• Boasting two INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides, this Yellow and Black Label UK pressing could not be beat
• An excellent source for many of the Beatles’ greatest hits up to 1966 – with 8 songs per side you are getting a lot for your money with this one
• Although the first label stereo originals will always win our shootouts, the early reissues still sound quite good to us, just not as good
• Several tracks, including “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “Day Tripper,” “We Can Work It Out,” and “Paperback Writer” were given their first stereo mixes for this very album
• Amazing sound for “From Me to You,” “We Can Work It Out,” “Yesterday,” “I Feel Fine,” and the list goes on

As is usually the case with compilations like this, there is quite a bit of variation in sound quality between tracks — what works well for a song from 1963 may not quite suit a song from 1966 — but from start to finish on both sides this record strikes a much better balance than most.

And the choice of songs is outstanding, with just the right mix — almost as if you had compiled the thing yourself from all the best tunes from that era of The Beatles. They’re almost all favorites of mine, and I hope yours too.

This collection has a number of songs that are not on the original British LPs: the first three on side one for starters; also “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “I Feel Fine,” “Bad Boy,” “Paperback Writer” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand.”

Tubey Magic Is Key to the Best Songs

This vintage British pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records cannot even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of A Collection of Beatles Oldies Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes beginning in 1963
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

What We’re Listening For On A Collection of Beatles Oldies

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
• The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Where Can I Find Your Mono Beatles Records?

We do not sell Beatles records in mono.

They spent time on the mono mixes because getting the levels right for all the elements in a recording is ten times harder than deciding whether an instrument or voice should be placed in the left, middle or right of the soundstage.

And they didn’t even do the stereo mixes right some of the time, in our opinion. But wall to wall beats all stacked up in the middle any day of the week.

If you like mono Beatles records you will have to do your own shootouts for them, because we have never heard a mono Beatles record sound good enough to compete with our Hot Stamper stereo pressings.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don’t have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that’s certainly your prerogative, but we can’t imagine losing what’s good about this music — the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight — just to hear it with less background noise.

A Tough Record to Play

A Collection of Beatles Oldies is a Difficult Record to Reproduce. Do not attempt to play it using anything other than the highest quality equipment.

Unless your system is firing on all cylinders, even our hottest Hot Stamper copies — the Super Hot and White Hot pressings with the biggest, most dynamic, clearest, and least distorted sound — can have problems. Your system should be thoroughly warmed up, your electricity should be clean and cooking, you’ve got to be using the right room treatments, and we also highly recommend using a demagnetizer such as the Walker Talisman on the record, your cables (power, interconnect and speaker) as well as the individual drivers of your speakers.

This is a record that’s going to demand a lot from the listener, and we want to make sure that you feel you’re up to the challenge. If you don’t mind putting in a little hard work, here’s a record that will reward your time and effort many times over, and probably teach you a thing or two about tweaking your gear in the process (especially your VTA adjustment, just to pick an obvious area many audiophiles neglect).

Side One

She Loves You

This song will never be Demo Quality, but when it’s mastered correctly using low-distortion cutting equipment, as it seems to be on the better copies, it can actually sound quite good.

From Me to You
We Can Work It Out

One of the better test tracks for side one. The overall sound should be airy and spacious. On the best copies you’ll hear lots of ambience around the harmonium. This is also one of our favorite songs from Paul McCartney’s Unplugged, again with a wonderful sounding hamonium.

This track and Day Tripper were the first “double A sided single” The Beatles released, the two songs having been recorded during the Rubber Soul sessions. (Some good sessions those!)

Help!
Michelle
Yesterday

When we did a shootout for Help! a little while back, we noticed that this song never sounded quite right on the Brit copies; the vocals had a hollow quality on every Brit copy we played. On this album it sounds MUCH closer to correct. The German Helps are still king for this song, but a good copy of this album is a close second.

I Feel Fine
Yellow Submarine

Side Two

Can’t Buy Me Love
Bad Boy

One of the best sounding tracks on the album. When this song is right, it REALLY ROCKS — Demo Quality for sure.

Day Tripper

The stereo mix of this song leaves much to be desired. We’re waiting to be blown away by a superb mono mix.

A Hard Day’s Night

One of the toughest tracks to get right. On almost every copy you’ll have to deal with aggressive upper mids and at least a bit of distortion. It has some of that sound on the original album as well.

Ticket to Ride
Paperback Writer
Eleanor Rigby

With a high-resolution copy you’ll really hear the texture of the strings of the octet (four violins, two cellos, and two violas) accompanying Paul. On an exceptional copy it’s pure magic. Paul’s voice should be rich and full with lots of ambience.

I Want to Hold Your Hand

Background

A Collection of Beatles Oldies (subtitled But Goldies!) is a compilation album by the English rock band the Beatles. Released in the United Kingdom in December 1966, it features hit singles and other songs issued by the group between 1963 and 1966. The compilation served as a stopgap release to satisfy EMI’s demand for product during the Christmas period, since the Beatles had only begun recording their new studio album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, late the previous month. It was the band’s first official greatest hits collection, although the Beatles had no involvement in the album.

The album’s preparation and release coincided with rumours in the press that the group were on the verge of splitting up. This speculation was encouraged by the band members’ high-profile individual activities since completing their final US tour, in late August 1966, and the announcement that, unlike in previous years, they would not be performing any concerts in Britain at the end of the year. The album cover is a painting combining contemporary psychedelic and op art themes and was commissioned by the band’s manager, Brian Epstein. To proponents of the Paul is Dead theory, the artwork offered the first clues relating to the alleged demise of Paul McCartney and his replacement in the Beatles by a lookalike, a scenario that is said to have taken place in November 1966.

WIKIPEDIA

Song Selection

A Collection of Beatles Oldies was the band’s first official greatest-hits set and their eighth official album release in Britain. A cover version of Larry Williams’ “Bad Boy” was the sole new track for the UK market. It had already been released in the United States, on the Capitol album Beatles VI in June 1965. Most of the other songs had been issued as singles, all of which had topped the national chart compiled by Record Retailer magazine.

The compilation provided the debut UK album release for the following singles tracks: “From Me to You”, “She Loves You”, “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, “I Feel Fine”, “Day Tripper”, “We Can Work It Out” and “Paperback Writer”. The two songs that had not been issued as UK singles (apart from “Bad Boy”), “Yesterday” and “Michelle”, had each been number 1 hits in other European countries overseen by EMI. “Yesterday” was also the title track of a March 1966 EP, which had topped Record Retailer’s EPs chart, and “Michelle” was one of the four Rubber Soul tracks included on the Nowhere Man EP in July that same year. Aside from their appearances on albums or as standalone singles, most of the songs on A Collection of Beatles Oldies had also been available on the various compilation EPs issued by EMI since 1963, one of which was the December 1965 release The Beatles’ Million Sellers.

Several tracks, including “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, “Day Tripper”, “We Can Work It Out” and “Paperback Writer”, were remixed in stereo for the album. The stereo mixing was carried out by George Martin, the Beatles’ producer, with none of the band members present, between 31 October and 10 November 1966.

WIKIPEDIA