.