Month: April 2018

Cat Stevens / Tea for the Tillerman – This Is Your Idea of Analog?

More of the Music of Cat Stevens

More Reviews and Commentaries for Tea for the Tillerman

Dear Record Loving Audiophiles of Earth,

I’m afraid we have some bad news. [This was written back in 2011 when the record came out so it’s hard to imagine that what I am about to say is news to anyone at this stage of the game.]

Regrettably we must inform you that the 2011 edition of Tea for the Tillerman pressed by Analogue Productions on Heavy Vinyl doesn’t sound very good. We know you were all hoping for the best. We also know that you must be very disappointed to hear this unwelcome news.

But the record is what it is, and what it is is not very good. Its specific shortcomings are many and will be considered at length in our review below.

Yes, we know, the folks over at Acoustic Sounds, in consultation with the late George Marino at Sterling Sound, supposedly with the real master tape in hand, and supposedly with access to the best mastering equipment money can buy, labored mightily, doing their level best to master and press the Definitive Audiophile Tea for the Tillerman on Vinyl of All Time.

It just didn’t come out very good, no matter what the reviewers say. And what do they say? Allow me to quote one.

…superbly dynamic, spacious and detailed…The attack of the pick on the guitar strings is astonishingly clean and detailed.

Depth is pronounced…

…the resolution of low level detail reveals a host of details that are either buried or glossed over on the other versions I’ve heard…

Uh-oh, wait a minute, here’s a blindingly red flag:

If you have the  edition, you’ll find this similar in one way: there’s nothing “mellow” about the overall production and when the music gets loud (and Marino lets it get so) it can get a bit hard, but better that than to soften it and lose the clarity, focus and detail of this superb recording, especially in the quieter passages where the resolution of low level detail is astonishing.

More about that later.

Another fellow, this time a blogger writing under the heading “my vinyl review,” had this to say:

This latest pressing… has a decidedly leaner tonal balance than the UK pink Island, and favors the chiming highs and upper mids of the guitars over the lower frequencies. That said, the QRP’s bass is also tighter than what is heard on the other pressings. As with the UK pink, Stevens’ vocals are right up front in the mix on the QRP, but also gain an additional layer or two of complexity over the other issues. This new reissue… is simply the most dynamic, detailed version of this classic album that I’ve heard to date, with more of the vocal nuances, guitar flourishes, and bass string vibrations that audiophiles crave. The U.K. pink undoubtedly possesses a rounder overall sound — and some with particularly bright systems or a sensitivity to the hint of stridence or sibilance in the vocals, might appreciate the touch of tube compression found on the original U.K.

Hey, that’s what I heard too.

Some of what is quoted above does sound very much like the Acoustic Sounds QRP record I played.

For example, when they mention that it’s not “mellow,” that “it can get a bit hard,” that it has a “leaner tonal balance than the UK pink Island,” yes, I would agree with all of that.

But that only scratches the surface of its many faults. (more…)

London Calling – A Killer Bill Price Recording

More of the Music of The Clash

More Top Quality Recordings Engineered by Bill Price

What sets this album apart sonically is The Clash’s use of reggae and dub influences. You can really hear it when you tune in to the bottom end; your average late 70s punk record won’t have this kind of rich and meaty bass, that’s for sure.

Drop the needle on The Guns Of Brixton (last track on side two) to hear exactly what I’m talking about. On a Hot Stamper copy played at the correct levels (read: loud) the effect is positively HYPNOTIC.

Bill Price engineered and as we like to say, he knocked this one out of the park. The best sounding record from 1979? I have the feeling it just might be.

Nobody would have accused The Clash of being an audiophile-friendly band, but a copy like this might make you think twice about that. (more…)

Highway 61 Revisited – Not So Good on Sundazed in Mono

More of the Music of Bob Dylan

More of Sundazed’s (Mostly Bad Sounding) Records

Sonic Grade: D

I don’t think mono works for this album, so we never carried this pressing, and we would have certainly not recommended it back in the days when we were selling Heavy Vinyl.

To see our current selection of Hot Stamper pressings that we think sound better in mono, click here.

To see our current selection of Hot Stamper pressings that we think sound better in stereo, click here.

This guide will help you to recognize which pressings we believe have the potential for the best sound, based on the latest shootouts we’ve carried out.

The Doors – Energy and Raw Power Are Key

More of the Music of The Doors

Reviews and Commentaries for The Doors’ Debut

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Doors

What to listen for you ask? ENERGY and RAW POWER. Few audiophiles have any idea how well recorded this album is, simply because most pressings don’t do a very good job of encoding the life of the master tape onto the vinyl of the day, regardless of whether that day is in 1967 or 2017.

The first Doors album is without a doubt the punchiest, liveliest, most powerful recording in the entire Doors catalog.

Huh? I’m guessing this statement does not comport well with your own experience of the album, and there’s a good reason for that: not many copies of the album provide strong evidence for any of the above qualities.

Most pressings are opaque, flat, thin, veiled, compressed, lifeless and sound exactly the way so many old rock records sound: like some old rock record. (more…)

Steve Winwood / Back In The High Life – Richness or Clarity?

On some of the copies we played richness and warmth seemed to have been sacrificed for the sake of greater clarity. That’s never been our sound, one of the reasons we do relatively few albums from the ’80s, and we noticed that on the copies with that tonal balance it was much more difficult to become involved in the music.

The richer, warmer, smoother, more balanced copies presented no such problem. Their sound transported us into the world of music Winwood had created in these songs.

If you clean and play enough copies you too might get lucky and find a copy that sounds as good as this one, where the obvious analog qualities are much more pronounced, and neither clarity or space is compromised.

Of course you might. We say it all over the site: it ain’t a magic trick to find a copy of Back In The High Life that sounds as good as this one does. All you need is a reliable source for large numbers of British pressings, the right cleaning techniques, and the time to painstakingly shoot out your copies one by one. We recommend scheduling the better part of a day. It’s how we found this outstanding pressing, and it’s how we found every other title you see on our site.

We find great sounding records like this every day, and we do it the only way it can be done, the old fashioned way: by working at it.

Brit Vs Domestic

It’s no contest. The British early pressings are the only way to go. The domestic pressings are clearly made from dubs and sound dull, smeary and small.

Spencer & Kirwan, Lost Guitar Heroes

More of the Music of Fleetwood Mac

Kiln House is one of the all-time great Fleetwood Mac albums. It’s the first album they recorded after Peter Green left. With Green gone Jeremy Spencer’s influence came to the fore. Apparently he was quite a fan of Buddy Holly. His songs are excellent: straightforward and unerringly melodic.

The co-leader for Kiln House is Danny Kirwan, and he rocks the hell out of this album. Three of the best songs Fleetwood Mac ever did, regardless of incarnation, are here: Tell Me All The Things You Do, Station Man and Jewel Eyed Judy, all written by Kirwan (with the help of others). His guitar work on these three songs is blistering.

Any Fleetwood Mac greatest hits collection would be a joke without these tracks. Of course they are consistently missing from all such compilations, at least the ones with which I am familiar. The sad fact is that few people miss them because few people have ever heard them.

The closest thing I can think of to the kind of music the new Mac plays is moody rock of the middle-period Beatles. Kiln House is similar to Beatles ’65 in its dual concerns with vintage rock ‘n’ roll and muted, romantic pieces. Jeremy Spencer took care of the former area, while Danny Kirwan extended the style best represented by McCartney’s “I’ll Follow the Sun.”

(more…)

Basie’s Farmers Market Barbecue – First Among Equals, or The Best Pablo Ever?

More of the Music of Count Basie

Hot Stamper Pressings of Big Band Recordings

Reviews and Commentaries for Farmers Market Barbecue

Musically FMB is a Top Basie Big Band title in every way. This should not be surprising: many of his recordings for Pablo in the ’70s and early ’80s display the talents of The Count and his band of veterans at their best.

Sonically it’s another story. Based on our recent shootout for this title, in comparison to the other Basie titles we’ve done lately we would have to say that FMB is the best Basie big band title we’ve ever played. Since so many Basie big band recordings are so good, we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves; after all, we haven’t done shootouts for all of his Pablo large group recordings. To be safe we’ll just call this one First Among Equals.

The following are some general guidelines as to What to Listen For while you critically evaluate any of the Basie Big Band Pablo recordings (or any other big band recordings for that matter).

Simply put, we offer here a short list of qualities that we’ve come to appreciate on the best of the Basie Big Band pressings, qualities that we find are often in short supply on lesser LPs (and, as a rule, those that have been remastered onto Heavy Vinyl). (more…)

B.B. King – Live & Well

More B.B. King

More Electric Blues


  • With two Triple Plus (A+++) shootout winning sides, this original Bluesway pressing from 1969 simply could not be beat
  • Surprisingly dynamic, with great energy, this copy brought BB King’s music to life in our listening room like no other could
  • This copy had the Tubes and the Big Bass that this music needs to work it’s Electric Blues Magic from The Master himself
  • “…a worthy recording on its own merits, divided evenly between live and studio material. King’s always recorded well as a live act, and it’s the concert tracks that shine brightest…”

Some of the Bluesway pressings we’ve auditioned recently have had exceptionally big, rich, lively sound, and that’s the way we like our music to sound.

There are plenty of dogs in the King canon, especially in the ’70s, so you have to be somewhat careful with the man’s recordings, but good titles in the ’60s with excellent sound can still be found if you’re willing to do the work (or you’re willing to let us do it for you). (more…)

Richard and Linda Thompson / Hokey Pokey – Album Background

More of the Music of Richard Thompson

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Richard (and Linda) Thompson

This is one of R&L Thompson’s best albums, their second release, following the luminous I Want to See the Bright Lights Shine from a year earlier. Rich and full-bodied, with big bass and gobs of studio ambience, this is the way this music was meant to be heard.

Wikipedia on Hokey Pokey

Hokey Pokey is the second album by the British duo of singer Linda and singer/songwriter/guitarist Richard Thompson. It was recorded in the autumn of 1974 and released in 1975.

Listeners keen to try to find connections between the albums by the Thompsons and their personal lives may be confused by the delays between writing, recording and release of the early albums. I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight was conceived and recorded prior to the Thompsons’ embracing of Islam, but the album’s release was substantially delayed. By the time that album was released the Thompsons were living in an Islamic commune in London.

In the meantime the Thompsons had toured as a trio with Fairport Convention guitarist Simon Nicol. Nicol recalls that period: (in Patrick Humphries’ biography of Richard Thompson)

We did the folk clubs as a trio … It was just after they got married, and it was lovely. I look back on that period with great affection … It was really powerful. You could hear a pin drop at most of those gigs. Rapt attention. Two acoustic guitars, and the bass pedals went through a little backline combo amp, we’d use house microphones … It was stuff from Bright Lights … and Hokey Pokey, in the process of creation, Hank Williams’ songs …

So much of the material on the Hokey Pokey album was written sometime before the album was recorded and even predates the conversion to Islam. To add to the confusion the release of the eventual album was again delayed and so the song and the themes of the album lagged behind the development of the Thompsons’s personal lives.

The album is thematically cohesive for the most part. The first eight songs present a bleak world view with constant images of people living a shallow existence and seeking some kind of gratification – often in drugs or sexual encounters (“Hokey Pokey”, “I’ll Regret It All in the Morning”, “Old Man Inside a Young Man”, “Georgie on a Spree”), or experiencing a hard and cruel life with the cruelty often being dealt out by their fellow humans (“Smiffy’s Glass Eye”, “The Sun Never Shines on the Poor”, “I’ll Regret It All in the Morning”, “Old Man Inside a Young Man”). “Never Again” (originally written in the aftermath of Fairport Convention’s devastating tour bus crash in 1969) portrays an old man looking back on a life devastated by the unexpected loss of loved ones.

“A Heart Needs a Home”, the ninth song, serves as Richard Thompson’s declaration of faith whilst also harking back to the unfulfilling existence portrayed in the preceding songs:

…I came to you when
No one could hear me
I’m sick and weary
Of being alone
Empty streets and
Hungry faces
The world’s no place when
You’re on your own
A heart needs a home.

In terms of musical style Thompson’s songwriting on this album reflects a number of British styles despite not being in the English folk-rock style of “Bright Lights”: Music Hall, English hymns, traditional brass bands, pub sing-alongs and even the double entendres of George Formby are all discernible.

The Moody Blues – Every Good Boy Deserves Favour on MoFi Anadisc

More of the Music of The Moody Blues

Reviews and Commentaries for The Moody Blues

Sonic Grade: F

Pure Anadisc murky mud, like all the Moody Blues records MoFi remastered and ruined in the ’90s with their misbegotten foray back into the world of vinyl. By 1999 they were bankrupt and deservedly so.

Their records were completely worthless to those of us who play them and want to hear them sound good but, unsurprisingly, a quick search on ebay indicates that they’re still worth money to those who collect the kind of audiophile trash this label put out.

Folks, seriously, you really have to work at it to find pressings of the Moody Blues albums that sound worse than the ones MoFi did in the ’90s. To be honest, we really don’t know of any. Which means that, as far as we’re concerned, their pressing of Every Good Boy Deserves Favour is the worst version of the album ever made.

Head to Head It’s Simply No Contest

Visit our Audiophile Hall of Shame (270+ strong) to see what, in our opinion, are some of the worst sounding records ever made that were marketed to audiophiles.

Over the many decades we have been in the audiophile record business, we’ve gone through the all-too-often unpleasant experience of comparing these audiophile pressings head to head with our best Hot Stampers.

When you can hear them that way, up against an exceptionally good record, their flaws become that much more obvious and, frankly, much less tolerable.

FURTHER READING

New to the Blog? Start Here

What Exactly Are Hot Stamper Pressings?

And finally,

A Confession

Even as recently as the early 2000s we were still somewhat impressed with many of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings. If we had never made the progress we’ve worked so hard to make over the course of the last twenty or more years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues so many audiophiles seem to like.

We’ll never know of course; that’s a bell that can be unrung. We did the work, we can’t undo it, and the system that resulted from it is merciless in revealing the truth — that these newer pressings are second-rate at best and much more often than not third-rate and even worse.

After playing some of the worst of the worst of these audiophile pressings, I was pissed off enough to create a special list for them. If you have any of these titles in your collection, now is the time to hear just how bad they are and to get rid of them.

Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, especially the ones comparing our records to their Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed Mastered counterparts, we know that our customers see things the same way.