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I've had the Made In The U.S.A. CD and the first CD issue of Pet Sounds since 1990. I remember reading in the liner notes of Pet Sounds that it contains Brian's intended mix of WIBN and I just read tonight on this board somebody referring to the version on Made In U.S.A comp as a 'rough mix'.
To be completely honest I never noticed anything 'different' but I did always notice that I felt it always sounded 'smoother' and less harsh on Made In the U.S.A comp but I always chalked it up to just being a different mastering.
Before getting the stereo remix on The Pet Sounds Sessions I always used the mix/mastering on Made In The USA whenever I included WIBN on any of my personal compilation cassettes and CD's.
I'm by no means an audio professional so I'm wondering if some 'professional listeners' here will explain to me what the differences are.
Thanks in advance.

The "rough mix" has a slightly different take of Brian's vocal, but the most obvious difference is in the bridge where Mike sings.  The first two words ("maybe if") are single tracked.  Then the double-tracking kicks in for the rest of the phrase ("we think and wish and hope and pray...etc").

Also on the phrase: "You know its gonna make it that much better/When we can say goodnight and stay together"... Brian really enunciates the "you" at the beginning of the line.  On the regular version, you almost don't hear it.

Isn't there also a version where Brian sings Mike's part in the middle?

I think it's a complete different vocal take. Also, the intro is different, as if there were effects added to it.

It's an early take of the song. Capitol used it when the master for the song went missing. It's still missing. Mark used the copy of Pet Sounds sent to the New York City offices of Capitol to pull WIBN off of. The master in LA had WIBN cut off and replaced with a duophonic copy. Back in the day, if a single was released off an LP after an LP came out, Capitol would pull up the LP master, cut out the track they wanted, replace it with a copy of that track, and store the tune on what they called their phono reels. Stupid if you ask me. Alot of tracks are missing because of this.

I always wondered at the time they compiled Made In USA and couldn't find WIBN, why they pull the master for Sunshine Dream and use that as the mono single was on there. I have heard that the mastering engineer at Capitol at that time (Larry Walsh), did not like the Beach Boys and put as little effort as possible into their releases. For the CD of Made In USA, he just did straight copies of the tracks with no real mastering. Its great for us nerds cuz its a flat transfer of the songs. But hardly the way they should have treated the group.

Yup, the original 1996 stereo version. The vocal multitracks with Mike's vocal were missing. I think what they did for later stereo mixes was some kind of OOPS-style trickery to isolate Mike's vocal from another mixdown, then fly it into the stereo mix.

I also believe similar circumstances are the reasons we don't have double-tracked vocals for the stereo mixes of "You Still Believe In Me" and "In The Back Of My Mind."

I think Mark said they found the double-tracked vocals for You Still Believe In Me. Beginning with the 2012 MFSL release.

The low down from Mark L from sometime ago.

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,9578.msg165841.html#msg165841

Pretty sure DrBB is right re YSBIM, I'll see if I can find the quote later (believe it's on this board somewhere).

That's interesting info ...

Sunshine Dream is a fine-sounding record ... So they must have used the NY tape (or another copy) of WIBN for that compilation? Because the Pet Sounds reissue of '80 or so has the Duophonic. Or wait ... did that have the Duophonic too? I need to pull out my record!

It goes both ways.  I assume it depends on where a given copy was pressed, but some have WIBN in duophonic and others have it in mono.

If someone can find the story/explanation of the double-tracked YSBIM vocal on the stereo MFSL release, that would be great. The original story about how it was cut (doubled vocal cut live during mono mixdown) would imply there’s no way to recover the vocal (unless they randomly had another multi-track recorder running at the same time or something), and that some sort of digital extraction (or artificial doubling of his single-tracked vocal) would need to happen.

I don't know where they got that version of WIBN for Sunshine Dream. Maybe its the last time the single master was seen. Bad thing about that rough version of WIBN, it got used on everything for awhile after Made In Usa. It was on the Reader's Digest comp (great comp btw, it had tracks on CD that weren't available yet). What was funny is that after the remasters in 1990, they put together a sampler CD for the remasters. They used that rough version instead of the one Mark used. And on the Absolute Best CD set, they used that rough mix as well.

It's on Still Cruisin', as well.

These are differences I heard while A/Bing it last year:

Brian's vocal sounds different on "THEN we wouldn't have to wait so long", "What happy times", the lower backgrounds in the second verse are different (no Dennis bass part), but higher backgrounds are present; Mike's bridge lead is single until "wish", then doubled, Brian's response to Carl's response is present.

Some of these difference may be mix differences rather than performance differences: I have it on good authority that Brian's lead is the same, just EQ'd and/or limited differently.

http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,6300.msg102047.html#msg102047