UK y&b Parl. Hard Day's Night LP

I have a British EMI/Harvest 12" 45rpm single of ELO's Showdown/Roll Over Beethoven that was cut by Harry Moss, that I thinks sounds terriffic.

 

I have a few later UK Pink Floyd Harvest pressings that bear the HTM initials. Not bad relative to their original counterparts. Heck, maybe he cut the originals, too. They date from around the late 1970s judging from the inner sleeves.

 

I'm coming in a bit late Peter. This is the first chance I've had to study my copies of A Hard Day's Night. I own 2 stero U.K. pressings and one stereo W German Blue Odeon pressing.

1. early/mid 1970s U.K. pressing - 2 box EMI
Side 1 - YEX 126 - 1 (6 PM) GUL (3 o'clock)
Side 2 - YEX 127 - 1 (4 PM) GAC (2 o'clock)

2. Blue Box U.K. pressing - 2 box EMI
Side 1 - YEX 126 - 3 -1 -3 - (3 o'clock)
Side 2 - YEX 127 - 4 (2 o'clock)

3. Blue Odeon - W German pressing, circa 1968 (?)
Side 1 - the original matrix YEX 126 - 1 is X'd out between 6 and 7 o'clock position.
In between 12 and 1 o'clock is 1C062-04145-A-1.
Side 2 - the original matrix YEX 127 - 1 is X'd out between 6 and 7 o'clock position.
Just past the 12 o'clock position is 1C062-04145-B-1.

The two U.K. pressings sound very similar. The -1 is a bit louder, but not much. The W German pressing has no top end whatsoever. I was aware of that issue. The only reason I purchased it was for the different artwork. The Blue Box LP has different font on the label from the earlier pressing.

 

Here is a screen dump from Cool Edit Pro of a sample from "I Should Have Known Better".
1. 1970s pressing
2. Blue Box
3. Blue Odeon

You can see that the first sample is the loudest, by a bit. I've also uploaded the samples here so you can listen to how bad the Blue Odeon pressing is vs the 2 U.K LPs.

Does anyone here have a good W German pressing of the stereo AHDN? The only other one I've heard sounds identical to the LP I own.
________________
Mike

 

Guys, very interesting. I too have a "bad" pressing of the German AHDN. It only has the YEX matrixes, not the other one. I thought we had pretty much settled on this site that blue German Odeon LP's with BOTH sets of matrixes sound really good. From this "fact" (which I "verified" with my own German blue LP's--the one matrixes are awful and the two matrixes are great), I extrapolated that blue Odeon German LP's with the YEX matrixes crossed out would sound equal to the ones with the two matrixes. Now, this turns out not to be the case. The reason I thought this was because on this site it has previously been confirmed that the later blue LP's were cut on Neumann equipment and, as a result, feature the second, non YEX number. I just assumed that the YEX number being crossed out with the second matrix meant the same as it appearing with the second matrix. Turns out now that that might not be true. I have three blue German Odeon LP's coming: Help!, Pepper & For Sale. The For Sale has the 2 matrixes and I am hoping the others will as well. I got them cheap enough anyway. I will await arrival, listen, look and post.

 

Hi Miike, your German Blue Odeon "AHDN" sounds like my recent purchase of a Blue Odeon "Revolver", bad........no highs what so ever.

 

Joining the party a little late here, but just wanted to pitch in that I have a one-box late 60's press of this title with the exact same numbers, but with different letters at the 3:00 positions which are:

Side 1: PP at 3:00
Side 2: OR at 3:00

Otherwise identical to yours and, yup - it sounds wonderful! Cheers!

--------- Chris