I felt none of the anticipation of opening a Fab Four LP that I felt as a fourteen year old in 1965. I did not have to scrimp and save to be able to afford to buy it and I have got enough money in my back pocket to afford the rest of the set. In 1965 most people could not afford to buy an LP on a whim - even grown ups. The fact that you had to save to get a record made it sound all the better - way back then.
The new LP felt a little heavier than its 1965 cousin. The groove on the record is the same gauge as a Stereo record; 1960s mono LP had a wider groove. Nowadays you need to use a needle with a 0.7 mil tip radius to avoid damaging the record or to prevent the stylus from skipping out of the groove.
I opened the record carefully.
The new LP looked as if it was pressed with care and there were no scratches on the surface and I did not feel the need to wash the record. The spindle hole was also correctly aligned. However, I got a bit of a surprise as a cat hair had somehow got onto side two; at first I thought it was a scratch. The cat hair had been floating around the room and of course static electricity had attracted it. Need I say more.
I carefully cued up the record after giving it a clean with a carbon brush. The run in was very quiet and at the volume I use I could hear no surface noise.
The only differences to the sound quality, as far as the record was concerned, were the improved treble and bass compared to 1965. The cymbals and triangles were reproduced more clearly. The higher notes of the guitars and sitars were also more piercing. The bass notes sounded more musical rather than thumping out.
The voices did not really sound much different as they fall into the middle frequency range and 1965 equipment was able to reproduce the middle range very well.
The record has been re-mastered very well and gives sound reproduction as good as it can get. There is pamphlet inside the sleeve which describes that the record has been re-mastered with modern equipment in mind and that 1960s "Hi-Fi" equipment was limited compared to today. FM and AM radio was equally as limited. The original records were produced with this in mind.
So how good is the sound and how much has it improved? Well, I have one Beatles mono LP from the 1960s which has survived rather well and it stands up very well in comparison to the modern vinyl - there is a little bit more surface noise and a couple of pops but no scratches, and the frequency response across the bass, mid and treble is similar to my ears. The modern record still had a couple of popping noises in between tracks. These popping noises would be audible in the very quiet sections of a classical record.
The main reason why the 1960s mono albums and the modern ones sound better is because of the improvements to turntables, amplifiers and speakers.
Back in the days of yore turntables suffered from rumble and wow and flutter. A modern deck hardly suffers from this unless it is really,really cheap. Valve amplifiers usually had a noticeable hum and distorted the music even at moderate amplitude. The ceramic cartridges had a much more limited frequency response and this is why the treble was less apparent.
The cartridge and stylus combination quickly wore out records which were played by teenagers over and over again. The damaged records sounded scratchy.
I lived in West Wales and our street was very quiet so any fault on a record was readily apparent. Today we live in a much more noisy environment so the surface noise from an LP is much less audible. This makes a big difference to sound quality. My living room in the outskirts of south London is relatively quiet at around 32 decibels. But that is only when there are no cars passing in the street. The noise level in 1965 in West Wales was way below this and any surface noise from an LP would have been audible at moderate amplitude and even using the best equipment for the time. This made little difference to a pop record but for a classical record it did.
If you read the audiophile forums, you will get the impression from many commentators that the new Beatles mono vinyl you will get to a new level of sonic heaven. This is not so. The new records are very good but how good? Most of the commentators do not compare any of their records or equipment to a standard. There is no objectivity. I always remain sceptical about any opinion on a forum or in a Hi-Fi magazine.
Some commentators claim that there is a " night and day" difference between the modern sound and that of the 1960s. This is an outrageous claim as it would mean that the music would be unrecognisable in its 60s form. Yes, the sound reproduction in 1965 was not as good today but it was good enough for The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys etc. to sell millions of record.
Some commentators have made reference to the "inky black silence" between the tracks of the new Beatles mono vinyl. I can see where they are coming from with the analogy, as the new records are very quiet, but for a person with normal hearing there is no such as silence. I once stayed in farmhouse in the heart of rural France and it was very quiet there. So quiet that my wife and I found it a little bit disconcerting at night until we got used to it - you could hear an owl from miles away!
You can also read commentary from audiophile gurus that on the new vinyl you can hear a mouse running across Ringo's foot or such like - but of course you cannot hear it on the CD equivalent. This sort of commentary is rubbish.
Inevitably you have to make the comparison between the LP and the CD. I tried not to do this when I played the new Rubber Soul LP for the first time. When I asked my wife what she thought, she insisted that I also played a digital version. She thought that the LP sounded "more primitive" but better. After an hour or so of playing Beatles music I asked her again. She replied that she had forgotten what the LP sounded like and was no longer prepared to make a judgement. This explains it all.
If you are a fan of The Beatles and really like the sound reproduction from an LP then I can recommend that you buy these albums; you will hear a sound quality much better than before without having to pay an arm and a leg for a mint condition original. However, do not expect to to be taken to a new level of sonic heaven as some of the commentators suggest.
If you want a flavour of the 1960s sound then play this You Tube all the way through:
The new vinyl will not take you back to the1960s. To do this, I suggest playing the records through a low powered single active speaker. To me the music sounds better but only because it reminds me of the past. If I want to listen to 1960s music with high sound quality then I choose a modern HiFi and a CD every time - be it mono or stereo.
