Beck – Guero

Sounds amazing to me, far from bad - Golden did a great job cutting this one. Amazing soundstage with tons of detail and nuance, and with really punchy bass. This one is most enjoyable for me at high volumes (just like the Bernie Grundman Odelay cut) - just turn it up! Pallas pressing is really well done, with near silent vinyl and flat as a pancake. Definitely recommended.

Mine came in a poly sleeve and without a card.

I think it sounds terrible, also the consensus of a couple of friends that own this one. I dont think cramming it on one record is the main issue but it certainly doesnt help. I sought out the 45rpm 2 LP copy and got it new. Sounds amazing.

Great pressing overall. Sure, it sounds a little compressed because of the album’s length, but it was mastered by Bob Ludwig—come on, you’re not going to get much better than that. No complaints about the quality here.

Haven't heard this particular Beck album before, but "E-Pro" was playing at a restaurant recently - I Shazamed it, realized who it was by and got so hooked that there was no way I could up a copy of this album when I saw it at the new arrivals section of FeeLit (ultra-hip record store in San Diego - thanks guys for the good vibes!). The whole album turned out to be a great expansion upon the DIY vibes of the classic Odelay - track after track of ultra-catchy hip-hop-slide-guitarish-alt-rock grit laced with the occasional Latin influence and a nice nod to Antonio Carlos Jobim. It's a definite keeper.

This is also a really, really good reissue. Sonically, it hits absolutely all the right buttons - even though it may not be the most dynamic album in the world, the mastering has excellent clarity and warmth with a sizeable soundstage, wonderful immediacy, great top end extension, HUUUGE punch factor, and not to mention strong, clear, precise and weighty bass. It's a perfect match for the lo-fi feel of the album.

Shockingly, even side 2 sounds excellent at its excessive borderline 28-minute duration... ESPECIALLY for a regular non-DMM record. Vinyl mastering is a fine art, and Golden's engineers went above and beyond the authority of the garden-variety lacquer cutter to carefully cram a great deal of bass and depth into those tight grooves - the only sacrifice at all being a reduced decibel level... which, by my standards, is perfectly fine when the vinyl is fairly quiet! It's absolutely astonishing that there is utterly zero muddiness or congestion to be heard here.

It trumps the Baby Driver soundtrack with similarly long sides by a HUGE margin... why that one couldn't sound as good as it ought to be is beyond me. Heck, I'd even say this outperforms my original Canadian RL-cut pressing of Todd Rundgren's A Wizard, a True Star - which is really saying a lot! (Ironically, this album was also digitally mastered by Bob Ludwig...)

Mind you, there are two interesting anomalies about this release: "Broken Drum" sounds bizarre, like it was upsampled from a 22khz digital file (half the sample rate of a CD), resulting in a ringing, low-resolution top end. It's almost... well, Windows 98-esque. Then again, it seems like it was mixed and mastered that way to begin with, as I found the Spotify version exhibits the same artifacts. I'm not complaining too much about it - it's just so odd to hear a track that's mastered like this cut to vinyl.

The other anomaly is that the record is housed in a plain white paper inner sleeve with rounded corners, an odd mismatch to the staticky Pallas-pressed vinyl - records made of staticky European vinyl formulations are best paired with the poly-lined inners which they usually come with. I'm not sure if this plain paper sleeve is even original, given that I got my copy used, but if it is, I'd be surprised UMe didn't invest a little bit of extra capital in protecting the vinyl from additional static charge. I've read the Mutations reissue also has a plain paper sleeve.

All things considered, this pressing otherwise sounds so impressive that I have no intention of upgrading to either of the original 45 rpm pressings. Recommended.

I just got a used copy and it has a plain-paper white inner with rounded corners. Can anyone who got this new confirm that this is what it originally came with? It seems odd that a staticky Pallas pressing would be paired up with such a sleeve, given that Pallas vinyl is best housed in poly-lined inners.

Sounds good. Side 1 is great, it has the best songs and the most space. Side 2 is crammed and does feel a bit flat. The 2xLP probably has more breathing room and stronger bass. But this album never had great dynamic range. I always thought the second half of the CD sounded flat. So is it the pressing or the music? Difficult to say. Overall I am satisfied with this available and affordable pressing of one of Beck's lesser efforts.

Music: 7/10
Pressing: 8/10

How's the sound? I noticed that they crammed 2 LPs into 1 LP.

Can anyone confirm that the US pressing is actually 140 gram vs 180 gram for European?