Letters and Commentaries for The Soft Parade
More records that are good for testing string tone and texture.
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.