Heart Full Of Soul/ Steeled Blues

From a warehouse find, this is a new, unplayed stock copy, in its original factory sleeve. Here's another one for my personal bucket list: A pristine Mint copy of this signature Yardbirds 45! In fact, this is only the second original copy of Epic 9823 I've ever owned in more than 45 years of collecting and dealing. I had one Near Mint copy that I sold back in 2004. Since then, sure, I see heartbreakingly abused copies of "Heart Full of Soul" as I browse antique/thrift shops and record stores around the country, but not until now have I found one that was worth buying and re-selling. And it is a real beauty � even better than the one I had over 10 years ago.

What makes this copy so special, other than the fact that it's new and (previously) unplayed, is that it's a styrene pressing, even otherwise-Mint or Near-Mint-looking copies might have distorted audio to one extent or another. Even one or two spins with pristine Mint audio! There's a lot of misinformation out there about styrene, but it's certainly true that a worn or poor quality needle can begin to degrade the audio on a styrene pressing much more quickly and jarringly than an equivalent vinyl pressing, owing to its fragile nature compared with vinyl. That said, I stand with those who understand the difference between the two media, and I say, "Give me a pristine Mint styrene pressing of any single over a vinyl one any day!" That's because, although quite fragile, styrene is much quieter than vinyl, which invariably passes some inherent noise to the stylus; styrene passes no noise, and so records with wide dynamic range sound so much more brilliant. (Because of this, it's often hard to find a vinyl pressing, even brand new, that has truly flawless audio with no surface noise whatsoever.) That said, every time I approach a styrene record, I say a silent prayer to the collecting gods to "please let this record not have damaged audio!" :-) Vinyl is much less subject to distortion than styrene as it's played, but it's much more likely to pass on noise from surface scuffs and shallow scratches than styrene does. Wow! Quite a tangent... Enough about the difference between vinyl and styrene records for one afternoon!

Note: I've gushed enough already about this record, but let me just note that the labels look new, and the audio is flawless. The only "ding" I can note is some faint storage wear on the wax itself. But that wear is so unobtrusive that I'm grading the record Mint overall. (Please remember that in Classic 45s and the real world, "Mint" means "New, like new," among other ways of describing it.)