What’s here is nice, but it feels like something’s missing-for instance, the numerous early studio versions of “Gypsy Eyes” and other outtakes that didn’t make the album, such as the horn-laden “South Saturn Delta.” According to seasoned Hendrix experts, there are hours and hours of Electric Ladyland outtakes this little bit barely scratches the surface. The other half of At Last… The Beginning consists of studio takes and rough drafts, a lot of them instrumental. I don’t know if you’d pull them out to listen to them very often, but it’s nice to have them. These are pleasant and casual you can hear the phone ring in the background of “Gypsy Eyes,” for example. Half of it is taken up with simple guitar-and-voice demo recordings Hendrix did in his room at the Drake Hotel in March 1968. The second double-LP in the set is called At Last… The Beginning: The Making of Electric Ladyland : The Early Takes. What is fun for everybody is the presence of unreleased stuff, and there’s quite a bit of it here. Sorry to get bogged down the technical minutia-but hey, that’s part of the whole fun of exploring these deluxe reissues, although it’s definitely not fun for everybody. It must be said, however, that Grundman and company have made the 100-percent correct choice with this flat transfer toying with the EQ would have only opened a can of worms and would likely never have matched what’s on vintage pressings. It’s terrific for scholarly study, but for a good-time listen, I might choose the woolly, thicker-sounding version of my original copy. The clarity of this new pressing is redoubtably good, so much so that I can hear tape edits and miscues that I don’t hear on my older version. This means, however, it sounds very subtly different than your granddad’s original pressing of Electric Ladyland, for three reasons: One, that the older versions very likely had some EQ choices made that weren’t carried over here (my early-1970s Reprise Records pressing, for example, has a thicker and rounder bass presence) two, the master tape will have shed some audio information during the past 50 years (this may be negligible, and I don’t notice any dropouts or anything in this particular case) and three, the equipment used today is quite different from the equipment used back then-not better or worse, just different. What’s slightly strange is that this is touted as a “flat” transfer, presumably meaning no EQ choices were made-what’s on the finished record is a fully accurate representation of what’s on the master tape. The results of an all-analog mastering are noticeable, with vibrancy and holographic imaging that often gets lost if there’s a digital intermediary. Assuming the source tapes are in good condition, an all-analog version like this is, to my thinking, the purest and best way of hearing an older album. Thankfully, that’s not the case with the vinyl: Mastering engineer Bernie Grundman has done a transfer of the original analog tapes to create this new pressing, meaning it wasn’t converted to high-resolution digital before it made its way onto disc-that might sound like a little thing, but it’s increasingly rare in this day and age. As for the album itself, some listeners have complained about the CD version being “brickwalled” and “too loud,” meaning, roughly, that the dynamic range has been squashed to accommodate for earbud and laptop listening.