Unofficial VH on vinyl???

[CoffeeDrinker71]

Does anyone here have experience with these unofficial vinyl albums that were released last year for Balance and Carnal Knowledge?? I know they are unofficial but they still fetch a high price. The question I have is this; does anyone know what SOURCE the music was pressed from? Did they have the master tapes, or did they use some other source? I was considering buying these to add to the collection but after watching a video of Sebastian Bach explaining how these newer or re-released pressings are being made from an unknown file source it makes me skeptical if it will sound different from the originals. The Skid Row album by comparison sounded worse on the newly released vinyl...and you could clearly hear how they remastered it.

[T.B.]

Does anyone here have experience with these unofficial vinyl albums that were released last year for Balance and Carnal Knowledge?? I know they are unofficial but they still fetch a high price. The question I have is this; does anyone know what SOURCE the music was pressed from? Did they have the master tapes, or did they use some other source? I was considering buying these to add to the collection but after watching a video of Sebastian Bach explaining how these newer or re-released pressings are being made from an unknown file source it makes me skeptical if it will sound different from the originals. The Skid Row album by comparison sounded worse on the newly released vinyl...and you could clearly hear how they remastered it.

Often they are simply CD rips mastered with maybe some basic re-EQ'ing to vinyl. I've seen a lot of these kind of bootlegs for rarer, usually long out of print titles being passed off as "new" reissues/remasters. One example is several of AC/DC's Bon Scott era Australian records were released in convincing looking reissues that were digital rips from original Aussie CD releases. I've only been burned once, and that was what looked like a new reissue of Black Sabbath's Born Again on the UK Vertigo label which turned out to be a European/Russian bootleg.

I'd add, even with legitimate, official vinyl reissues, it's a real crapshoot whether *any* current pressings are warped, scratchy, or generally just poor quality. That's just the state of current limited vinyl production.

The last few years, colored vinyl has become a "thing" (such as the F.U.C.K. red vinyl release) and you'll see a lot of these sort of bootlegs pressed on colored vinyl to take advantage of consumers who don't know any better. Often the packaging and sleeve graphics are hazy, poorly reproduced scans of original album (and even blown up CD) art. IMO, you are better off sticking to just the CD release as that's typically what you're getting on one of these records with the addition of tics, pops and surface noise inherent with most vinyl pressings.

[CoffeeDrinker71]

Thanks T.B.! I appreciate your insight on this. I agree...as tempting as they are, I will probably avoid them. The easiest way to tell these are not official is by the absence of the Warner Bros. fine print copyright stuff on the bottom of the back side of the jacket. Like you said, it is probably just a CD rip converted to vinyl. Thanks again!