Driving My Car into a Ditch

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

Mobile Fidelity made a mess of Drive My Car on their Half-Speed mastered release of Rubber Soul in 1982.

Perhaps it’s more accurate to say Stan Ricker, MoFi’s go-to mastering engineer, did.

He equalized out far too much upper midrange and top end.

What fuels the energy of the song are the cow bell, the drums and other percussion. Instead of a scalpel, Mobile Fidelity took a hatchet to this slightly bright track, leaving a dull, lifeless, boring mess.

Some Parlophone copies may be a little bright and lack bass, but at least they manage to convey the musical momentum of the song.

Even the purple label Capitol reissues can be quite good. A bit harsher and spittier, yes, but in spite of these shortcomings they communicate the music, which ought to count for something.

As much as I might like some of the MoFi Beatles records [not so much anymore], and even what MoFi did with some of the other tracks on Rubber Soul, they sure sucked the life out of Drive My Car.

We all remember how much fun that song was when it would come on the radio. Playing it on a very high quality stereo should make it more fun, not less.

If you’ve got a Rubber Soul with a Drive My Car that’s no fun, it’s time to get another one.

By The Way

The best $250 — to the penny! — I ever spent on records is the price I paid for my brand new, still-in-the-shipping-carton MoFi Beatles Box. I ordered it in 1982 when I first learned of it, and it finally came the next year. I already owned all The Beatles albums MoFi had done to date, including the UHQR of Sgt. Pepper, which, like a fool, I got rid of once the set came out.

BC-1 single-handedly turned me on to the early Beatles records, the first five albums, records which I hadn’t played since I was in grade school. (Introducing The Beatles — aka Please Please Me — on Vee-Jay was one I had failed to warm to and probably had never owned. Now I love it, even more than any of the other first five.)

I plan on writing more about it down the road, but for now let there be no doubt, I had the set at the ripe young audiophile age of 29 and proceeded to fall in love with the music of The Beatles all over again.

Someday I hope to post a picture of the first record I ever bought for myself with my own money, She Loves You on Swan in the picture sleeve, a record I still own. I was probably nine. That was the record that unofficially marked the start of my passion for recorded music.

It’s cracked and unplayable but of course that is to be expected. What ten year old music lover could resist playing She Loves You until it cracked? Notthis one, I can tell you that.

If you are still buying these remastered pressings, making the same mistakes that I was making before I knew better, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered LPs.

At the very least let us send you a Hot Stamper pressing — of any album you choose — that can show you what is lacking on your copy of the album.

And if for some reason you disagree with us that our record sounds better than yours, we will happily give you all your money back and wish you the very best.

Further Reading

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