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Choosing between Reissue and Original pressings

Reissues have been common since quite some time but these days as vinyl has picked up momentum again, there have been some very high quality reissues from labels like Classic, Analogue Productions, Speakers corner, MFSL, Boxstar etc. For any particular album how do you decide whether buy a good reissue or get a good copy of original pressing from ebay ?

For the sake of discussion lets keep out exceptions where the original pressing is too hard to get or too expensive. In most cases it is possible to buy a copy of original pressing for sane amount of money if one shops carefully on ebay but I have also found that quite a few times a high quality reissue can sound better. Whats the general thought among hardcore vinyl followers here ?
pani

Showing 2 responses by pani

pani OP
1,232 posts
 
Thanks everyone for writing elaborate posts on this topic. This is a very important subject especially for people like me who has just started building their record collection. When I visit a record shop I see tons of options and it becomes difficult to choose. Apart from the Audiophile reissues there are other variations of the same album, like:

1. First pressing
2. Early pressing
3. Early reissue
4. Pressed in so and so country (mostly specified if it is a Japanese pressing)
5. Early reissue by a famous XYZ label (like MFSL)

First pressings are rare but early pressings are found more often. In such cases do you favour "country of pressing" ? If yes, then how do you rank them ?

Coming over to reissues, an album like Muddy Waters "Folk Singer" has been released by MFSL and Analogue productions and of course there must be the original pressing of it. What do you do in such situations ?

Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" reissue, remastered by Steve Hoffman is generally considered much superior to the original (I havent heard the original though). Question is, if a reputed mastering engineer is involved in a certain reissue (Steve Hoffman, Bernie Grundmann, Bob Ludwig etc), does it make a good case to buy the reissue ?

One more question, is it possible to detect the original pressings from a early reissue ?
pani OP
1,232 posts
 
Working duplicate tapes of the master are generally shipped overseas for release in other countries.

These duplicate copies were most probably made out of the original copy ? If yes then obviously they would be inferior to the original because in analog there is always loss when transferring information from one tape to another! So, probably the tape that were being used in other countries were inferior in the first place ?
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