Bootleg EP? and SRO*

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TonyCurrie

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Curiosity has got the better of me and I've just bought a very bizarre EP on eBay. As you can see, it's almost certainly a bootleg - unless it's from a licensing deal in some remote country. But I doubt that. If anyone knows anything of this one's origins, do tell. If it was one of the Chinese pressings, there would be Chinese characters somewhere on the sleeve - and it would probably be yellow or orange vinyl, too! Meanwhile I await its arrival with some interest.
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That's an interesting record for sure! Perhaps it might not have strictly been a bootleg, but released in a country (for local consumption) where copyright laws were lax. But it definitely could be a bootleg.

The most unusual one I have, which is in poor shape and was picked out of a dollar bin, was a London pressing of Going Places from Japan. It has some cheesy sleeve to it, with some sort of "Ameriachi" title. But naturally, it would have been licensed.

I also remember seeing a photo of a 78RPM release of "Mexican Shuffle." India, perhaps? It's been ages since I've seen it.
 
It's a pretty neat looking package--and what a rare photo of Herb! As for it not being a real deal, you still can't fault someone's obsession to package this deal, by obtaining a few songs & getting a-hold of a good lathe! :D

But a shame to go such an illegal, immoral route, then, even out of preserving a Smithsonian-level of collector appeal...


-- Dave
 
nathan, yes it is. it is really not a rare picture of Herb, the picture above is from the SRO lp CD it was cropped. does any one actually have this, so my question is is it the mono or stereo and is it the single version of Spanish Flea rather than the album mono version. just wondering, as I never seen this one, could be a bootleg.
bob
 
It's not at all neat, it's a cheap rip-off! And, they likely got away with it for at least a little while.
 
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Hey! Where did SHE come from?

(This one IS official!)

Harry
 
What incredible arm strength, too, to hold yourself up like that! Incredible. I want her phone number. :laugh:
 
I can now confirm that the EP is a bootleg. It's been made from needledrops - you can hear a little turntable rumble and hiss that cuts dramatically at the end of each track; not to mention a bit of tape wow near the start of "Spanish Flea". In fact, I have a suspicion that it was "mastered" from cassettes. It's mono and although not bad quality it's obvious that it's not an official release. No copyright information or publication date on the label, and the "A.M." label is a joke. Interesting, though, that the pressing has a properly-stamped matrix number. Curious to know which country it was pressed in. The sleeve is indeed a rip-off from the SRO cover and the logotype of "Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass" is identical to that on SRO.
 
Just on a lark I decided to order that Hör Zu/Teldec version of SRO. It arrived yesterday and I've gotten around to examining it today. I'm not generally one to collect foreign versions of these old albums, but this one's a keeper. For one, the jacket is nearly stone mint - way better than the picture above. And our female intruder is present on both sides of the jacket.

Listening to the vinyl, I'm impressed with the nice crispy highs. To me SRO was always just a bit on the muddy side. While the overbearing bass is still there, it sounds a little better supporting some extended high frequencies. The other thing I think I'm hearing is that "Our Day Will Come" doesn't sound as "tape-damaged" as the versions I have on CD and LP.

So after being impressed with British mono version of BEAT OF THE BRASS and now this from Germany, maybe it's worth seeking out some European pressings of these albums.

Harry
 
It would be interesting to compare the sonic qualities of the different pressings.

One of my local stores somehow had a few of the Deutches Gramophone pressings, where I actually found a sealed copy of Warm, and used copies of The Brass are Comin' and Ye-Me-Le. My verdict on these compared with genuine A&M pressings: on the plus side, the vinyl is the quietest I've heard of these titles, but on the minus, they all have a dull sound quality to them. It is subtle, but what it reminds me of is the master tape being an additional generation (a copy) of what was used in the US. In other words, some slight detail in the music is lost due from what is possibly the result of A&M sending DG a copy of the master which the vinyl was cut from.

The Hor Zu version might be a case of the label deciding to use their own EQ during cutting. (And it could be that DG left the EQ alone.) Different electronics, different cutting lathes, etc. all contribute to those differences as well.

I only owned one Hor Zu LP--I think it was Revolver (Beatles), and unfortunately it was too noisy to bother playing. I got it free (for that reason, in fact). But I didn't yet compare it to the recent stereo 180g LP version.
 
Hor Zu is the German (and Austrian) equivalent of TV Guide. The albums that were released under their banner were licensed to regular labels who did a deal with the TV magazine on special promotions.
 
After more examination, I don't think the SRO from Germany is really so different in the EQ. It just sounded that way on the turntable with my EQ choices on the speakers. I did a needledrop and find it not that much different from other versions of the album. EXCEPT, "Our Day Will Come". As some of you will recall, that first track has always sounded a bit "crunchy" for lack of a better term. I first noticed it on the old and rare Japanese CD of the album while making a dub for someone. Listening to what I thought was pristine sounded awful in headphones. It was as if the master tape used had been eaten by a car's cassette player.

Appalled, I pulled out my old LP and gave it a listen too. It didn't sound much different - still "crunchy", but the noise was generally buried in the surface noise of the LP, and when played on speakers for all of those years, really didn't stand out.

When the Shout! version came out, and it had the crunchy distortion to it too, I figured that the track really was a lost cause, fidelity-wise and haven't paid it much attention since then.

Now this HörZu/German version of the LP arrives and I really don't hear much in the way of that distortion. It's as if they made a copy to send to Europe before the damage was done to the Hollywood master.

In Beatles circles, there's a highly-prized HörZu pressing of one of their early albums. On this page, you can read all of the arcane details.

Harry
 
Not at all uncommon for master tapes to suffer damage (often at the top of the tape) which then appears on second and subsequent pressings. A good example is Sounds Orchestral's "Cast Your fate To the Wind" which suffers from print-through at the start (but not on the first pressing). Generally speaking, copy tapes were made from the masters before the disc was released, and so can become the only source for undamaged masters.
 
I was surprised after all these years of "crunchiness" to hear a clean version of the song. I would have thought that my original LP was an early pressing since by then I was eagerly awaiting each release, but that LP has the "crunchy" version.

This German LP sounds great on this track: http://1drv.ms/1L4ghbw

Harry
 
Logically speaking, all existing tapes out there came from one single source. It's what happened past that first generation that's in question.

I am now officially ready to say that if I never hear this song for another five years, it will still be too soon.

I no longer have the JP CD anywhere on my server, so I can't compare that digital version. That one was a sonic turd, and I clearly remember those dropouts. I have the HZ needledrop track, and the Sig Series ripped to FLAC on my network drive. Both digital versions were played through the analog outputs of the Oppo BDP-105 to the preamp.

I have two vinyl copies on hand. Playback via Dynavector XX2 into Musical Fidelity pre-preamp, to the same preamp above.

Copy 1 of the LP sounds a little more open on the upper mids and top end. It's slight. But between the two, I am not hearing any distortion or dropout, other than a vague flattening or dulling on the left channel during the first verse (and at this point, I almost think I might be imagining it). Two different pressing plants? Perhaps. I did not see the Monarch stamping in the run-out, but on Copy 1, SP-4137-B12 on side A, and SP-4138-A13 on side B. For copy 2: SP-4137-1B (which is crossed out and rewritten) on side A, and SP-4138-1E on side B.

Copy 1:
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Copy 2:
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The HZ sounds very slightly faster compared to the two vinyl copies I have, but it could just be a minor turntable difference. The SS CD runs slower (flatter, for us musically inclined).

The worst sounding of the four I've heard repeatedly today: The SS CD. The dynamics are slightly flattened and of course it's slightly brickwalled, but the overall tone of the music has been dulled--highs are slurred, the bass doesn't have that same low-end "grip" the vinyl copies have, and even the mids sound congested and not "open" like the vinyl. It sounds like an old tape copy, and tapes do not deteriorate this much. I never did a direct shootout over good equipment like this and didn't realize how dulled the SS CD was. There is a bit of "grunge" in the left channel in our questionable spot. I wonder if the mastering engineer decided to dull things a bit to cover up some age-related problems.

One thing that causes distortion is that this track and "Mame" were a bit bass-heavy. On 45RPM singles (especially styrene), you get intermodulation distortion on the music when the bass is that loud; with the styrene, that bass turns "fuzzy" since the plastic can't handle the stylus trying to track that bass. (And if it's a juke box pull, like my older copy, it can get quite nasty.) Some of this could affect the LP as well, and might affect the music so it sounds like it is slightly distorted. (Hard to explain without demonstrating it in person.)

I do not have means to do needle drops any longer, but may borrow something since I have some titles I need to get on my music server. Even with a few minor clicks, I'd rather listen to the needle drop than that SS CD. To put it another way, the odd-sounding SS CD does not encourage me to listen; the vinyl makes me want to get up and flip sides to play all the way through.

Just goes to show us all that vinyl can still be one of the most trustworthy media for this music. 50 years on and the original vinyl still sounds good; any digital version has been all over the map, sonically.
 
I was surprised after all these years of "crunchiness" to hear a clean version of the song. I would have thought that my original LP was an early pressing since by then I was eagerly awaiting each release, but that LP has the "crunchy" version.

This German LP sounds great on this track: http://1drv.ms/1L4ghbw

Harry
Wow! I don't usually pay much attention to sound quality. I don't even understand any of the technical differences anyone described in this thread. I was just reflecting that the differences in sound quality would be too subtle for me to hear, but they're not. I bought the Signature Series version in MP3 format, and I'm amazed at how much better the version you just provided sounds!

Now I'm starting to wonder: Are there copies out there of the TJB's "Monday Monday" without that hiccup (or whatever it is) 7 seconds into the song? Because I bought the Signature Series version of that on MP3 as well.
 
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I believe that the "Monday, Monday" dropout is present in all versions, at least all of the versions I've heard. And this includes the mono version on the rare mono album. I have attempted a correction on my own. It seems that the information in the dropout part of the recording is there, and if you use an audio editing program like Audacity, that tiny portion can be level-boosted to match the surrounding sound, resulting in much less of a dropout.

As for the Signature Series, I can hear many places where deteriorating master tapes now exist, with attempts to fix them. A memorable example is "Tijuana Taxi". We all noticed that when DEFINITIVE HITS came out as the last A&M release for Herb, that "Tijuana Taxi" had that same crunchy-tape sound in the last few seconds of the song. And we compared it to older A&M releases on CD of GOING PLACES and GREATEST HITS, where that section sounded fine. In the Signature Series, that section of tape improved a good deal, but still wasn't as smooth-sounding as on those old CDs.

So yeah, there are lots of examples of things that sound better on LP, on older CDs and on the newer CDs. You just have to pick and choose from among them.

Harry
 
Now that you've got me curious, I checked all the versions of 'Monday Monday' that I have, and indeed they all have the same dropout seven seconds in. It's an odd glitch - the modulation doesn't vanish, but it's almost impossible to bring the level up and smooth it out (on Adobe Audition) without an audible pop. But I shall work on it over the weekend and see what can be done.....
 
What I find a bit disturbing is that given how easy it was to fix "Monday, Monday", why wasn't this done when the Signature Series was mastered? And why does SRO on the SS CD sound so bad? These both make me wonder which tapes were used for the CDs. I'm presuming any of the copies of the masters also still exist...? It is not all that hard, with digital editing, to grab a good section of one tape and paste it into a section of another tape that is damaged. Even though it is too low of a resolution, nobody is going to notice if you grab a fraction of a second from an existing CD copy and fly it in--a bit of EQ and level adjustment, and it's a near-perfect match. The process is not perfect but it does make the listening more pleasant, and more important for what could be a "last time ever" digital release.

This also makes me wonder why, with digital editors so readily available, why the CSG hasn't been removed from modern CDs. No, we don't need the EQ jacked up or have it drenched in noise reduction which sucks the life out of it, but CSG is simple to remove now, and it focuses the sound so much better. Our earlier experiments here were an example of how this could be done.

It is amusing that even early LP copies of "Monday, Monday" have the glitch. And that back when I heard this LP all those years ago, I never really paid attention to it. (I only first noticed it when I found a copy of the original CD release from the late 80s, by which time I was a far more critical listener.)
 
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