Pink Floyd - Piper At The Gates Of Dawn - 1967 UK Mono Vinyl - Please Read Desc.

	£		100
	$		132

THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN
PINK FLOYD
1967 UK First Mono Pressing
COLUMBIA RECORDS SX 6157
MATRIX NOs: XAX 3419-2 / XAX 3420-1
1 G Stamper On Side 2! The Very First One Ever Made

First and foremost, please understand that this record has serious wear and is not suitable for audiophiles or anyone wanting a full, clear and comprehensive experience of the album from this record.
Also, there is no outer cover for this record. This is being sold as record only, plus some extra protective sleeves.

From a glance, this record looks like it's in quite nice shape with only some small signs of sleeve removal hairlines and some very sparse scuffs / scratch marks and a not a huge amount of spindle trails but unfortunately looks can be deceiving. When held under light, you can see down into the record grooves, a lot of which have a dulled appearance and unfortunately I believe this is groove wear. 
When played on my turntable, the record doesn't skip or jump anywhere. There is some small background crackle that's present throughout with few ticks / pops to speak of and if the record's demerits were just left at that then I think it'd be a very strong VG but unfortunately the aforementioned groove wear is quite severe and there is a lot of high frequency distortion littered throughout both sides of the LP. Some tracks are affected quite badly, some others still manage to play through very nicely to an audiophile standard. On Side 1, most tracks still play through alright and the distortion is limited to certain nasty spots, e.g. the instrumental bridge in "Matilda Mother" before the tape edit joins two takes together. The distortional impact is at it's worst in busy areas of music where there's suddenly less space and the ceiling of the sound is replaced with a high frequency fuzzing instead. "Flaming" in contrast still plays quite nicely throughout with only faint signs of this wear in it's introduction.
Unfortunately Side 2 is the most problematic part. "Interstellar Overdrive" is essentially ruined by this distortion and the wear is extremely visible in the grooves, please see the last photo. A lot of segments are overpowered by this distortion to a point where the music actually drops out at times. If I had to guess, this track of the LP was played a lot over and over somewhere on equipment that was tracking far, far too heavily on a worn out stylus and it just gouged out the grooves. The frustrating part is that once it gets to the closing section (The part that usually pans left/right in the stereo mix), the distortion and wear just completely vanishes and the rest of side 2 plays in a conservative strong Very Good condition, and in contrast is extremely delightful to listen to with only faint surface noise / crackle.
Because of all that I've described above, I'm quite confident that the grooves are just worn down. Things may get better with a cleaning, they might not. I can't make any guarantees as to if this record is restorable or not. All things considered: the visual appearance, the medium amounts of audible wear on Side 1 and the all-or-nothing wear on Side 2 plus the section that plays completely VG afterwards, I think that this record grades as Fair, and certainly no higher than that. 


The visual appearance of this record is still quite nice and this may serve as a very nice display piece or a collection filler. There is NO cover included as I obtained this LP orphaned alongside a matching pressing of A Saucerful Of Secrets, mis-placed in the cover of their compilation album "A Nice Pair". I will include a fresh high quality inner sleeve and also a plastic outer wallet to protect the record from any more wear.
Also for those who are interested, the Saucerful LP does not suffer the same kind of wear that this LP does, so perhaps that means the wear is from something else? I'm really not sure. What I am sure of is that this LP currently doesn't provide the best listening experience and should not be bought for purely listening / audiophile purposes. It may play better or worse on your equipment but this is the best account I can give based on listening through my personal system.



Any questions, please feel free to message me! I combine postage on multiple purchases :)