Beach Boys new remasters with new stereo

Also says stereo for Help Me Rhonda and 409..

I have heard the new stereo mixes as the twelve remasters were released two weeks ago in Japan and a good friend of mine purchased them.

The "Good Vibrations" stereo mix/creation is the best of the bunch. Very true to the 45 sound. But yes, Bill, there are synched & extracted sections; but Derry Fitzgerald & Mark Linett did an outstanding job.

"Heroes & Villians" is truer to the 45 than the previous stereo mix from a few years ago.

"Help Me, Rhonda" is not so much synched, but more 'extracted' sounding. Still sounds very good on speakers (fair on headphones).

"Help Me, Ronda" (LP version) is very good stereo however.

"409" sounds stereo on speakers, but careful listening on headphones indicates it's strictly an extraction.

"I Get Around" again sounds like an excellent DES
with 'phones' on, but natural with loudspeakers.

"Dance, Dance, Dance" is a better, truer to the 45 stereo mix than previously issued.

"Do You Wanna Dance" stereo mix is flawed, but still wonderful to hear in stereo.

Classic Carl-led LP cut "Girl Don't Tell Me" is beautiful sounding in new stereo.

There are more revelations, of course, but these are of the most interest to this board.

Don't forget that these sets include the dedicated monaural mixes too for the mono purists out there.

Andy

Aaron, Brian Wilson mixed many Beach Boys tracks to mono only in the 60s.
I recall reading he had/has a hearing problem in one ear and he preferred
mono. #1 hits "I Get Around" and "Good Vibrations" never saw true stereo
mixes before the CD era (and what has appeared, are indeed sync-ups).
Also, the complete "Pet Sounds" LP was mono until the 90s. As well, many
other BB tracks were always mono-only.   I am anxiously waiting to hear
these CDs.

aaronk wrote: Interesting. But I still don't understand the need for a "sync up." No multitracks available?

Not for everything, no. A lot of companies didn't even keep their multitracks, especially for artists that weren't big. But even on the recent "Smile" release, in production at the height of the Beach Boys' fame, there were two songs where they couldn't find the vocal tracks, and they had to do a sync-up with a radio performance of the songs.

Edited by Brian W.

Good Vibrations is, as far as I care, still mono only. All official stereo mixes have been a hodge-podge of "extractions" from the mono mix,
sometimes combined with elements from the existing multi-tracks. There's been a good number of stereo "instrumental" mixes over the years
but for a long time, no vocal multi-tracks were known to exist until around the time the Love and Mercy Brian Wilson biopic was being put
together and lo and behold, a tape containing some single-tracked vocals appeared.

There was an odd edit of Good Vibrations released on the mid 90s DCC reissue of Endless Summer which Steve Hoffman assumingly created solely
because he could; he took the ending off the instrumental mix from the Beach Boys 1993 Good Vibrations 5CD box set and tacked it on to the
original mono mix creating a single mix with a slightly longer ending. The switch in fidelity on the edit is noticeable, though and if you
compare this ending to the one on the actual single mix, you'll notice that it doesn't quite sound right (possibly an alternate take).