Neil Young Ditch Trilogy Box Set

Mine too was not boxed in the usual 'frustration free' packaging and has a couple of relatively minor scuffs on 2 corners but certainly not up to Amazon's usual high standards. However I did use the online tracking of this and found that it initiated from Amazon.it! I'm therefore surprised it wasn't totally buggered. Contents was fine except TTN cover disassembled as per everyone else's. 

Have to say I was a bit disappointed that the covers were not of the high quality tip-on style of the previous 4 titles, instead accurate repros of poor UK sleeves, oh well. 

Sonically all all seems good though again the improvements over the originals not as marked as the previous set with the exception on OTB which is a transformation due in no small part being at the correct speed for the first time on vinyl outside of the USA. The original runs 3% fast, so now it sound postitively depressing!!! 

I paid £110 which is pretty high but as the previous releases were only pressed 180g for the box and the indidual copies were just 140g I went for it. 

Not 100% sure but i think most of the albums that don't come in outer brown boxes seem to come from amazons warehouses around Germany or EU further afield.

I got a quick response from Furnace Mfg (Pallas) regarding the NY pressings:

John LaPrade  //  Furnace MFG 

John LaPrade  //  Furnace MFG

Joe,

I think most people already knew that.

Fools and NY completists were to easily parted from there money on this box set.

One album Neil still hates to this day and pulled from sale years ago because its so bad and the others can still be had cheap as chips brand new.

I've been playing them for the past couple of nights and think they're very good. All vinyl is dead quiet, but TTN has a slight warp.

Initial comparisons, the USA originals tend to have more life and deeper bass, but the new pressings do have better treble resolution and maybe a little sweeter.

Are they worth nearly £30 per LP count?

For me YES even when I have the originals!

Steve, On the train going through Watford on route to London from B'ham.... all the best as I zip by.

Richard

Originals, cheap or otherwise, are of course available for any re-issues out there. The value of purchasing re-issues is an individual choice that can only be made by the person spending their own hard-earned money. In that regard, the NY set is no different from the flurry of other re-issues posted throughout the forum.

I've not had time to listen to all complete lps yet Steve, but can say they sound extremely good and are dead quiet. There were some definite improvements compared to the USA originals in some areas. I suppose I have to bear in mind that my sealed originals cost me approx £100 each when I got them, so these new ones are cheap in comparison.

I too had heard that only 3500 of these would be made and was surprised to see so many copies of the set available on Record Store Day - even for here in Toronto, surely the world capital of Neil Young fandom . After a little digging, I found out that there were only 3500 NUMBERED copies made and these are available exclusively from Neil Young's webstore - still some avilable if that sort of thing is important to you. There were obviously a great deal more unnumbered copies made.

Although there's little more than speculation about the Hello Waterface/Goodbye Waterface in the runout grooves on the original pressing of Tonight's the Night, inscriptions of this sort are often the work of the mastering engineer so I'd be surprised if Bernie Grundman, who remastered these from the original tapes, would keep the old runout groove inscription. That's a good thing - as a collector, I want to be able to distinguish between various editions of the same album. Copying a pressing down to this level of detail makes that harder. In any event ewemon this edition, being a remaster, will not have the same sound as the edition you are referring to - maybe worse, maybe better, but not the same.

This is an interesting thread and it's helpful in clarifying some of the questions around this box set, but not all of them! There was of course the premature release of copies of this earlier in the year when it was expected to be an RSD release. It is still not clear to me why there are some copies that are numbered and others not. However I think that the unnumbered version available in the UK in November is still limited. I bought a copy from What Records and they told me it was their last one - and they still show it as out of stock. The price was a lot less than some dealers, so I paid a shade under £25 per LP including the fairly weighty delivery charge. This is not excessive for AAA audiophile pressings, with a reasonably strong box with lid (not just a slip case). And they are audiophile pressings! I have done some limited comparison, but On the Beach and Tonight's the Night sounded significantly better than respectively an earlyish UK and a later German pressing. OTB was remarkable for the way in which NY's voice was more prominent and TtN was notably more vivid, I thought. Zuma didn't seem much different from my original UK pressing, I think I bought that soon after it was released. I'm not at home now to check the actual vinyl, but I think on the Hoffman thread it was said that the U.S. and EU pressings were all done at Pallas but with the different geographical distribution intentions indicated - explaining the P USA mark.