One of the resources I've found handy to figure out if a recording is in glorious mono is Discogs, where you can look up every version of an album, and more often than not, figure out if an album is in mono or stereo.

'Chet is Back!' is remastered by Bernie Grundman for ORG Music, and contains two 45-rpm records.

Take the Chet is Back! album from ORG Music that I was listening to yesterday, there's nothing on the album cover to indicate whether it is mono or stereo.

'Chet is Back!' inside.

First I did a Google search for 'chet is back!' and it pulled up a list of references, one of which was Discogs. Clicking on the Discogs link gave me the main 'chet is back!' information page, where you can see the basic information about the album.

The ORG Music version is not listed on the main page, but clicking on 'All Versions of this Release' will bring up the list of all the versions of this album. In the list I found the ORG Music version and clicked on the link to bring up the information on the album, but I struck out, there was nothing specifying if it was mono or not.

However, on the Acoustic Sounds website it indicates that Grundman remastered the album from the original master tapes of the original RCA Italiana LMP 10307 release, which was recorded in Rome, Italy, at the RCA Italiana Studios in 1962, which is in the right time frame for a mono recording.

There are a couple of references on Discogs that seem to indicate the original recording was in mono, but there is nothing definitive. For the Speaker Corner Records release of this album it indicates that it is mono, but says nothing definitive in the description.

So this time Discogs failed me, as while there were strong hints that this was originally a mono album, it wasn't definitive.

So what to do? Give it a listen. It is usually pretty obvious while listening whether a record is mono or stereo, so first I played the album with my Ortofon SPU Classic GM MkII stereo phono cartridge to be on the safe side, and Chet is Back! had the classic mono perspective, truth of timbre, and rhythmic prowess , that I've come to associate with mono, so that's a pretty good indication.

Playing 'Chet is Back!' with the Ortofon SPU Mono CG 25 Di MkII.

Then I played Chet is Back! with my Ortofon SPU Mono CG 25 Di MkII and it sounded awesome! It's mono.

You can see in the photo below, that after I decided it was mono, I wrote 'mono' on the back so I'll remember.

'Chet is Back!' front & back.

I'm obviously no mono sleuthing expert, so if you have any mono sleuthing techniques that are helpful, please let me know, I'd love to learn more and tell everyone about it!

Thanks for stopping by, and for any tips you can share!