Month: June 2018

The Mehta Planets – Sealed with the Pioneer Booklet

More of the music of Gustav Holst (1874-1934)

Factory Sealed CS 6734 with the super rare Pioneer spacecraft booklet inside the shrink!

There’s a very good chance this is the last such copy on the planet. I have never seen one before, and I remember when this record came out, so probably few were made with this special booklet included.

I’m guessing it has about a dozen pages or so, and probably talks about the Pioneer mission to Jupiter.

“Launched on 2 March 1972, Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to travel through the Asteroid belt, and the first spacecraft to make direct observations and obtain close-up images of Jupiter. Famed as the most remote object ever made by man through most of its mission, Pioneer 10 is now over 8 billion miles away.”

Johnny Hodges & Wild Bill Davis – Blue Rabbit from 1964

This KILLER jazz pressing boasts shootout winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from first note to last
The sound here is Tubey Magical, lively and clear, with three-dimensionality that goes deep and fills the listening room from wall to wall
This copy plays on relatively quiet vinyl, Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus throughout
“One of altoist Johnny Hodges’ many solo records in the 1960s… Tasty and swinging music.” – Allmusic

For us audiophiles both the sound and the music here are wonderful. If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good 1963-64 All Tube Analog sound can be, this killer copy will do the trick. (more…)

Lizard – Heavy on the Mellotron

More of the Music of King Crimson

More Hot Stamper Pressings of Prog Rock Albums

Every bit the sonic equal of the first album, if you love colorful Big Production Jazzy Prog Rock (with mellotron!) is your thing you can’t go wrong here

Standard Operating Procedures

What are the criteria by which a record like this should be judged? Pretty much the ones we discuss in most of our Hot Stamper listings: energy, vocal presence, frequency extension (on both ends), transparency, harmonic textures (freedom from smear is key), rhythmic drive, tonal correctness, fullness, richness, and so on down through the list.

When we can get all, or most all, of the qualities above to come together on any given side we provisionally award it a grade of “contender.” Once we’ve been through all our copies on one side we then play the best of the best against each other and arrive at a winner for that side. Repeat the process for the other side and the shootout is officially over. All that’s left is to see how the sides matched up.

It may not be rocket science, but it is a science of a kind, one with strict protocols that we’ve developed over the course of many years to insure that the results we arrive at are as accurate as we can make them.

The result of all our work speaks for itself, on this very record in fact. We guarantee you have never heard this music sound better than it does on our Hot Stamper pressing — or your money back.

AMG 4 Star Review

Lizard is very consciously jazz-oriented — the influence of Miles Davis (particularly Sketches of Spain) being especially prominent — and very progressive, even compared with the two preceding albums. The pieces are longer and have extensive developmental sections, reminiscent of classical music, and the lyrics are more ornate, while the subject matter is more exotic and rarified — epic, Ragnarok-like battles between good and evil that run cyclically.

The doom-laden mood of the first two albums is just as strong, except that the music is prettier; the only thing missing is a sense of humor… At the time of its release, some critics praised Lizard for finally breaking with the formula and structure that shaped the two preceding albums, but overall it’s an acquired taste.

If You Like Power Pop, This Is a Must Own Album from 1979

More of the Music of The Knack

This Monster Power Pop Debut by the Knack is an AMAZINGLY well-recorded album, with the kind of Wall to Wall Big Beat Live Rock Sound that rivals Back in Black and Nevermind — if you’re lucky enough to have a copy that sounds like this! (If you’re not then it doesn’t.)

My Sharona is simply STUNNING here. You just can’t record drums and bass any better!

And let’s not forget the song Lucinda. It’s got exactly the same incredibly meaty, grungy, ballsy sound that Back in Black does, but it managed to do it in 1979, a year earlier!

Mike Chapman produced this album and clearly he is an audiophile production genius. With a pair of Number One charting, amazing sounding Pop albums back to back — Blondie’s Parallel Lines in 1978 and this album early the next year — how much better could he get? The answer is: None more better.

Come to Life, Would You!

So many copies we played of The Knack just didn’t come to life the way the good ones do. Especially noticeable on many of the pressings we played was a lack of bass foundation and punch. When the bass comes in at the opening of My Sharona it should make your neighbors come knocking. On most copies the effect is, to be charitable, less than startling, especially if you’ve heard it sound the way it can on our Hot Stampers. Let me tell you, THEY ROCK.

Bass, Man

Dropping the needle on the average copy we kept asking ourselves where the bass was! Only the best copies let you hear the bass with all its power and glory intact. (Of course, you have to have the kind of dynamic full-range system that can reproduce that kind of power down low; we never tire of making the case for big dynamic speakers because we know what a THRILL it is to hear a record like this played good and loud on them.)

Real Studio Space

One of the qualities we heard on the more transparent copies is huge studio space around the drum kit, especially the kick. We love that “unbaffled” sound; it lets the long-delayed reflections off the back wall be heard clearly. Until we got our EAR 324 in 2007 we couldn’t get a good picture of just what was happening in the studio, but now those reflections are as clear as a bell on record after record, from The Planets to Physical Graffiti.

The advent of top quality stand-alone phono stages is, in our opinion, one of the most important revolutions in audio in recent times. Room treatments that allow that three-dimensional studio space to be recreated in your very own living room are another.

Side One

Let Me Out
Your Number or Your Name
Oh Tara
(She’s So) Selfish
Maybe Tonight
Good Girls Don’t

Side Two

My Sharona
Heartbeat
Siamese Twins (The Monkey and Me)
Lucinda
That’s What the Little Girls Do
Frustrated

Count Basie / Chairman of the Board – The Reissues that Beat the Originals (and of course the Classic Records Remaster)

A Shootout Winning copy with Triple Plus (A+++) sound on the first side and Double Plus (A++) sound on the second
From first note to last, this copy is big, clear, rich and lively, with huge amounts of space around the band
Forget the honky, hard-sounding Roulette originals, and of course the second-rate Classic Records pressing – this reissue is the way to go
4 1/2 stars: “This 1958 date for Roulette was a rare chance for the orchestra to perform on its own, and listeners to hear how powerful the band could be when its concentration was undiverted… The record is admittedly heavy on the blues, but it’s a brassy, powerful vision of the blues… A dynamic date, it shows the ‘new testament’ edition of Basie’s orchestra in top form.”

This reissue is spacious, open, transparent, rich and sweet. It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording Technology, with the added benefit of mastering using the more modern cutting equipment of the ’70s. We are of course here referring to the good modern mastering of 30+ years ago, not the dubious and too often disastrous modern mastering of today.

The combination of old and new works wonders on this title as you will surely hear for yourself on these superb sides. We were impressed with the fact that these pressings excel in so many areas of reproduction. What was odd about it — odd to most audiophiles but not necessarily to us — was just how rich and Tubey Magical the reissue can be on the right pressing.

This leads me to think that most of the natural, full-bodied, lively, clear, rich sound of the album is on the tape, and that all one has to do to get that vintage sound on to a record is simply to thread up the tape on the right machine and hit play. (more…)

1970 – It Was a Very Good Year, Especially for Dave Mason

1970 Was a Great Year for Analog Recording

This album appears to be criminally underrated as music nowadays, having fallen from favor with the passage of time.

It is a surely a MASTERPIECE that belongs in any Rock Collection worthy of the name. Every track is good, and most are amazingly good. There’s not a scrap of filler here.

The recording by Bruce Botnick is hard to fault as well.

1970 was a great time in music. Some of the best albums released that year (in no particular order):

Tea for the Tillerman,
Bridge Over Troubled Water,
Moondance,
Sweet Baby James,
Tumbleweed Connection,
After the Goldrush,
The Yes Album,
McCartney / Self-Titled,
Elton John / Self-Titled,
Morrison / His Band And Street Choir,
Deja Vu,
Workingman’s Dead,
Tarkio,
Stillness,
Let It Be — need I go on?

Even in such illustrious company — I defy anyone to name ten albums of comparable quality to come out in any year — Alone Together ranks as one of the best releases of 1970.

Listening in Depth to Young Americans

More of the Music of David Bowie

Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of the album.

Here are some albums currently on our site with similar track by track breakdowns.

This is one of my favorite Bowie albums. Nobody seems to care about it anymore. They dismiss it as disco junk, but it actually has some of his best music on it. I especially like the song Win. David Sanborn’s saxophone sounds like it’s coming from 60 feet behind Bowie, a nice effect.

Side One

Young Americans
Win

My favorite track on the album, an undiscovered gem in the Bowie catalog.

Fascination
Right

Side Two

Somebody up There Likes Me

One of the best tracks on the album. Sanborn is out of his head on this track. Another gem that never gets enough credit.

Across the Universe
Can You Hear Me

This is one of the best tests for side two. It’s the rare copy that gets those soulful background voices to sound clear and clean. They often sound squawky, veiled, or thin.

Grain and smear are big problems with mass-produced vinyl like this. It takes a very special pressing to show you that those problems are in the vinyl, not on the tape.

Fame

(more…)

Offenbach / THE Gaite Parisienne to Own – A Classic Case of Reversed Polarity

More of the music of Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)

More of the Music of Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)

This amazing Readers Digest disc has A+++ Out of This World Demo Disc sound for Gaite Parisienne
The dynamic energy, clarity and power of this work come through on this pressing like nothing you have ever heard
But only if you can reverse your polarity – if you can’t (or won’t) just forget hearing this record sound the way I describe it
“This is unpretentious, well-crafted music, and while it will not appeal to those exclusively interested in serious listening, it is undeniably masterful within its genre.”

Amazing in every way! The top end of this record is clear, clean and correct. No other copy sounded like this one on the first side. When you hear all the percussion instruments — the tambourines, triangles, wood blocks and what-have-you — you know instantly that they sound RIGHT.

The overall sound is very different from many of the other recordings of the work that we have offered in the past. Rather than smooth, rich and sweet, the sound here is big and bold and clear like nothing we have ever played.

This is Front Row Center sound for those whose systems can reproduce it!

And this is truly a top performance by Fistoulari and the Royal Philharmonic. I know of none better. For music and sound this is the one!

Side One

The Triple Plus sound makes this THE Gaite Parisienne to Own.

If you have a hot copy of LSC 1817, consider yourself very fortunate. If your copy of LSC 1817 has never thrilled you, then this pressing will beat the pants off it, as it is pretty darn THRILLING. Even if you do have a great 1817 I would still put this up against it and expect it to win the shootout.

It’s clear, clean and above all, TRANSPARENT. This is a claim no modern remastered record, in our opinion, can make. The energy is spectacular on this side. Not only that, but listen to the bite of the brass — that’s some high-rez sound!

IF…

If you can reverse your polarity. If you can’t the sound will be aggressive and vague in equal measure.

Chopin

A++ sound, in reversed polarity again. Rich and natural as befits the music.

Note how vague the violin solo is with the polarity wrong. As soon as it is switched a solid, real, natural violin pops into view.

That’s how you know your polarity is correct, folks.

The Germans Won Our Proto-Shootout for The Blue Album Back in 2010

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

UPDATE 2020

We had forgotten how good these pressings were. Apparently we were way ahead of the curve in 2010. The German pressings with the right stampers win the shootouts we’ve been doing recently. A number of old listings from this era don’t hold up, but I’m glad to see that this one does.

This is a WONDERFUL SOUNDING early German Import 2 LP set — pressed on fairly quiet vinyl to boot! We are on record as finding the British pressings of 1967-1970 too bright; certainly most of them are anyway.

This German set has much more natural sound to my ear — it’s RICH, SMOOTH and SWEET, with plenty of tubey magic and little of the grain and grunge of the Brits.

The original domestic pressings, as anyone who has ever played one can attest, mastered at Sterling no less, are absolutely godawful.

Like most compilations, some songs sound better than others, but Don’t Let Me Down and Come Together are two that really stand out here. For some of you out there who have never tried one of our Hot Stamper Beatles records, this may be the best sound you’ve ever heard from them. The CDs — even the new ones — sure don’t sound like this!