Do you prefer this album in mono or stereo?. Ok, read something about this album and the experts will tell you that the British press in mono is the only one that deserves a ride on your record player. I don't have an original monkey press. Who has so much money or good luck? Yes, I have a British reissue in mono format.
Some stereo copies, including a stereo reissue (the double LP version of the Hendrix family), I used for this test for a couple of reasons (it's available at record stores and my copy was also available). To my ears, the stereo copy has the clearest and coolest sound, and it has an effective panoramic view and the kind of nonsense on the soundstage that makes the stereo fun. Here's another one that, according to professional listeners with hyper-tuned ears, should ONLY be heard in mono. I remember that I liked mononucleosis better years ago.
I have compared a mono original to a stereo original. I took the black and white copy with me just a couple of years ago. It had been (badly) placed by someone in a national chain of second-hand bookstores. The price was too good to lower it and the album is so clean that I sold my reissue in mono.
The stereo copy given to me by my wife's uncle, who had about 300 records. Despite being a much loved copy with many minor scratches and fine marks, I prefer the stereo copy. To my ears it's the opposite of what I said about The Who Sell Out. In this case, I thought the stereo had more power.
However, Zappa's concept was fulfilled musically, while Townshend's was a simple showcase, not that there's anything wrong with that. The second side is just as nourishing, and that goes for “Silas Stingy”, Entwhistle's children's song that follows “Boris The Spider”, who used to think dragged the side down a bit (this is Entwhistle's first experience buying a house). The opening, “I Can't Reach You”, communicates Townshend's nascent spiritual quest. The Who Sell Out was recorded in the UK.
Released in the United Kingdom just before Christmas 1967, it never made the top ten, which is a pathetic performance, not for The Who, but for record buyers in the United Kingdom, and it barely made the top 50 in the United States, which is even more pathetic, but the American Decca had no idea what to do with the group. I remember buying my original stereo copy of UK Track at The Harvard Coop in the spring of 1968, when I was visiting Boston to attend the ECAC hockey tournament. Now tell me how many children will remember today when they downloaded a song to their iPod. The “double” version combines part of the resolution of the classic reissue with the pleasant tonal balance of Backtrack.
The classic reissue is undoubtedly the most dynamic and detailed of all, and it has the most developed and well-defined lower part, but you'll also have to put up with a remarkably shiny, hard and pinched upper part that is exhausting. It is a narrow band of brilliance that highlights wheezing, cymbal hits, vocal cords, guitar scratches and other transient information. It's not rough and rough, just brilliant. Listen to “Tattoo” and compare Moon's cymbals and Townshend acoustic guitar rasgueros in the reissue of “Twofer” and “Classic”.
. It may not reveal all the details and it does represent full-fledged revisionism, but its balance is richer. The mono mix arouses more interest because it includes a unique part of the Townshend guitar with pedal steel in “Our Love”, which will surprise the DNA of longtime Who fans who have lived with the stereo mix for decades. The same goes for “Mary Anne With the Shaky Hand”, where, in the end, a very shaky effect is inserted in the word “trembling”.
The effect was in the original mono, but not in the original stereo. It has been inserted into the stereo CD remix. But aside from these two peculiarities, the mono mix is simply better than the stereo mix, and I think you'll agree even if you listen with a stereo cartridge. Front-to-back layers are done neatly and cleverly, and the overall organization is superior.
Unfortunately, the equalization problem is also present, perhaps to a greater extent, since everything doubles when a mono mix goes to two speakers. If you are going to buy one, I would opt for the jumpsuit. Good luck finding an original in good condition and for a reasonable price. Just don't turn up the volume too high on this reissue.
The packaging is superb and both the mono and stereo reissues include the glossy limited-edition full-color poster that came with the original for a very short time. The Who Sell Out is the third studio album by the British rock band The Who. It was released on December 15, 1967 by Track Records in the United Kingdom and Decca Records in the United States. That said, for this review I only compared the new 180-gram stereo press to an original U.
Decca Records stereo press from the '60s. I chose not to compare it to Classic Records' 200-gram mono reissue, since it's a completely different animal. The first stereo discs from the late 1950s are quite rare and often quite expensive, while their mono counterparts are generally quite common and sell for a little less money. To ensure this, some companies, especially Warner Brothers Records and Atlantic Records, occasionally released special mono editions of albums for radio use only.
By 1967, stereo discs outsold mono discs by a significant margin, and by 1968, most American record companies concluded that sales of mono discs were declining to the point where it was no longer profitable to continue selling them. Since mono editions outsold stereo copies by a significant margin during the first half of the 1960s, artists and studio engineers used to spend much more time mixing the mono version of their albums than the stereo version, simply because the mono version was the one that most buyers were going to listen to. Undoubtedly, there are many more nuances and complexity in the differences between mono and stereo discs. They didn't do it in all their releases, and no one really knows how many copies of a given title could have been printed in mono, but the number was quite small.
Capitol and RCA used the reverb trick quite frequently, and it is particularly notable in Elvis Presley's early recordings, which were sold exclusively in false stereo from 1968 until the late 1980s, following the phasing out of mono discs. Mono printing sounded heavier and stronger, but it still retained the fun and friction of the studio tricks included in the tapes on this album. For the manufacturers, these problems meant that many titles had to produce two different versions of the album: one in mono and the other in stereo. Bands used to sign a mono or stereo version of the album with engineers before its release.
While most mono players couldn't play stereo discs, stereo turntables were able to play mono discs without problems. Although all the records recorded and released today are stereo discs, there was a period of about ten years when albums were released both in stereo and in mono. .
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