Iron Maiden Vinyl 180g vinyl/single reissues discussion

BryanAguilarHTX · December 29, 2014

Hello, first post ever on this forum. I've not really seen a lot of talk about these Iron Maiden vinyl reissues of all their 1980s albums and 7'' singles, so I wanted to know what you all thought, because my experience with these reissues have been quite negative. Iron Maiden is one of my all time favorite bands and before this whole campaign never owned a Maiden album on vinyl, so I took this opportunity with all the expendable income from my first job at the time to dive right in. Unfortunately, from what I understand the European pressings have been very good, but the American versions have been the opposite, and last I checked, I do live in America. Lol

For the first two albums (debut and Killers) I didn't get them, because I was going to stick to the US pressings which included "Sanctuary" and "Twilight Zone", excluded on the UK versions and thus these 2014 versions. Number of the Beast's remastering job was very subpar compared to the '82 version, so I returned it and got the original.

The studio albums from Piece of Mind through Seventh Son all had some form of mixing problem ranging from annoying to downright unlistenable (which by this I mean the individual tracks seem to "sway" from their channels, a bit hard to explain but it makes me dizzy after awhile, and by unlistenable, Piece of Mind's mix was shifted towards the right channel, very annoying) and some had this strange problem where in between tracks the audio would completely cut off, sometimes taking the last bit of the song with it. I don't know what that's about, and it sounds just as weird as I'm making it sound to be.

The singles haven't been much better. The same mixing problems are persistent, though some better than others. Two other problems though, are the warping which was really bad on some, and the pressing seemed to be slightly off center on certain singles causing pitch vibration problems in addition to the mixing woes.

The covers to the studio versions are also very flimsy and cheaply made. The European versions were sturdier and were also glossy. I didn't care about the glossiness really, just the fact that the covers feel almost paper thin. Not quite, but damn near close.

I'll be returning these and use the money to get the 1980s pressings. Sorry if this was a bit long winded but this quality control from one of the biggest bands and one of MY favorites is downright rediculous. What do you all think?