Best sounding Beatles albums


I'm looking for Beatles on vinyl to replace the original pressing records my aunt lent me some years ago (She wants 'em back, so to speak). I was going to go for some of the new Japanese pressings but after reading reviews from Fremer, etc. I am thinking this is not the best route.

Does anyone know what the best sounding pressings are (not the individual titles) and where to get them? Also if anyone has info on how much they should go for that would be helpful too.

As always, thanks fellow A'goners for any useful info. THis continues to be a great sight and forum.

Chris
cmo
I agree with Thaluza that "Abbey Road" wasn't the best of the MFSL recordings. The best of the MFSL, in my opinion, are the early albums. "Please Please Me" is absolutely fantastic. So is "Help". "With The Beatles" is also very fine, but extremely hard to find.
I am pretty sure that once you've heard a clean Stereo copy of Sgt Pepper on yellow/black Parlophone original/early UK Press, no other press will suffice. Some feel the MONO is better, but not for me.

I had (sold it) the white album (very clean) original UK MONO numbered in the lower 6000 (very early press) and while it sounded great I prefer the orig UK Stereo there as well (Apple).

Try better records (dccblowout.com). Tom Port constantly reviews Beatles product and a great source for info.
I also prefer the Parlophone Blue Box. I have a number of the later Beatles on MFSL and initially they sound quite impressive. However I found that "the mix" seemed to differ a fair bit from the Parlophone set. The MFSL dynamics in particular are fairly spectacular and the bass and lower registers are a little too overpowering----great if you want to hear Ringo! Its almost like the engineer was "riding" the gain Also the vocals were noticeably different in not a pleasant way. A colleague of mine brought over original Parlophone (France) stereo LP's and these were unbelievably good. The good news is that the Blue Box Parlophone set was close---tonally very similar just not as resolute.

I would look for a good copy of the Beatles Blue Box.