The Vinyl Restoration Project | The Monkees - "I Won't Be The Same Without Her" - Original LP - Raw Transfer @TheVinylRestorationProject | Uploaded April 2023 | Updated October 2024, 2 hours ago.
TheVRP Archives - Original 1st Edition Pressing - "The Monkees – Instant Replay" - 1969 - Colgems Records – COS-113
The Monkees - An Observation After 'Putting An Ear' to their Original Legacy Vinyl Sound from several of their albums - '66 - '69.
The stereo mixes in general, in my view, are not the problem, but it really falls more on what happened after that - in the post-production process. And so it would be the mastering and/or cutting phase of the projects where the 'cord gets cut', so to speak, and so you can't help but notice 'a drop-off' in achieving the maximum vinyl master sound fullness, impact, and overall richness in sound of a legacy recording when put to the vinyl medium that music reproduction was more than capable of back then. The simple fact of the matter is that the budgets did not call for it when it came to The Monkees and their music. Economics and Marketing 101, folks.
How so?
Well, think about it. The Monkees were marketed mostly for what age group? Kids. And do kids care about sound? Nope. So why put the money into the budget to pay for ensuring the sound is 'premium' during the mastering phase to vinyl when you don't have to? So nobody is at fault here. This is just Economics 101 at work, I believe.
And so, absolutely, that would explain why most all (if not all) of the Monkees production-to-vinyl falls short in sound or at least that I've heard. What you end up getting from their original vinyl pressings is good quality in terms of post-production manufacturing of the product, no doubt(after-all this was RCA), but the depth of sound is just not there in general and it comes across overall as more of a 'muted, tinny sound' that was a 'branded' sound for the Monkees on vinyl back then, shaped by the economics of it all. At least that has been my takeaway for those Monkees albums I've been able to put my ears to so far. There seems to be that pattern there.
No copyright infringement intended. For educational purposes and for cultural significance.
TheVRP Archives - Original 1st Edition Pressing - "The Monkees – Instant Replay" - 1969 - Colgems Records – COS-113
The Monkees - An Observation After 'Putting An Ear' to their Original Legacy Vinyl Sound from several of their albums - '66 - '69.
The stereo mixes in general, in my view, are not the problem, but it really falls more on what happened after that - in the post-production process. And so it would be the mastering and/or cutting phase of the projects where the 'cord gets cut', so to speak, and so you can't help but notice 'a drop-off' in achieving the maximum vinyl master sound fullness, impact, and overall richness in sound of a legacy recording when put to the vinyl medium that music reproduction was more than capable of back then. The simple fact of the matter is that the budgets did not call for it when it came to The Monkees and their music. Economics and Marketing 101, folks.
How so?
Well, think about it. The Monkees were marketed mostly for what age group? Kids. And do kids care about sound? Nope. So why put the money into the budget to pay for ensuring the sound is 'premium' during the mastering phase to vinyl when you don't have to? So nobody is at fault here. This is just Economics 101 at work, I believe.
And so, absolutely, that would explain why most all (if not all) of the Monkees production-to-vinyl falls short in sound or at least that I've heard. What you end up getting from their original vinyl pressings is good quality in terms of post-production manufacturing of the product, no doubt(after-all this was RCA), but the depth of sound is just not there in general and it comes across overall as more of a 'muted, tinny sound' that was a 'branded' sound for the Monkees on vinyl back then, shaped by the economics of it all. At least that has been my takeaway for those Monkees albums I've been able to put my ears to so far. There seems to be that pattern there.
No copyright infringement intended. For educational purposes and for cultural significance.
