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Guilty Pleasure

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Haha yeah I do love those compilations. I understand they are not audiophile records, but they take me back to a time in my life were music helped me become the man I am. I now have 52 K-Tel records, and 67 other compilations. I have the "Now" This is Music LP's starting with the first one. Fun to collect for sure

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Hey kermit nice collection, I'm glad i'm not the only one. I didn't show it but I also got one today issued for Chevrolet (1970), back of the album is covered with muscle cars.
 
stormking said:
Hey kermit nice collection, I'm glad i'm not the only one. I didn't show it but I also got one today issued for Chevrolet (1970), back of the album is covered with muscle cars.
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OH, you gotta post a picture now!!
 
The problem with the K-Tel records is that they have shallow grooves/lower recording levels than the original issues. So you have more shallow dynamics, i.e., bass is less and volume is less. I have probably 30 K-Tel records, and many of the original issue records. There is quite a difference in sound. But hey, how else are you going to fit "20 Original Hits, By The Original Stars" on one record?? Something has to give!
 
As Wolfie62 notes, the number of tracks/playing time on some of the cheap compilations causes issues.

In the UK Music For Pleasure (MFP) and 'The World Of' released some which didn't get silly about cramming too many tracks on.
The Kinks one was great (though the faux stereo remix on a couple of tracks was, erm, interesting). Early Cat Stevens and Strawbs & Sandy stuff was brilliant, fine pressings.
The 'Now thats what I call . . .' series is best avoided imo, not only compressed the tracks were often faded out early.
Label samplers from the 70s - 80s were mostly well done.

Much of my early vinyl was obtained like this, an LP for the price of a single ? No brainer when you're 14.
 
I also have a few K-Tel LP's and yes the dynamics are poor and the songs I also have on original LP's sound so much better. But I still have days when I breakout the compilation LP's and play them back to back.

Anyone remember the K-Tel record selector..........
 
I will say that I much preferred these "Now" albums made in the UK. They did sound much better than the K-tels of that time. But, as a 13 year old with an All in One system with Thruster speakers, Audiophile albums where the least of my worries. And this is where the K-Tel albums did their best work. Buy 1 LP, with all those hits?!?!?!? When your parents are buying these are the best.

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I have a total of 2 K-Tel records in my collection. Super Bad, and Super Bad II! Excellent track selection on these! I still remember when they were advertised on TV!
 
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