I have had it up to here waiting for the Beatles catalogue to be remastered

£200 for the mono set (from Amazon "List Price £237"!) and £170 for the stereo (List Price £202!).

I was expecting around the £200 mark TBH, but it wouldn't have surprised me in the slightest had they gone even higher.

sometimes the US price isn't just the price in pounds though...

Can anyone recommend me an art criticism-angled book on the Beatles, specifically their days hanging out with German art students and how it affected their subsequent work? I would say mainly about 'the Hamburg days' but Klaus Voorman did alot of work with them even through Lennon's solo career.

I'd love to read something well-written taking their career in that context.

listened to that 10-minute "Revolution, Take 21" outtake yesterday --- eeeyowch it is good. Screw the remasters, release more stuff like that! (Kidding ... remasters & outtakes, plz)

Adam, this book is great:

http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/20071001/9780307353375.jpg

This book took 20 years to write and it shows - extremely well researched and short on gossip. Fantastic musical critiques and social analysis. Oh, and there's quite a bit on the 1960-61 Hamburg/Liverpool era.

^Love that book!

xxxpost

Amazon UK are listing the box sets for pre-order at £134 for Stereo and £158 for Mono, whic seems pretty reasonable to me.

Again, why is the Mono more expensive? It seems to have less discs in it.

They've come down a lot since I posted those prices a few days ago. Plus they've dropped the "list price". Interesting. In a good way.

http://larryfire.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/beatlesstereoofficial.jpg

These are the mono ones, right? I mean, they don't exist to me at all. Mono doesn't exist to me whenever stereo is available..

[imghttp://www.puppiesandflowers.com/blogimages/bear-covering-eyes.jpg[/img]

oops
http://www.puppiesandflowers.com/blogimages/bear-covering-eyes.jpg

geir, even now, it must be said...you are a weird bird homie

and no, i think that is the stereo box set .... you may look at it, Geir. IT EXISTS.

Not in the shops before 090909, no :)

Someone photoshop some 2001 monkeys caressing that Beatles box.

looking forward to downloading the mono one.

that picture is actually some kind of Second Life computer-generated proto-copy of the box set. weird. geir is actually correct that it doesn't exist!

Geir, "Let it be" was never released in Mono, so that's the Stereo set.

Alright?

http://www.beatles-unlimited.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/beatles-mono-boxset300.jpg

There you go, the Mono set.

ah good, i like that box better since it will fit in my CD racks instead of that big booze bottle box shaped thing for the stereo

Anyone worked out why the mono (less CDs in it) is more expensive?

http://images.amazon.com/images/G/01/richmedia/images/cover.gif

Anyone worked out why the mono (less CDs in it) is more expensive?

I think it's because the mono box is a limited edition

not the most solid evidence, but cd japan does mark their listings differently by that token:
http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/search3.html?q=beatles+box+set&step=20&r=any&order=score&media=

Anyone worked out why the mono (less CDs in it) is more expensive?

The mono set actually contains two copies of the product - one in each speaker - so Apple is overlooking the opportunity to charge double the money. The stereo set only has 50% of the product in each speaker.

Just checked a minute ago, and Amazon.co.uk have bumped the prices back up - £200 for mono and £160 for stereo.

Beatles.com is now showing a clip of the Revolver mini-doc.

Appears to be rather weak chopped up version of the Anthology stuff.

clips up over at amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/entity/The-Beatles/B000APTK6K though I'm not sure whether that's the best way to judge how good these sound ... will listen when i get home from work. wonder if the price for the box set will come down at some point? right now, it is out of my price range ...

Does anyone know which stereo mixes will be used on the first 2 albums? Will they use the original 2 track mixes or new remixes that George Martin have been playing with the thought of making? (Most of those songs would probably sound better with one channel in the middle and the other one to the left/right rather than one extreme right and the other one extreme left, but that would also be kind of revisionist)

Yeah, but does anybody actually like it like that?

Does anyone know which stereo mixes will be used on the first 2 albums? Will they use the original 2 track mixes or new remixes that George Martin have been playing with the thought of making? (Most of those songs would probably sound better with one channel in the middle and the other one to the left/right rather than one extreme right and the other one extreme left, but that would also be kind of revisionist)

― Geir Hongro, Monday, July 20, 2009 5:46 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

stereo mixes in general for those albums is revisionist

You could say so, but those stereo mixes were originally done as early as 1965-66, which is quite some time ago by now. And at least until the CD releases in 1987, that is how people who bought them on vinyl since the late 60s got used to hearing them.

this is now posted on the Amazon site in the U.S. the list price is $298.99 discounted to $239.99.

Product Description
FEATURES:

-Dimensions: 5.75" x 5.38" x 2.63"

-Description:

·Hard white glossy slip box
·Limited edition (10,000)
·CDs packaged as mini LP replicas (replica artwork, sleeves and gatefolds)
·Remastered by Paul Hicks, Sean Magee with Guy Massey and Steve Rooke

-Contains:

Original Mono version - 11 albums (12 discs)

+= mono mix CD debut

·Please Please Me
·With The Beatles
·A Hard Day's Night
·Beatles For Sale
·Help! (CD also includes original 1965 stereo mix)+
·Rubber Soul (CD also include original 1965 stereo mix)+
·Revolver+
·Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band+
·Magical Mystery Tour+
·The Beatles+
·Mono Masters (features all of the mono tracks that appeared on singles, EPs. or that never made it onto the 13 albums)

-Essay written by Kevin Howlett

*note: Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road and Let It Be are not included, as they were originally recorded in stereo

as for the stereo mix, the list price is $259.98 discounted to $204.99:

Product Description

FEATURES:

-Dimensions: 12"x6"x3"

-Description:

Hard black glossy lift top with magnet clasp

CD's packaged in three panel digi-pak with digital mini documentaries

Remastered by Guy Massey, Steve Rooke, Sam Okell with Paul Hicks and Sean Magee

-Contains:

All 13 Studio remasters plus Past Masters (digi packaging with digital mini documentaries)

Please Please Me

With The Beatles

A Hard Day's Night

Beatles For Sale

Help!

Rubber Soul

Revolver

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Magical Mystery Tour

The Beatles

Yellow Submarine

Abbey Road

Let It Be

Past Masters

DVD of all 13 mini-documentaries (Running time: 40 minutes)

10,000 is 'not many' for a beatles edition!

there is some dispute about that limited edition number, EMI already denied that this was the case. who knows.

It's only the mono that's ltd edition?

808 state vs the beatles is an interesting prospect.
or is it a different guy massey ?

That's Graham Massey, isn't it?

oh yes. crappy morning @ work. fuzzy brain.

A second boxed set has been created with the collector in mind. 'The Beatles in Mono' gathers together, in one place, all of the Beatles recordings that were mixed for a mono release. It will contain 10 of the albums with their original mono mixes, plus two further discs of mono masters (covering similar ground to the stereo tracks on 'Past Masters'). As an added bonus, the mono "Help!" and "Rubber Soul" discs also include the original 1965 stereo mixes, which have not been previously released on CD. These albums will be packaged in mini-vinyl CD replicas of the original sleeves with all original inserts and label designs retained.

That's odd, for having 'All of the Beatles recordings' none of these sets have any of the Christmas records, do they?

No.

Altogether now! "Get one of those for your trousers, get one of those for your hairrrrr"

the christmas recordings are the big ommission (also missing: a couple of available mixes of early tracks like ask me why and please please me; mono yellow sub mixes [if these exist, apparently a matter of dispute]). fwiw, cute as the christmas record is, they are not mindblowing works of art and you can find perfectly good bootlegs on the internet now so I don't really care. It'll just be nice to get decent sets of the actual albums on cd finally (yeah I have the purple chick stuff, yeah it's pretty good, but those all have issues too).

The Mono Yellow Sub is just the stereo mix combined.

the whole mini-documentary thing with these is irritating.

Yeah it will be like 5-minute edits of Anthology stuff padded with Box Set adverts.