With the success of a certain presidential campaign imbued with racial bias and the dismissal of the “politically correct,” I find myself considering the state of my own biases.  Are they in any way being processed into a state of resolution or am I only sublimating these biases to a place where they lie in wait, gaining strength for later when an event that cracks the veneer of my west coast urban intellectualism unleashes them back onto the world with a vengeance? Perhaps the alarming uptick in racially charged hate crimes among a certain segment of the population goes beyond bigotry and cretinism and reflects some pent up frustration we’ve all been feeling over the past 8 years and that has been held at bay by “political correctness.” Or perhaps that’s just a politically correct excuse for unconscionable behavior.

This nutty world of vinyl record enthusiasts appears to harbor it’s own strong biases. I was reading a blog the other day in which the author described the folks on the Steve Hoffman forums as “the most heavily censored and over-moderated assemblage of over the hill obsessive compulsive Americans ever gathered in one place.” And here I thought it was just a place to get advice on record collecting. I had no idea.

Come to think of it, a lot of the folks on Steve Hoffman forums are pretty annoying. What with all of the “I’ve got the such and such pressing of yatada yata and it sounds great to me!”  I mean come on, how is a budding record collector supposed to get anywhere finding a decent vinyl pressing with that kind of help. The truth is, most of the time the individual opinions of other collectors don’t really help us in finding a satisfying pressing of a particular record. We’ve got to hear a copy for ourselves. So I’ve been trying to do that by biting the collective bullet and accumulating records so that perhaps a few of my readers out there won’t have to.

There was a time in the not so distant past that I’d never have even considered buying multiple copies of the same album. Now I own 3 copies of Pink Floyd’s Piper At The Gates of Dawn, an album I never thought I’d own even one copy of, and I can offer some educated advice on which version you might consider buying if you don’t already own a copy or if you’re not happy with your current one(s). This is a fantastic album and my affection for it is directly linked to having had the opportunity to hear a stellar pressing of the it.

Let me say straight away that my experience with this album thus far only reinforces a bias I am forming against reissued, 180 g pressings in general. The latest reissue of Piper illustrates both what I love and what I don’t love about a lot of the reissues coming out these days.  The packaging is fantastic! I love the use of the original labels and some of the retro details on the cover design. I also love the high quality inner sleeve, in this case a black paper with a poly liner. Very nice! I only wish I were more crazy about the way the record sounds.

I really should preface any criticism here by pointing out that how this record sounds to you will have a lot to do with your system.  There’s an appealing punchyness to the sound of this record that may compensate for the lack of a low end typical in a modest system.  On first listen there is some nice naturalness to the instruments as well. In particular the drums on “Take up thy stethoscope” come accross pretty well, and overall the tonality isn’t bad.

But when I put on the budget copy of this record I got with my UK version of A Nice Pair, a twofer set that also includes Pink Floyd’s second album A Saucerful of Seacrets it’s clear to me why the 2016 reissue was not worth the $28 I paid for it at my local record store.  The drums that sounded natural enough before now, when that sound is compared to the drums on the A Nice Pair version, sound somehow not really like drums at all. And all the other instruments as well as the vocals have a level of naturalness and listenability on A Nice Pair that make it hard to continue comparing it to the 2016 reissue and suffer through yet another crap sounding track. Oh, the sacrifices I make for my readers!

I suppose I’m not being very diplomatic about the 2016 reissue.  Maybe it’s just a symptom of our current political climate.  After all, there was one reviewer on Amazon when I was researching it that said I would regret not getting a copy. I don’t usually research or even buy records on Amazon, but I happened to be looking for something else and I thought I might read some reviews of this reissue to see if there were any that were interesting or helpful. What I found instead were reviews that sounded like concerned Hilary supporters warning the public of the dangers of a Donald Trump presidency. Here’s one review from a far from satisfied customer:

“Please, I’m begging you, DO NOT buy this. It is NOT anything like the Floyd you know or love. This is just four guys that found instruments in a thrift store and drugs on the street. Syd writes child like music that even a child would laugh at. My ears bled while trying to give this music a fair chance, it has since gone through the shedder and I put Dark Side of the Moon on.”

Poor guy, he really didn’t know what he was getting into when he bought this record. This is pre-prog rock Pink Floyd for sure, and our reviewer certainly has made one very accurate observation about Piper – this is Syd Barrett’s music, and if you’re not on board with his vision you’d better just hop off and put on Dark Side to calm your nerves. Rolling up a fatty might not hurt either!  And did you hear? Now getting stoned is legal in California! At least one good thing came out of this election.

Anyway, let’s get back to our subject. My third copy of Piper is a Fame reissue.  When researching this record on Steve Hoffman forums I guess didn’t get a good impression of this version from the forum members as I never really considered buying one. I started with the 2016 reissue and then got A Nice Pair a short while later. I’ll disclose later why I ended up buying the Fame reissue as it’s a key piece in our story.  For now let me just say that the copy I have of the Fame reissue blows away the other two in a very exciting way!

In the description the seller wrote for this record record he says “This is the sound of the Master Tape, make no mistake about it.” Now if that doesn’t make you want to buy the record I don’t know what will. And buy it I did. Now I have a copy that manages to strip away much of what obscures the original recording of the music from the listener.  The drums I was mentioning earlier don’t just sound wonderfully like drums, they have decay, fading gradually and giving a heavenly sense of time and space to the instrument. The same holds true for the guitars, vocals, keyboards and every other instrument.

Piper makes prodigious use of the two channels for effect. Voices and sounds move back and forth between the right and left channels on a number of tracks. On this Fame reissue there is tremendous clarity and definition throughout the sound stage which fleshes out the sounds as they travel and fully realizes the lush, dreamy quality of this album. If I hadn’t heard any another version of the record I’m not sure I’d have fully appreciated this. Now that I have I can say this version is a bonafide revelation.

Or at least, this copy is.  Confession – I bought this copy of the Fame reissue from Better Records.  If you’re not already familiar with this record seller then you may want to stop reading this post and simply go ahead and buy a record or two from them. They offer a 100% money back guarantee so what have you got to lose?

If you ARE already familiar with Better Records, then either you have bought a record from them or remain one of the many who wonder – is it really worth the money? After all, you’re paying this company to pre-screen numerous copies of a particular title on an audio system designed to expose the various flaws of each copy until the rare copies that meet their standards are offered at prices that can seem quite startling.

The Better Records business model flies in the face of what most collectors adhere to. BR bases the value of their records on subjective rather than objective criteria. Each record is priced based on the quality of the listening experience and not necessarily on it’s collectibility.

Getting back to the copy I bought, I paid . . .are you ready? $160 for this copy. Crazy? In my defense, original UK pressings of this record in this good of condition sell for upwards $600 or more, and I am dubious that I’d find an original pressing that sounds as good as this one does.  My copy may not have the collectability factor or the re-sell value but honestly, are we really ever going to sell our best records?  Doesn’t it make sense to find the best sonding copy we can find and just keep it, play it and enjoy the hell out of it?

Again I bit the collective bullet here and I can now say this.  If you want to good sounding copy of Piper at the Gates of Dawn for not a lot of money then buy a copy of A Nice Pair. I can definitely recommend the UK version, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the US version was pretty decent as well. If you want a great sounding copy of Piper then I would say take a chance on the Fame reissue. At least you know there’s the possibility that you MIGHT get a great sounding copy for a decent price.

Either way, you don’t have to worry about it being a digital remaster or even whether the quality of the mastering is an issue. It isn’t. I can’t promise you that the copy you buy will sound as good as the one I bought, but who knows?

I CAN promise you that any Fame reissue will sound better than the 2016 remastered reissue and likely better than the copy you’d get with A Nice Pair. Bit if you want an ABSOLUTELEY FANTASTIC sounding copy of Piper then you’ll have to wait until they offer another one at Better Records.  I bought the only one they had.