NEIL YOUNG Harvest VG++ PLAY GRADED RARE 1972 Reprise 1st Pressing Lee Hulko

$

55

Why buy a first or early pressing and not a re-issue or a ‘re-mastered’ vinyl album?

First pressings are made from first generation lacquers and stampers. They usually sound vastly superior to later issues and re-issues (which are often pressed from whatever tapes or digital sources  are currently available). First or early pressings nearly always have more immediacy, presence and dynamics. The sound staging is wider and subtle instrument nuances are better placed with more  spacious textures. Balances are firmer in the bottom end with a far-tighter bass. Upper-mid ranges shine without harshness, and the overall depth is more immersive, with inner details more clearer.  On first and early pressings, the music tends to sound more ‘alive’ and vibrant.

Vinyl:  VG++ Play Tested. Sounds Great!  Has some marks that don't affect play.  Side 2 song 4 has a soft repeating tick.  Reprise Labels are Clean.  This is the 1972 Reprise 1st Pressing!!  Esteemed as the Best Pressed version of this album, this is the 1st Pressing Mastered by Lee Hulko of Sterling Sound!!!  Neil's most Celebrated Album.  One of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time!!! allmusic gives it 4 1/2 stars!!!
   In the dead wax:  "LH" for Lee Hulko and "Sterling" stampers.  
Cover: VG++ (see photos; a couple of splotches on the front cover add to the rustic charm; name written small on inside of gatefold.)  Original Textured Gatefold.  Includes the textured Lyric Sheet and textured Inner Sleeve.  This album package appears to have used the old Paper Craftsman's method of including plant parts in the paper mixture to give a rustic look and feel to this most handsome of Neil's albums.  Harvest indeed!  A Beautiful copy.   
Goldmine Standards.   I play test every album that I sell on eBay as I have found you can't rate an LP accurately by just visually inspecting an album.  I wipe the dust off of every cover with clean, unscented baby wipes.  I professionally clean the vinyl.

See Review Below!

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AllMusic Review by William Ruhlmann  [-]

Neil Young's most popular album, Harvest benefited from the delay in its release (it took 18 months to complete due to Young's back injury), which whetted his audience's appetite, the disintegration of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (Young's three erstwhile partners sang on the album, along with Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor), and most of all, a hit single. "Heart of Gold," released a month before Harvest, was already in the Top 40 when the LP hit the stores, and it soon topped the charts. It's fair to say, too, that Young simply was all-pervasive by this time: "Heart of Gold" was succeeded at number one by "A Horse with No Name" by America, which was a Young soundalike record. But successful as Harvest was (and it was the best-selling album of 1972), it has suffered critically from reviewers who see it as an uneven album on which Young repeats himself. Certainly, Harvest employs a number of jarringly different styles. Much of it is country-tinged, with Young backed by a new group dubbed the Stray Gators who prominently feature steel guitarist Ben Keith, though there is also an acoustic track, a couple of electric guitar-drenched rock performances, and two songs on which Young is accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra. But the album does have an overall mood and an overall lyric content, and they conflict with each other: The mood is melancholic, but the songs mostly describe the longing for and fulfillment of new love. Young is perhaps most explicit about this on the controversial "A Man Needs a Maid," which is often condemned as sexist by people judging it on the basis of its title. In fact, the song contrasts the fears of committing to a relationship with simply living alone and hiring help, and it contains some of Young's most autobiographical writing. Unfortunately, like "There's a World," the song is engulfed in a portentous orchestration. Over and over, Young sings of the need for love in such songs as "Out on the Weekend," "Heart of Gold," and "Old Man" (a Top 40 hit), and the songs are unusually melodic and accessible. The rock numbers, "Are You Ready for the Country" and "Alabama," are in Young's familiar style and unremarkable, and "There's a World" and "Words (Between the Lines of Age)" are the most ponderous and overdone Young songs since "The Last Trip to Tulsa." But the love songs and the harrowing portrait of a friend's descent into heroin addiction, "The Needle and the Damage Done," remain among Young's most affecting and memorable songs.