Need Help. Best sounding Jimi Hendrix CD's

The last JH CD thread, had this, disc one anyway, as The Best JH on CD!
How 'things' change!
Oh well, at least it's for the better!

 

OK, I've started a new thread to discuss the mix differences for axis: bold as love.

Go here if you have an unhealthy obsession with this subject (like me ).

 

Well, I just picked up a couple of Hendrix P20P's on eBay. Think I did okay?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4008512950
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4008511983

--Paul Curtis

 

Yeah, Paul... real great. You outbid me on both of 'em!

I snagged his Cry of Love for $7.51 which was listed as a Japanese pressing. I also found a different seller with a W. German Smash Hits so I got something out of all that.

 

Sorry! I was going to bid on Cry of Love as well, but since I managed to outbid this "miquefan" character for the other two discs, I figured I'd let him have the third.

I've already got that one, and I'm eager to find out whether the P20P is any improvement. The German disc sounds pretty good, and it uses a proper mono source for "Stone Free," rather than the rechanneled version that's on all the current releases; the problem is, several tracks (including "Stone Free") have clipped intros.

No hard feelings, I hope!

--Paul Curtis

 

No hard feelings, Paul. That's the nature of eBay. I take comfort in the fact a Forum member still won.

 

I am listening to "Stone Free" right now, and it sounds like a folddown of the rechannelled version. It sounds wrong for some reason. I mean I have the Track "Smash Hits" and the signal is not like this one. Someone comment on this please.

 

AFAIK the mono Stone Free has never been on any Hendrix CD. EH keeps using the fake stereo versions. How Eddie Kramer and Georege Marino think fake stereo is better than mono is beyond me. EH doesn't have the multi's for Stone Free but they do have the multi's for AYE. Hope this helps.

Chris

 

I think that you will enjoy your W. Germans just fine. I have done some critical comparisons between the W. German Hendrix CDs and the Japanese Hendrix CDs, and I feel that the W. Germans are quite good sounding. The original Japanese Polydor Hendrix Cds do have a little more top end, and upon very extreme critical listening the Japanese Polydors have a tighter bass with no mush on the bottom. The only thing that strikes me as distinctive between the P33P and the P20P series is the soundstage. I always felt that most CDs of Hendrix made his guitar seem to big, like Jimi was bigger than life and was playing a guitar about 10 feet long along the front wall. Even the W. German CDs create the effect that Jimi's guitar was huge, and if you close your eyes you get the impression that Jimi Hendrix was a giant playing all over the front wall. The P33P series actually tones the size down and Jimi becomes a real part of the band, playing a more realistic size guitar. But if you put on a P20P disc and close your eyes Jimi has deffinate place in the band, staged in a real location and playing a guitar that is pinpoint accurate in stage location. For my tastes this one difference made all the difference in the world.

 

I will stick by my statement; "if the EH remasters are your only option then don't buy them, because you will never be a Hendrix fan." This sentiment dosen't come from some collector of little silver discs, it comes from the deepest part of my inner self, that part of my spirit that gets touched in a special way when Jimi play his guitar and sings. How can a person ever feel their spirit touched in a deep cosmic way by any of the EH remasters when you are listening to sound that has been crunched all the way up to digital maximum, and the waves of sound are clipped and squared off? If your ears can here the square waves, then your spirit can feel them.

 

Another thing to note about the EH CDs is that for AYE? the US release has the stereo version of redhouse found on the original US Smash Hits LP. The Japanese and European EH release of AYE? uses the mono version (which is also a completely different take) found on the original UK LP of AYE? Interestingly, the source used on the UK and Japanese EH remasters is a vinyl dub! Although the track is in mono, the surface noise is in stereo!! The strange thing is that the "Blues" compilation used a tape source for this track so why Eddie couldn't use that tape I don't know. I suppose that, seeing as the "Blues" compilation was mastered long before the EH series began, that tape may now be lost.

 

Are you sure it is a vinyl dub??It doesn't sound like it on my EH CD

DAN

 

If you have either the Japanese mini-LP sleeve edition of the EU version then yes. Th track is mono but the surface noise is spread across both channels. Headphones are the only easy way to spot it though....

See here for an old thread on this topic (and on the Japanese mini-LP editions in general).

 

Malc, I apologize, you are right !
That must explain why the Douglas AYE featured the stereo version instead of the original mono.
What about the EH BLUES CD? Is it a dub too?

Regards
Dan

 

Dan,

the EH Blues CD seems just to be a clone of the earlier CD release of the same compilation. The "Red House" on there is the mono version but is from a tape source. As I said earlier, I guess they couldn't find the tape when they were mastering the the EH AYE?. Why they couldn't use the digital master made for the "Blues" CD is a mystery to me though.

Malc

 

Anyone who wants to enjoy Hendrix on CD has to have the original US Reprise or overseas Polydor's, if only for the naturalness of the sound, warts and all. Just MHO....

 

I have to agree with Ed 100%. But I guess we could all hold our breaths for some new high resolution remaster.

 

Huge difference of opinion of the EH remasters on that thread compared to this one.

?

 

I just read that entire thread (while listening to VOODOO SOUP, which I like very much), and I did not read any posts that counterdict this thread. In fact, that thread opened up more questions regarding various versions of songs, such as RED HOUSE, that it did answering questions regarding sound quality.

 

IMHO, Voodoo Soup is the worst sounding and has the worst selections of all the legitimate Hendrix CDs.
This has been done several times before, but the CD versions of the US catalogue were as follows:
1. Original Reprise CDs (second generation at least tape)
2. RE-1 Reprise CDs (NoNoised versions of originals)
3. MCA Mankowitz (Better tapes, less NoNoise, not maximised, different covers) These possibly sound the best.
4. MCA EH versions (current) Maximised, but much less NoNoise.
Band of Gypsys is better in the EH version compared with the 25th Capitol - less phase shift and bass is less distorted (the difference between first and second generation tapes)
The loudest of all the EH CDs is First Rays - way over the top and it should be reissued in a reasonable edition.
The latest CD (Berkeley), is not nearly as maximised and sounds fine.
Stages and Lifelines are both worth picking up (the latter for the 69 LA Forum concert)

 

I bought the EH remasters back in high school and became a Hendrix fan. Maybe the deepest part of your inner self should revise its sentiment.

 

At the CD shop today I picked up an MCA 1993 release of Electric Ladyland to compare to my '80s 2-disc Reprise edition and '97 EH edition. I picked the same tracks from each and put them on a CD-RW and digitally adjusted so each had a "zero" peak to compensate for the different volumes.

IMO, the 2-disc Reprise sounds the best. No compression or no-noise, but not quite as warm as you'd like. The MCA faired worse than I thought. Not as in your face as the EH release, but uses NR and some EQ tampering. Almost "dull" in some spots. The EH version sounds tonally similar to the 2-disc Reprise, but is more compressed and maximized. Unfortunately I don't have any Poyldor German/Japan issues to compare.

 

Bumping this back up because I'm somewhat confused on which 'Ultimate Experience' Cd I have. On the spine it says MCAd-10829. Like someone else said the mastering is credited to 'Chop Em' Out, London' and doesn't say specifically who did the mastering. There is also a piece of paper inside advertising the intial round of 'Experience Hendrix' remasters from 1997, though, to my knowledge, the Experience Hendrix team never went back and 'secretly' remastered the 'Ultimate Experience' disc. The sound on it seems good enough, probably not perfect but still pretty good. I'm just curious as to who actually did the mastering on this.

 

I guess I just want to revisit this thread because of a recent thread about AXIS: BOLD AS LOVE. I have very strong feelings about the Hendrix catalog on CD because I am kind of a collector. As I posted over at the AXIS... thread, I own about 85 Hendrix CDs, all legit Polydors, Warners and MCAs. This came about partly by accident, but totally without any planning.

My collecting of Hendrix CDs was the result of an irrational response to the attacks of Sept. 11th, 2001. Right after Sept. 11th I decided that I wanted to preserve ONE THING that was uniquely American. I chose to collect Hendrix CDs because I felt that by preserving this one little bit of Americana, I could pass something on to my children that represented everything that my generation stands for. (I know how silly that sounds now.) So I started shopping around for Hendrix discs and I very quickly bought every single current MCA release, including the Purple Box. My quest for Hendrix was totally unplanned and haphazard, but I soon met 2 girls that between them owned over 1,200 Hendrix CDs, all legit Polydors and Warners and MCAs. (1 girl owned over 700 and the other girl owned over 500). Well these girls were beginning to merge their collections at the time that I met them so I was able to aquire over 100 used Polydors and Warners at very fair prices. (Example, a mint Japanese Polydor box of STAGES for $250.) My collection very quickly swelled from the 3 Hendrix CDs that I owned on Sept. 11th to 122 Hendrix CDs. I have since sold off some because of poor sonics OR WHATEVER, but I am still actively seeking out copies of Hendrix CDs that I do not own.

The result of all this has been my heart felt belief that the current MCA remasters are the worse sounding Hendrix releases in digital, and that the Hendrix catalog desperately needs a curator to mine the vaults and care for the tapes. A release program similar to the Miles Davis releases by Sony would finely do justice to the Hendrix catalog.

 

Originally Posted by therockman:
if the EH remasters are your only option, then simply don't listen to Hendrix, you will never be a Hendrix fan.

It's a simple case of someone's audio snootiness getting the best of their common sense -- not the first time I've seen it happen on this forum.

If you're going to be exposed to a masterpiece such as 'Electric Ladyland,' it doesn't matter whether it's via a super-duper audio-snob-endorsed CD or via a fourth-generation cassette dub -- the main thing is that you hear it. My first exposure to that album was with a beat-to-hell vinyl copy I bought for a dollar, which I played to death on a $70 Sears stereo. Yet somehow, despite that handicap, I became a huge Hendrix fan.

So if all some kid has is a cheap CD boombox and $8 in his pocket to buy 'Ladyland,' you're really going to tell him to skip it because it's not the correct pressing? Let's not get so hung up on mastering trivia that we forget that it's about the music, not the little pieces of plastic that convey them.