Vanity Fare - Hitchin’ A Ride

Kent: not sure what you mean by it being only a mono recording, as it is
stereo on the original US Page One LP.

LP length (3:05) in mono

The oldest CD I have with this song is PolyTel Canada's 2-CD Brit's Blitz (1987). It's from crackly vinyl, it has inner groove distortion at the end of the song, and it truncates the fade. The odds are pretty good that you'll never encounter this dreadful CD set, so we'll move on.

Infinitely better is Rhino's Have A Nice Day Vol. 2 (1990). Here, it runs 3:04, and seems to be from a tape source. Nice dynamic range, reasonable EQ, no evidence of noise reduction on the fade, and a nice, long tail to the fade. The following CDs all use the same analog transfer as Have A Nice Day Vol. 2:

• Time-Life's Superhits Vol. 20 Early '70s Classics (1992) - digitally exactly 0.1 dB quieter
• Time-Life's AM Gold Vol. 15 Early '70s Classics (1992) - digitally exactly 0.1 dB quieter; only on first pressings of this disc; later RE-1 reissue replaces "Hitchin' A Ride" with "We May Never Pass This Way Again"
• Rhino's cheapie Seventies Smash Hits Vol. 2 (1993) - digitally identical
• Time-Life's Sounds Of The Seventies Vol. 31 AM Top Twenty (1993) - shortens tail of fade by about 4 seconds
• Time-Life's 2-CD Seventies Music Explosion Vol. 3 Miracles (2005) - digitally exactly 0.61 dB quieter

LP length (3:05) in stereo

This does exist, but apparently only on Starland Music/Warner Special Products' 2-CD Starland Music Presents Good Times Rock & Roll, also released as Starland Music Presents 40 Summer Fun Hits (OPCD-4545, released 1993). Here, it runs 3:03. On the intro, the whistle is in the right channel. The mastering is a little loud, with a small amount of clipping in the loud portions (nowhere near as loud as typical loudness-war discs), reasonable EQ, and no evidence of noise reduction on the fade. But it seems to be from vinyl; I hear some cracklies and a little turntable rumble on the fade. Still, it's a nice transfer from vinyl, and the sound is better than a lot of vinyl transfers.

45 length (2:39) in stereo

It's on Varese Sarabande's Dick Bartley On The Radio Vol. 1 (1997). It runs 2:41 here, and fades from 2:32 to 2:41. It seems very muffled compared to the Starland disc above, and I hear evidence of noise reduction (high end disappears on the fade). On the intro, the whistle is in the left channel, which is the opposite of the Starland disc. I don't have this song on vinyl, so I can't tell which one is correct.

My recommendations

For the LP length in mono, go with Rhino's Have A Nice Day Vol. 2 (1990).
For the LP length in stereo, go with Starland Music Presents Good Times Rock & Roll or Starland Music Presents 40 Summer Fun Hits (1993).
For the 45 length in stereo, try fading the Starland disc early. The Dick Bartley disc fades from 2:32 to 2:41; that should work unless someone posts more accurate fade points.

I beat the odds and have that terrible Polytel Brit's Blitz CD too!

Revisting this thread, here's some additional thoughts.

The "Rhino's Have a Nice Day Volume 2" and the vinyl dub on the Polytel CD contain a mono mix that I don't have on an American single. My DJ copy,
mono and stereo sides, does not contain the organ boost that you'll hear at 1:47 on the Rhino CD. It DOES match my import 45. You'll also note a
louder vocal (between the drop outs) on that Rhino CD too. Polytel doesn't have the drop outs, just lots of vinyl noise. So I'm thinking that there
was a dedicated mono mix created for this song. It just may have never been released in the US on CD until the Polytel CD, then Bill Inglot's
transfer from tape for Rhino/Time Life.

There's also speed differences, so that organ piece is at around 1:51 on my mono DJ side, where it is NOT boosted.

As we know, that "Have a Nice Day" dub has a million drop-outs. Makes me wonder if Bell got mono and stereo dubs from England and found the mono tape
to be unusable, dubbed on bad tape, so instead of asking for a new dub, simply folded down the stereo version, muddied it up a bit with EQ and a
little more compression, faded it early, and put it out that way. The stereo DJ side matches the stereo album mix faded early, no real EQ difference.
The DJ 45 might have slightly more stereo separation but it's the same thing. I suppose the US mono 45 could be a different mono mix that closely
matches a muddied up stereo fold down, but I doubt it, sounds like a fold down to me. I've owned several 45s and they all had the same sound. That
doesn't mean that at some point Bell got a better mono tape and used it for later pressings, but I've never heard one.

Your ears may vary.

I agree that there's an organ boost at 1:47 on the Rhino CD, and 1:48 on Brit's Blitz. Bill confirmed that this mono mix matches the import (UK?) 45, but doesn't quite match the mono mix on the US promo 45.

I hear the same organ boost at 1:48 on the left channel of the Starland Music disc, but not in the right channel. (David confirmed that the Starland disc has its left/right channels reversed.)

Is it possible that the UK 45 version, found on the Rhino CD and Brit's Blitz (and the vinyl that was played for Brit's Blitz), is still a fold-down, but a fold-down that doesn't use the left and right channels equally? It could be that the instrumental breakdown portion uses only the left channel of the stereo mix, which does include the organ boost.

I'm going to defer to others to compare the mixes more closely. I'm not so good at untangling the EQ/compression differences.

Edited by crapfromthepast