The Buckinghams Complete Hit Singles

Does anybody have any intel on this release on Varese Sarabande?

I would have purchased this CD if it contained the mono
hit mixes.

You can read my review of this cd by clicking on the "reviews" tab.

Vic Anesini and Bob Irwin both did some nice work on
finding, remastering and remixing CBS material. I've
read a lot of articles and CD jackets that tell the
story about the CBS vault. From my reading, for the
longest time the people running the vault didn't find
much of anything. Maybe they really didn't know where
material was located, maybe it was because tapes
weren't filed well, or because once found, the tapes
would have to be kept track of (and sometimes not
returned), or when they were returned they'd have to
be re-filed (more work for them). Finally Bob Irwin
was allowed to go in and find material. That's how we
got the nice work on Simon and Garfunkel and the
Byrds. The Santana "Abraxas" original master was filed
as "Do Not Use" so of course, nobody used it. The Bang
multi-track masters weren't even there, they were
still sitting in Eileen Burn's basement, some in
unmarked boxes. The alleged reason why many of the
original CBS CDs sounded so terrible was because they
had been mastering material for years like this: Use a
master dub until it was nearly worn out, make a copy
of that worn tape, then use that tape until it nearly
wore out, make another copy, etc. This went on for
years, and it got so bad that the suspicion is that
the reason that reverb was added to the Simon and
Garfunkel tapes was to hide the drop outs. I suppose
it was better than trying to deal with the vault
people. Single masters for the Buckinghams and others
may indeed still be in there, but re-issue labels
probably need someone like Bob to go in and find them.
Or, master from vinyl.