Recently purchased several Motown CDs; two by the Temptations, one by the Four Tops, a Junior Walker and a couple of Motown Chartbusters. These appear to be great value, with the individual artist ones selling at around £5.99 for 2-on-1 CDs and the compilations under a fiver. Only problem is, they sound absolutely dreadful !

Motown on vinyl has a warm, bass heavy sound. My system has the same kind of sound (Eastern Electric tube CD player, Shanling Tube amp, Linn Keilidh Speakers) yet these CDs are bass-light and the treble is so hard and overpowering I simply can't listen to them. It's like when they remastered them they just boosted the treble as much as they could and applied bass cut.

I wondered if anyone has come across any decent Motown pressings on CD ? Are the American reissues any better than the uK ones? How about Japanese ? I'd love to get copies of quite a few of these albums as I wasn't really into soul when they came out but the price the vinyl versions go for now rules that avenue out completely.

I wondered if anyone has come across any decent Motown pressings on CD ? Are the American reissues any better than the uK ones? How about Japanese ? I'd love to get copies of quite a few of these albums as I wasn't really into soul when they came out but the price the vinyl versions go for now rules that avenue out completely.

I have a few Motown CDs (Temptations, Marvin Gaye). AFAIK they're bog-standard UK pressings, but they don't have the sonic signature you describe, and I do have some original vinyl versions for comparison purposes. Sorry, I realise that doesn't actually help you much!

Thanks Joe. Are your CDs the "2-on-1" issues which all currently available Motown releases seem to be ? If not it might be worth me seeking out earlier UK issues.

No; these are individual CDs, bought in the mid 90s. I'll check out the precise details over the weekend and get back to you.

Surely you gotta go with vinyl for Motown? Made for each other......

Cheers

Rich

I am a Motown Collector and have both British and Uk pressings on Vinyl and CD. I will have a listen to the Cd's and see if there is any diference. Most Motown reissues and complinations on vinyl are not very good, to bright.

I played the British release (CD) of Marvin Gaye What’s Going On and compared it to the US version and in my opinion the US was far better, it had a lot more bass to it. I tried the same with a US and a British compilation CD playing the same tracks on each and the US was better. I tend to go for the US releases as they have what they call Deluxe Versions of classic Motown releases, the What’s Going on is a double CD with different versions of all of the tracks. A nice little booklet included. There are also loads of box sets. I do not know if it is still available but about 10 years ago Motown released 2 box sets of all the singles, it was called The Motown Singles Collection (US)

If you are going to listen to Motown US vinyl in my opinion is best.

Having done a quick check, my Motown CDs date from 1992-95. All are UK releases.