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For some time I've been curious how the Sgt. Pepper Nimbus Supercut pressing stacks up to the Mobile Fidelity UHQR pressing. The difficulty has been that I've not seen any drops of the Nimbus Supercut pressing circulating as it's a rare item.
While I'm very reluctant to add yet more Beatles needledrops to what seems to be a preponderance of them by other droppers, I thought others might have an interest in this so it's with no small amount of trepidation that I share this project.
So what you have here is a comparison of the Sgt. Pepper Nimbus Supercut and the MFSL/UHQR pressings.
For those who are unfamiliar with these pressings, the Nimbus Supercut was a very limited pressing made available in 1984 through the audiophile magazines 'Practical Hi-fi' and 'Hi-fi Today'. I have found estimates on the number of copies pressed ranging between 500 and 1500. That makes this LP quite rare. Here's a further spiel I found on the 'net regarding Nimbus Supercut pressings in general:
Nimbus Records have achieved somewhat of a legendary status within the audiophile circle for their 'Supercut' releases, which were only available by mail order through the Hi-fi magazines 'Practical Hi-fi' and 'Hi-fi Today' in the early 1980s. Nimbus mastered each release from the original master tapes using the best available mastering processes. In fact, Nimbus employed many techniques for each release that were not commonly used. For example, generally when bass moves from channel to channel on an LP, groove modulation is employed to reduce the movement of the stylus and this results in this bass being centered more over both channels. Most audiophiles would argue that this - and in fact anything, which changes the original recording should be avoided although this is common practice on most LPs. For example, the release of 'Joan Armatrading' had bass moving from channel to channel in several places, but Nimbus did not limit this, resulting in an outstanding pressing.
Nimbus also had the ICI company produce an extremely pure vinyl for the LPs, which has amazing frequency reproduction and is virtually noise free - similar in quality to the 'super vinyl' used on earlier Mofi pressings. Due to their rarity and small pressing quantities, they are often more expensive than audiophile LPs from other labels, but the sums paid can be justified by the outstanding quality of the pressings and the fact that they tend to rise in value over time and as such are deemed as investments by some audiophiles. Other releases included Pink Floyd's 'Wish You Were Here', Beatles 'Sgt Pepper' and Wings 'Band on the Run' and many other excellent titles.
The Mobile Fidelity UHQR pressing was limited to a run of 5000 LPs and they were all serial numbered. Released in 1982, the UHQR pressing was perhaps the most technically sophisticated pressing of its time and has a very respectful following. For many it's the "definitive" pressing for Sgt. Pepper.
Though there have already been several drops of the UHQR pressing circulating, rather than utilize any of those previous efforts, I decided to do my own transfer of the UHQR so that my comparison would be between audio from two different pressings captured on the same equipment. This avoids speculation based upon differences in hardware/software that others use and allows for a more controlled comparison. The audio here is from a sealed copy.
I make no claims of this audio being definitive in terms of audiophile quality compared to previous droppers. I will only state that the two pressings here have been transferred by me, using the same setup. This should at least provide us with an idea of what differences or similarities may exist between these two pressings based on how they're represented via my particular setup.

Now, if we could only locate the very rare Australian Audiophile pressing of this LP...

http://www.filesonic.com/file/142363941/The_Beatles___Sgt._Pepper__1967