Hot Stamper Pressings of Revolver Available Now
Reviews and Commentaries for Revolver
A great sounding record in stereo, potentially anyway, but this later reissue in mono is so awful it deserves a special place in our Hall of Shame.
My notes for side one: hard, sour, no bass.
Side two: dumbass small mono, so unclear.
Is it the worst version of the album ever made? That’s hard to say. There is no shortage of competition, that’s for sure.
But it may be the worst sounding version of the album we’ve ever played, and that should be good enough for any audiophile contemplating spending money on this kind of rubbish.
We love the mono mix of For No One, but not when it sounds like this.
The only Beatles vinyl we offer on our site are stereo pressings. Our reasons for doing this are straightforward enough.
The Beatles records in mono, contrary to the opinion of audiophiles and music lovers alike, virtually never have the presence, energy and resolution found on the best stereo copies. If your stereo cannot resolve all the information on the tape, sure, Twin Track Stereo (used on the first two albums, hard-panned multi-track afterwards) ends up sounding like some of the instruments are stuck in the speakers, hard left and hard right, with nothing but a hole in the middle.
But there is a great deal of information spreading into the middle when we play those records here, and nothing feels stuck in the speakers that doesn’t sound like it was supposed to be heard coming directly from one of the speakers.
It is our contention that the best audio equipment, properly tweaked, can show you a world of musical information that exists only on the stereo pressings, information that the mono mixes mostly obscure.
Original Vs. Reissue
We can tell you this potentially helpful piece of information about Revolver pressings: no original Yellow and Black British pressing has ever fared well in any shootout we’ve conducted.
The better your stereo gets, the more bandwidth-limited, distorted, compressed and congested the originals will reveal themselves to be.
That’s why we think The Beatles Music on Vinyl Is an Audiophile Wake Up Call.
Further Reading