Just when you thought it was safe...new Afghan Whigs album outta nowhere! As I have enjoyed just about everything Greg Dulli has released, I was cautiously optimistic about this record before it came out, but I was still a little worried it wouldn't live up to the previous Whigs material. It did. This one made me happy and was easily my favorite album of 2014.
Do to the Beast was released as a double LP. Pre-orders from Sub Pop received the "Loser Edition", which was on white vinyl. Unfortunately, there was a major flaw in the pressing (in one track on side D). Let's take a closer look a that and get nerdy, shall we? Here's what the flawed area looks like under a microscope:
When you look at this image, do you see that the grooves in the middle do not look like the rest of them? That would be why this one doesn't play properly.
It looks as though grooves in the middle are smashed together - I believe that narrow channel in the center of this image is supposed to be a fully formed groove,
but it is far too narrow for the needle to sit in. I have been interpreting this incorrectly for over a decade, thinking of it as a bad/damaged stamper issue
that only impacted the white copies. Sub Pop had the second disc re-pressed and sent the replacement out to anyone who had ordered the white vinyl directly from them.
And they only replaced the white vinyl, which is what led me to believe the black copies had not been affected. Turns out that was not so.
The black ones had the same flaw. It seems that something went wrong when the lacquer was cut for this side and it was not caught at any of stage of the process.
This should have been identified at the test pressing stage or, at the very least, in the QC process during pressing. Anyway, the side was re-cut for the replacement
disc. If you want to identify which version one of these is without listening to it, you can do so by examining the trail-off wax on side D:
- The original flawed version says: BE 41892-01 D1 SP1061 SIDE D 22602.4(3)... "...IT IS HAPPENING, EACH TIME, FOR THE FIRST TIME, FOR THE ONLY TIME."
- The replacement version says: SP1061 SIDE D-RE "...IT IS HAPPENING, EACH TIME, FOR THE FIRST TIME, FOR THE ONLY TIME." 22602.4(3)ยทยทยท J. POWELL
It is unclear to me whether there were any subsequent pressings, so, for the moment, I do not know if there are any black copies without the flaws. If
you have a black one with trail-off etchings that match the replacement disc text above, please get in touch. Anyway, I figured that replacement disc, since
it was only distributed to direct-sales Sub Pop customers, would end up being the collectible version, but the value has not changed much.
The real collectible version has been the clear vinyl one. When the band toured in support of Do to the Beast, they sold a tour edition on clear vinyl. This one is tough to get and expensive when you can find it.
| Version | Value ($) | Scarcity | Price Trending |
|---|---|---|---|
| SP 1061 White 2xLP (mispress) | 20-30 | 2 | Stable |
| SP 1061 White 2xLP (mispress with replacement second record) | 25-35 | 4 | Stable |
| SP 1061 Black 2xLP | 20-30 | 1 | Stable |
| SP 1061 Clear 2xLP | 120-130 | 9 | Stable |
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| Test Pressing: | Black vinyl, generic RTI labels stamped with production date (February 17, 2014) and catalogue number |
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This page was last updated on April 2, 2026.
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