ROLLING STONES Sticky Fingers Pre-Production Acetate (1971 UK 9-track Trident Studios double sided metal based high grade methyl cellulose lacquer acetate containing markedly different mixes & some different takes to that eventually released on the 'Sticky Fingers' album itself. Notable differences are two versions of 'Bitch', 'Moonlight Mile' still being called 'Japanese Thing' and the instrumental balance differing, sometimes wildly, from the final mixed and mastered offering delivered in April 1971. By its very nature, a limited thing and quite possibly now unique after the passage of forty years, it shows the album still as very much a work in progress. There is no date on the disc, just the hand annotated titles, but this would have been either late 1970 or early 1971 as the tracks are pretty much finished & most overdubs are in place, although in some cases, like 'Bitch', there was still a choice of version. Listening to excerpts, there are even a few sections where count-ins remain, so maybe these were still being worked on at the time. Fragile by their very nature, the surface of the disc shows the inevitable scuffs of time although in playback the stereo is clear & undistorted and the music punchy and direct. A certain amount of background noise is inevitable with something like this, but the disc has obviously not been played often enough for the sonics to have started to suffer. An amazing find that we are proud to be able to offer here. Probably the next best thing you'll get to owning a pre-production master tape).