Golden Imports

“Golden Imports” Series In November 1973 Philips, then owner of Mercury, began a reissue series entitled “Golden Imports”, consisting of stereo recordings from the Mercury Living Presence series. The Golden Imports Series were pressed from new matrices and more refined, high quality vinyl. The albums have more appealing covers than the Wing Records series, usually use the notes on the original SR-90000 series albums, and were pressed in the Netherlands, yielding sound quality approaching that of the originals. The Golden Imports has the openness and lightness of the analog days but lacks somewhat consistency in the lower mid band.There are a little over 150 albums in the series. Single LP albums carry SRI-75xxx catalog numbers; multiple-disk sets of n LPs have SRIn-77xxx catalog numbers. Several albums in the series contain mono-only recordings which, unfortunately, were electronically reprocessed to simulate stereo. The initial release of 18 albums, which are detailed in the Stereo Review Feb 1974 issue. List price was $6.98