Red Hot Chili Peppers – By The Way

KPG in the dead wax here as listed. Pretty much perfect sound & music, thank you. This or 1st UK press London Calling, difficult to choose.

Damn! It’s just crazy to hear this issue and compare it with my old CD and what’s on Spotify. Spotify and CD both are heavily brickwalled. The cymbals are quite annoying and overall very treble heavy with no low end punch or midrange warmth.

This original issue is not an audiophile record/jaw dropping sonic experience because compression was baked into the mix but the mastering magic Kevin Gray did to save it is amazing.

Overall much wider soundstage, deeper sound quality and better separation.

Bass is not tamed and I can feel Flea’s bass tones for the first time with great clarity. Guitar has a great spark totally missing on Spotify. Drum doesn’t sound tiny and Chad’s kick sounds amazing.

Unfortunately, the worst part of this issue is the vocal. Vocal is distorted across all tracks but significantly on the last track of every side (aided with inner groove distortion).

I scored a near mint copy in the wild at a very low price. Happy to own this and finally have an engaging experience with this album.

Thank you Kevin Gray!

For anybody wondering, this doesn't sound drastically better or different really than the current Walmart (purple) pressing.

I’ve loved this record for 20 years now, but I have never truly heard it before listening to this pressing. God bless KG

Be careful when trying to purchase this US LP. I bought one off here and I got sold a European version. I messaged another person selling this and I asked them to confirm if it was the US LP. Their reply was 'oh no it says made in '. Both sellers were selling these 3 x the price of a European version.

Awesome Sound!!! It's great job by Jim Scott and Vlado Meller! Thank you for this sound!

This is the best sounding version of the album I've ever heard by far, thanks mostly to Kevin Gray. Unlike most versions of the album on CD and wax these are not "brick walled" and you finally get a sense for the dynamic soundscape of the music. Excellent and worth tracking down if sound matters to you.

The presentation of the record has a lot of faults. The pressing is just OK thanks to United... flimsy packaging overall. The discs are very weak and you're likely to have some warping... also they come in paper sleeves that scuff up the discs and absolutely require a decent cleaning to remove all the excess junk. I can confirm there are some manufacturing issues as well, like others have mentioned with missing discs. But to be honest I'm just thankful that they didn't screw it up completely like they normally do... there's very little surface noise which typically happens with URP. So ultimately these things don't get in the way of the sound/music.

Tracking the correct version down is a bit difficult, even on discogs. Most versions of this share the same barcode and there is little on the outside of the package to identify the version. As a result most of the sellers here have the version listed incorrectly. I had to go through 9 sellers before I was able to get this KG cut. Before purchasing ask the seller to some details:

- If sealed you're only clue is the small text on the back indicates it was manufactured in the US and there's a reference as well to "AOL Time Warner". This is an indication that it is the 2002 US pressing.
- If opened you're in luck because you can have the seller this runouts. "KPG@ATM" is all you need to this was cut by Kevin Gray at AcousTech Mastering

Yep, disc one is really missing. I've just opened my sealed copy of this album and... No disc one... Great. Well, sound is great on disc 2 and so on, but what's the problem with those disc one missing copies?

The US version as a Orange label instead the pink one of the europe version.the other lp have the same colour as the European,means black.Am i correct?

Pretty great sounding pressing. I noticed someone below mentioned that the bass was too low on theirs, but that's not a problem with mine. Maybe my setup just allows for more low end. Either way, solid pressing and little to no surface noise after I cleaned/dusted it off.