Well, as promised in an earlier post, here are some photographs of my “un-boxing” of the remastered Beatles In Mono. It’s a white box that holds 10 CDs – that is each original mono album released by the group, plus a 2 CD set called “Mono Masters”. This is like the “Past Masters” double that is available either individually or in the stereo remastered box set. However, “Mono Masters” has a slightly different track list with four different songs unique to this package. These are from “Yellow Submarine” and have never previously been issued in mono on CD: “Only A Northern Song”, “All Together Now”, “Hey Bulldog” and “It’s All Too Much”.

The box also contains a 44 page booklet with lots of great photos and text by Beatles aficionado Kevin Howlett.

Interestingly the small print on the removable promotional flyer that is tucked into the shrink wrap on the outside of the box says “Made in Japan” – so I guess EMI commissioned their Japanese pressing plant to produce these sets. It was reported that only 10,000 box sets were made. Such was the demand though that EMI quickly moved to create more. I read that another 3,000 were being produced, though this is unconfirmed. I know these box sets are expensive but given the interest, another 3,000 doesn’t seem enough for the whole world. If you have any more details on this let me know.

The packaging for the individual CDs in this set is different to the newly-designed stereo remaster covers, recreating down to the finest detail how the original UK LP record covers would have looked back in they day had you purchased them when they were first released. This includes the paper inner sleeve for the disc, all original inserts and cover art. Even how the cover was glued together is authentic. There’s also a resealable plastic outer sleeve for the cover and a small, protective plastic sleeve for the disc itself – just like those you get on LPs (at least in Australia!). You can see examples of these in photos below. Notice also that the CD labels printed on the CD echo what the original LP labels would have looked like (in the photo of “Please Please Me” below check out the very early Parlophone label).

The “Help!” and “Rubber Soul” CDs here also contain the original 1965 stereo mixes of these albums (which are different to the 1987 George Martin stereo remixes done for the first round of CD issues of the Beatles catalogue.  So, now we have three different versions to compare!)

Beatles In Mono

Label:  Apple      Cat.No:   5 099969 945120

JAPAN/2009/11CDs/book/boxed set/all original covers and inserts

I like to keep the shrink-wrap on to help protect the box and so a razor blade is required to carefully cut an opening

The box slides out to reveal 11 CDs and the 44 page booklet

The Mono set (in their plastic covers) revealed

All the original inserts are included - like the famous "Sgt Pepper" cut-out card and the "psychedelic" pink-coloured inner-sleeve. You can also see the little plastic sleeve to help protect the CD

Detail of how they've striven to recreate the original covers. The old-fashioned fold-over tabs and even the original paper inner sleeves. Note the old Parlophone label printed on the CD