Re: [ARSCLIST] stereo or double mono

[David Lennick <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mike Richter wrote:

>
>
> Two other cases may be of interest: Electronically enhanced for stereo
> (which sounded bad either way); and stereo recordings sold as mono.
>
> Suppose the publisher had a good stereo master of a title with a limited
> market. He could publish two versions, the stereo listing for a one
> dollar premium. Or he could publish the same pressing with different
> jackets, thereby keeping the customers who wouldn't pay the stereo
> premium. Complicating matters further, if the title sold the publisher
> might create a monaural master for a repressing so that the same issue
> would be either mono or stereo depending on when it was pressed.
>
> My copy of Westminster's "Flaming Angel" (by Prokofiev) rescued a friend
> from a major problem. He needed it in stereo and his was mono. Though
> mine had the same labels and packaging, it was in stereo.
>
> Mike
> --

You'd be surprised how often that happened. A number of 101 Strings LPs from the 60s
were packaged and labelled as mono but turned out to be stereo (the appeal of that
series in mono would have been limited anyway, so why bother with duplicate masters
and stampers) and all (as far as I know) of the Everest Archive of Piano series were
stereo, despite being packaged as mono and stereo (with a price difference of about
20 cents when I was buying them new).

I haven't run across any of the "real" mono vs "not real" mono ones Mike describes.
On the other hand, I've had some horrors where a master was reprocessed into fake
stereo and then mixed down for a mono issue. RCA did that a number of times in the
60s. Eddie Fisher's Greatest Hits comes to mind.

dl