I'm going here and there throughout the book, and this is what it says about the U.S. pressing:

==BEGIN SWIPE==
"Although George harrison was in Los Angeles during the banding session for the album, he did play an important role in the sound of the American release. During a break from his production of Jackie Lomax's LP, Harrison dropped by the Capitol tower to listen to the acetate pressings of the album. George did not like what he heard and insisted that he be allowed to work with Capitol's engineers to remaster the album.

According to Mal Evans, who was with George in Los Angeles, the Capitol engineers had "done all sorts of technical things to it that altered half the effects!' As as often the practice at the time, the engineers had run teh sound signal through a limiter and compressed the volume range of the recording by cutting back the high volume peaks and bringing up the low passages. This would have been particularly noticable on songs such as "Helter Skelter", which is a loud raucous rocker that has a fade-out fade-in ending, and Harrison's "Long Long Long", which has quiet passages throughout and loud distortion at the end. Evans observed that if George had not "returned it the way it should be the American LP records might have been a bit of a mess!" Capitol used Harrison's remastered version of The White Album to make the metal parts for the discs."
===END SWIPE===

So for any of you who have ever wondered why UK and Japanese pressings are highly sought after, that's why (that, and the fact that both countries also released mono versions, while Capitol were slowly phasing out mono pressings altogether).

For those who don't know (or if you didn't read the other posts in this thread), when Capitol Records in the U.S. received music from The Beatles, they would tweak the sound to suit their tastes. This is more true with the 45's. Find a Beatles 45 on Capitol (all variations up to and including the purple labels), and for many of the records between 1964-1965, Capitol would add their special echo to it, so it would have that reverb sound that was popular in the 1950's. British studios were quite advanced, and with George Martin producing, he still added his classical music sensibilities to how music should sound. The U.S. pressings were all crap, and not only did the records have echo and reverb, but they were also muddy compared to the British 45's.

That is the one great thing about vinyl, at least from a technical standpoint. The same set of masters would be sent to various countries, yet due to the technology and upkeep of the pressing plants around the world, you could have a whole set of unknown variations.












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"CD is a crock. This company will never get involved with that format." - Bashkar Menon, head of EMI, 1984
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