Month: March 2018

Pictures At An Exhibition and its Gigantic Organ Sound

More of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer

Hot Stamper Pressings of Prog Rock Albums Available Now

Listen to that GIGANTIC organ that plays the fanfare opening of the work.

Honestly, I have never heard a rock album with an organ sound that stretched from wall to wall and sounds like it’s seventy five feet tall.

No, I take that back. The first ELP album has an organ that sounds about that big, but that’s a studio album. How did they manage to get that kind of organ sound in a live setting without actually having to build one inside the concert hall?

Pictures At An Exhibition has some of the biggest, boldest sound we have ever heard.

It’s clearly a Demo Disc for big speakers that play at loud levels.

Play this one as loud as you can. The louder you play it, the better it sounds.

The hottest Hot Stamper pressings of Pictures are Demo Discs in two other areas as well, bass and size and space, along with the titles linked below:

To see more reviews and commentaries for titles that we think sound their best on imported vinyl, please click here.

Please note that many of our Hot Stamper pressings are only available as imports. It has been our experience that the domestic pressings of these albums are simply not competitive with the better imports.

Advice

Want to avoid paying our admittedly high prices and find a top quality copy for yourself?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that tend to win our shootouts.

Pictures at an Exhibition should sound its best this way:

Further Reading

Elvis Presley – It Happened At The World’s Fair


  • An insanely good sounding copy: Triple Plus (A+++) on the first side, Double Plus (A++) on the second
  • If you want to know just how rich, spacious, natural and Tubey Magical an Elvis record can sound, here’s your chance to find out
  • Fairly quiet vinyl throughout — Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus – it’s unlikely any early pressing would ever play as well
  • Elvis’s early albums are rarely in audiophile playing condition, so finding these later pressings with such good sound has been a real ear opener

This pressing has the glorious sound of 1963 in its grooves. It has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records cannot even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound. (more…)

Tim Buckley – Goodbye And Hello

  • An insanely good sounding Gold Label original with Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides
  • The overall sound here is super big, full and dynamic with excellent bass and a nice extended top end
  • Fairly quiet vinyl throughout — Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus
  • 4 1/2 Stars on All Music: “Often cited as the ultimate Tim Buckley statement, Goodbye and Hello is indeed a fabulous album…”  

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Miles Davis / Workin’ And Steamin’ – Tonally Right On the Money

davismiles

Reviews and Commentaries for Kind of Blue

Hot Stampers of Miles’s Albums Available Now

This review is from a pressing we put up circa 2010. We had never heard any clean, early pressings, and we we put some in our shootout, one of them was out of this world sounding.

In the commentary below we discuss what we think the early pressings probably sound like. Now, having heard how good the best of them can sound, we admit we clearly needed to do more research and development.

The record pictured above can have superb sound, much better than practically any modern Heavy Vinyl reissue you care to name.

The right properly-cleaned early pressings have the potential to take the sound of this music to the next level, a level we had no idea could exist until the right record came our way.

Our Commentary from 2010

To the Jazz Fans of the World, we here present one of the BEST sounding jazz recordings we have ever had the PRIVILEGE to place on a turntable. I cannot ever recall hearing a better sounding Rudy Van Gelder recording, and I have a theory as to why this tape is as good as it is: it’s MONO. It also sounds like it’s recorded completely LIVE in the studio, direct to one track you might say. As good a recording as Kind of Blue is, I think the best parts of this album are more immediate and more real than anything on KOB.

Better than the Originals?

The record combines two Miles Davis albums recorded in 1956: Workin’ and Steamin’. The 1974 remastering here by Brian Gardner is excellent. Since RVG probably would have mastered these tapes himself for the original pressings, I’m going to guess that this album sounds better than any original, for two reasons.
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Roxy Music – Stranded

More Bryan Ferry

More Roxy Music

  • Outstanding sound with a Triple Plus (A+++) side one and an excellent Double Plus (A++) side two
  • The sound on this British original Island pressing is wonderful throughout – rich, smooth and oh-so-analog
  • One of the group’s best sounding recordings, the Tubey Magic on their early albums is off the scale, especially here
  • “The operative adjective for Roxy’s first true masterpiece is gorgeous (it’s the same adjective for their final one, too) – The centerpiece, “Mother Of Pearl”, might be Roxy’s finest seven minutes.”

Stranded is one of the better recordings by the band, coming in second for sonics only to the first album, which is really saying something considering that the first album is a Better Records Top 100 title. The Tubey Magic on the early albums has to be heard to be believed!

These British pressings give you the richest, fullest, biggest sound with the least amount of sibilance on the vocals, grain or grunge. It’s the rich, full-bodied ANALOG sound we adore here at Better Records, although it’s worth noting that the sound on some tracks is noticeably better than on others.

We thank Chris Thomas for his production and John Punter for his engineering work at AIR Studio. This album and the first one are without question the two best sounding Roxy albums, and that’s true for any incarnation of the band.

Both belong in any serious rock and pop collection, and if you are a fan of Art Rock, every Roxy album should be on your shelf, along with your Bowie, Pink Floyd, Supertramp, Eno, Peter Gabriel, 10cc and so many others (most of which are personal favorites of mine, albums I have played hundreds of times over the last 30 years and plan to play hundreds of times in the next). (more…)

Della Reese – Della in Living Stereo

 

  • Both sides here are rich and smooth with a big bottom end and a lovely musical quality that’s missing from the average copy
  • Plays Mint Minus Minus on side one and even quieter on side two — Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus
  • “Recorded in 1959, this excellent album finds Reese backed by an orchestra that Neal Hefti arranged and conducted.” – All Music

If you’re a fan of vintage female vocals – the kind with no trace of digital reverb – you may get quite a kick out of this one.

Tubey Magic Is Key

This early Living Stereo pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records cannot even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What to Listen For (WTLF)

Copies with rich lower mids and nice extension up top did the best in our shootout, assuming they weren’t veiled or smeary of course. So many things can go wrong on a record! We know, we heard them all. (more…)

EMI’s Wonderful Prokofiev Symphony No. 1 with Previn

More of the music of Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Sergei Prokofiev

This EMI contains one of my favorite performances of the Classical Symphony, and it also carries the distinction of having the best combination of sonics and performance that we have ever heard on vinyl.

There is a recording by Previn and the LA Phil from 1986 with a performance To Die For; unfortunately it comes with the kind of mid-’80s tear-your-head-off-digital shrillness that makes the CD medium the worn out joke we analog lovers know it to be.

The First Symphony happens to be one of my favorite classical works of all time, right up there with The Planets and Pictures at an Exhibition. I wouldn’t want to go to a desert island without all three.

This pressing has exceptional transparency and dynamics, allowing the energy and precision of the performance to shine through. This is truly a sublime recording that belongs in any music collection, whether you’re a fan of classical music or not. It’s a work of such joy that I’ve never failed to be uplifted by it — except when the performance is too slow, which it too often is.

This is a difficult piece to pull off. Most of the time either the orchestra is not up to the task or the conductor misunderstands the work. Previn has a spritely take on the piece, which is precisely what it needs and, every bit as important, the London Symphony has the chops to bring his vision to life.

FROM AN OLDER HOT STAMPER LISTING

Side One

Transparent mids (just listen to the tympani at the back of the stage), It’s dynamic and has a lovely 3-D soundstage (a strength of EMI to be sure).

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The Strings on Wishful Sinful Are a Tough Test

The Soft Parade is a tragically underrated album and a killer recording, with Demo Quality sound on the best pressings

A new test we found helpful on side two was the quality of the strings on Wishful Sinful.

Man, they can really get edgy and shrill on some copies. The best side two’s have them sounding high-rez, rosiny and (almost) smooth.

No two copies of an album will get those strings to sound the same. If you don’t believe us just pull out two copies and listen for yourself. You may be in for quite a shock. You can adjust your VTA (you can and should) until you find the maximum resolution, most body, most harmonic extension, as well as the most correct tonality on the strings, but after you do, you will still never get two different pressings to sound the same.

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David Bowie – Another Hit Song with Dubby Sound

More of the Music of David Bowie

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of David Bowie

Both sides are really rich and sweet with especially Tubey Magical guitars. 1984 (a favorite of ours on David Live) sounds great here. In addition to singing, the man handles sax, Mellotron, and Moog duties on the album, and, most surprisingly, plays practically all of the electric guitar parts.

The title song of course sounds quite good. Rebel Rebel unfortunately does not — we get the feeling that the master tape for that song was used for the single and the album version was made from a dub. Still, it’s better here than it would be elsewhere. (more…)

Emerson, Lake & Palmer / Trilogy – A Classic of Tubey Magical British Prog Rock

More Emerson, Lake and Palmer

Records We Only Sell on Import Vinyl

  • One of the best copies to ever hit the site and boy is it KILLER! Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout
  • An excellent recording that really shines on a good pressing like this; fairly quiet vinyl too!
  • “Every track on this album has been carefully thought, arranged, and performed to perfection…”

It’s not easy to find great copies of this album. This kind of prog rock demands big, bold sound, and not all copies have the size or low end weight to pull it off. Keith Emerson’s organ needs to extend all the way down, or it just doesn’t work. Both sides here have a great bottom end, and some real texture and space up top. (more…)