One thing I have noticed is that pressings from various countries sometimes 
vary drastically in pitch. I have read that Epic in the 60's sped the pitch 
on many Dave Clark 5, Yardbirds, Tremeloes and Hollies singles (along with 
adding extra compression and reverb). Either they did it for the extra 
"oomph" or the remastering engineers at CBS just didn't care. I heard a 
story about Todd Rundgren getting very pissed off at Capitol for how they 
mastered one of his 70's productions.

When I was making a CD-R copy of Marshall Crenshaw's "Our Town" EP - I 
noticed that some of the remixes sounded slower than the versions on his 
"Field Day" LP - they sounded strange (I haven't heard them in several 
years) so I sped the turntable up to match the LP.

I hope the Katrina re-issue sounds better than the Attic Records Best-Of CD 
(that I picked up in a Wal-Mart bargain bin in the early 90's) - that album 
had some strange azimuth (poor tape head alignment) problems on several 
tracks.

Billy

>actually, I just went through all this with my upcoming katrina & the 
>waves reissues
>where the vinyl was faster than the master tapes... apparently, it was not 
>uncommon
>at the lacquering/mastering stage to speed up masters slightly for extra 
>oomph....
>what does a re-issuer do? we matched the vinyl speed since that's what we 
>were all
>used to hearing...
>
>so, a word to the wise.... best to compare the analog masters to the vinyl 
>for speed
>and mastering issues... especially if no mastering notes/tones are on the 
>tape box...
>i am also finding that, from talking to various re-issue engineers... in a 
>lot of cases,
>it's actually better to transfer from vinyl for an exact re-issue... very 
>interesting...
>so, sometimes, actually getting a master tape is not really better.... 
>weird...
>
>
>
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