Turn Me On Reel Man! Krist Novoselic writes a column for the Daily Weekly and is a regular contributor to Reverb.Much is being written about the new re-mastered Beatles reissues. I’m not surprised that the new maters sound better than the 1987 CD releases – but I listen to the Beatles mostly on vinyl. I even spin their last release, Love, on my turntable.A couple of months ago, I acquired boxes of old reel-to reel-tapes. The deal was no cherry picking and to take all the boxes. I should have said no to more clutter, but I was too interested in what was inside. Sure enough, this was a serious collection of late ’60s MOR — mostly soundtrack’s like Love Story, Dr. Zhivago, and Lalo Schifrin scores.Oh, but the thrill at finding The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour! Many reel-to-reel tapes are deteriorating — the emulsion is falling of the plastic tape. But I put it on the old deck and Magical Mystery Tour hardly shed, and sounded great.I marveled at how different it sounded from the three LPs and CD that I own. Yes, there was plenty of definition and depth and the stereo separation seems more pronounced. There’s a lot of imagery in the music of this Beatle album, and what a delight to hear it with this archaic technology.Reels were commercial tapes before cassettes hit the market. Magical Mystery Tour would sound even better if it was at 7 ½ ips but this commercial release is at 3 ¾ ips. (ips is Inches Per Second – the amount of tape that moves past the playback head.). I am going to digitize the tape to preserve it. I’ll probably put it on a mini-disc – another obsolete but fun technology! And by the way, they both sound way better than MP3’s!!!!!!!