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 its 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 yadada yada 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 opinions of other collectors don’t really help us in finding a satisfying pressing of a given 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 more records so that perhaps a few of my readers out there won’t have to buy so many to find a good one.

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 relative to 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 amount of naturalness to the instruments as well. In particular, the drums on “Take up thy stethoscope,” 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 that also includes Pink Floyd’s second album, A Saucerful of Secrets, it’s clear to me why the 2016 reissue was not worth the $28 I paid for it.

The drums that sounded natural enough before, when compared to the drums on the A Nice Pair version, now 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, because the more I listen to it the more I find I’m suffering through one lousy sounding track after another. Oh, the sacrifices I make for my readers!

I suppose I’m not being very diplomatic about this 2016 reissue. Maybe it’s just a symptom of our current political climate. After all, there was one reviewer on Amazon who said I would regret not buying a copy.

And while I don’t usually research or even buy records on Amazon, I happened to be looking for something else and thought I might read some reviews of this reissue to see if there were any that were interesting or helpful. What I found instead, the review referenced above notwithstanding, were mainly folks that sounded a bit like concerned Hillary supporters warning the public of the dangers of a Donald Trump presidency.

Here’s one 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 shredder 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 above certainly 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!

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 didn’t get a good impression of this version from the forum members and I never really considered buying one. I started with the 2016 reissue and then got A Nice Pair.

I’ll disclose later why I ended up buying the Fame reissue as it’s key to 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, for instance, don’t just sound wonderfully like drums, they have decay, and fade gradually, giving a heavenly sense of time and space to the instrument. The same holds true for the guitars, vocals, keyboards and every other instrument on the album.

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, fleshing out each sound as it travels. This reissue manages to fully realize the lush, magical, dreamy quality of the music on Piper.

If I hadn’t heard any another version of Piper, I’m not sure I’d have appreciated how much this one gets the music right. Now that I have heard this copy and others I can say that, compared to the Nice Pair version, this pressing kills, and compared to the 2016 reissue, the Fame reissue is a bonafide revelation.

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

If you ARE already familiar with Better Records, then either you’ve already bought a record from them or are one of the many on the sidelines wondering if their records are really worth all that money? After all, you’re paying this company to pre-screen numerous copies of a particular title on a system designed to expose the various flaws of each copy until the rare copies that meet their standards emerge and are offered at prices that can be 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 its collectibility.

Getting back to the copy I bought, I paid . . .are you ready for it? $160 for it. 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 of the very early pressings, but honestly, are we really ever going to re-sell our best records anyway? Doesn’t it just make sense to find the best sounding 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 a 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 a 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 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 you never know.

I CAN promise you this – any Fame reissue will sound WAY better than the 2016 remastered reissue and likely much better than the copy you’d get with A Nice Pair. And if you want an absolutely FANTASTIC sounding copy of Piper, then you’ll have to wait until they offer another one at Better Records. I bought the last one.