Month: April 2019

Brahms / Four Symphonies / Boult (4 LP Box Set)

This is an IMMACULATE looking EMI 4 LP Box Set. Unlike many of the typical ’70s mid-hall, vague, cold sounding EMIs that some audiophiles seem to like. these recordings have much more presence, as well as beautifully textured strings. 

In fact, the more I play this set, the more I like it. Boult brings quite a bit of energy to these performances, especially considering his age at the time (he was in his 80s!).

This is an Older Classical/Orchestral Review

Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we started developing in the early 2000s and have since turned into a veritable science.

We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the Sonic Grades and Vinyl Playgrades are listed separately.)

We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.

Currently, 99% (or more!) of the records we sell are cleaned, then auditioned under rigorously controlled conditions, up against a number of other pressings. We award them sonic grades, and then condition check them for surface noise.

As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which is why we currently have a highly trained staff of about ten. No individual or business without the aid of such a committed group could possibly dig as deep into the sound of records as we have, and it is unlikely that anyone besides us could ever come along to do the kind of work we do.

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Brahms / Violin Concerto / Stern / Ormandy – Reviewed in 2009

This very nice looking Columbia LP has SUPERB SOUND on side two. The violin is much sweeter than on side one and there’s much less distortion during the loud passages. If we were grading this as a Hot Stamper we’d give it about an A+ – A++. And on top of all that, Isaac Stern, never one of my favorite performers, is actually wonderful here. He plays beautifully.

Ormandy is another person who rarely gets the respect he is due, probably because his Columbia recordings sound bad as a rule. This is the exception. The recording is 95% as good as it could possibly be. This is a truly outstanding Brahms Violin Concerto in every way!

Side one is pretty good as well. It’s very lively and the violin sounds great — it sounds like it’s right there in the room with you. The loud passages on this side do suffer from compression distortion. Overall we’d give it about an A.

The Brass Are Key on Chicago V

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chicago Available Now

The brass on any Chicago album has to have just the right amount of transient bite yet still be full-bodied and never blary. In addition, on the best of the best pressings you can really hear the air moving through the horns.

Most copies suffer from dull highs and smeary, compressed brass. This is a sound we cannot abide. The lively copies with real bite to the brass and plenty of ENERGY in the music are the only ones for us. Finding them is not easy but we came across a few that made the grade and are proud to offer them here.

More often than not the brass lacks bite and presence, but these sides had the Chicago horns leaping out of the speakers. What is a Chicago record without great horns? Without that big bold sound you may have something, but it sure ain’t Chicago.

Most pressings don’t reproduce the percussion harmonics, the leading edge transients of the horns, or the big, open space around Peter Cetera’s vocals that we know is there, but a high-res, super-transparent copy like this one brings out all those qualities and more.

One More Sonic Note

We always notice during our Chicago shootouts that the songs on their albums tend to be hit and miss sonically (especially when it comes to the more multi-layered and dynamic tracks).

But on the hotter copies the production missteps don’t seem to be nearly as problematical.

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The Byrds – Sweetheart Of The Rodeo

More of The Byrds

Two stunning sides — a Red Label side one and a 360 side two! The instruments here have more texture, the bass has more weight and the soundfield has more depth than on any other sides we played in our shootout. Pull together enough copies and you might find one this good, but based on our experience you’ll face some pretty long odds finding any that can compete with this.

We’ve been trying to find good sounding copies of this great album for ages, but that is no easy task. For one thing, it’s not an easy album to find in clean condition, and for another, most copies we do find just don’t sound all that good. We had a big shootout this week and were thrilled to finally hear what a serious pressing can do. The sound on side two is natural, realistic and lifelike with excellent presence and tons of energy. (more…)

Bach / Glenn Gould Plays Bach

This 3 LP set on the early White Arrows 360 Label has three sides that earned sonic grades of Super Hot or better, with two sides being White Hot and pretty darn amazing for an old Columbia pressing (Columbia for the most part being an egregiously bad label when it comes to the sound of their classical records).

This set is highly regarded in classical circles and does not sit in the used record bins for cheap, even in reissue form, which limits our ability to find them and try them. On top of that there are six sides to play for every copy, so if is very unlikely we will be able to find a better copy for you down the road than this one anytime soon. The surfaces are about Mint Minus Minus, not bad for a solo piano record but not exactly quiet either. (more…)

Our First Shootout Winner for Dolphy’s Brilliant Out To Lunch Album

More Hot Stamper Pressings on Blue Note Available Now

This review was written in 2019, the year we did our first shootout for Out to Lunch.

A SUPERB JAZZ DEMO DISC on unusually QUIET vinyl! Blue Note fans, take notice — this is a VERY special pressing!

Folks, Out To Lunch is one of the ultimate Blue Note titles for both music and stereo sound, and I don’t think you could find another pressing of the album that sounds this good and plays this quietly no matter how many you played, realistically speaking of course. If you’ve been watching our better Blue Note offerings, you probably know that this is the first Hot copy to ever make it to the site. And what a way to start off — both sides earned A+++ grades.

Dolphy’s debut for Blue Note is an absolute KNOCKOUT musically, and the quality of the sound on this pressing was everything we could have ever hoped for — more, really — (which is not a bad definition of a White Hot Stamper LP when you come to think about it). It’s 100% guaranteed to blow your mind.

This is an amazing album — All Music Guide calls it “Dolphy’s magnum opus, an absolute pinnacle of avant-garde jazz in any form or era” and we think that hits it right on the head.

Thankfully, for us audiophiles the sound on the better pressings can be stunning. The trick of course is finding those copies, and it’s a tough enough job that we’ve never been able to get any Hot Stamper copy up on the site until now. For the fellow who snaps this bad boy up, I am positive this White Hot Stamper will prove well worth the wait.

White Hot All Over

Both sides are KILLER, with mindblowing transparency, stunning immediacy and exceptional clarity. There is tremendous separation between the various players and plenty of natural ambience. This is exactly the kind of record that will make your speakers disappear. Turn this one up good and loud and revel in the glory that is Out To Lunch. Get ready to get lost.

I wish I could tell you to look forward to more great copies like this in the future, but I’m not sure we’d be able to back that up. Clean copies of Out To Lunch are extremely scarce nowadays, and it’s going to take us ages to build up a big enough stack of ’em to get this shootout going again.

One last note — Bobby Hutcherson MURDERS on the vibes on this album. Hearing his stellar, groundbreaking work played back on a White Hot Stamper copy through a high-end stereo is nothing less than a THRILL. We look forward to hearing about it from the lucky person who takes this one home.

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Ray Charles – Sweet & Sour Tears

  • You’ll find stunning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides of this Shootout Winning 1964 pressing – exceptionally QUIET vinyl for a vintage Ray Charles record (!)
  • This stereo pressing is the only way to hear these classic songs sound rich, powerful and free from coloration
  • A concept album filled with an eclectic collection of themed music, this release showcases Charles’ innovative approach to recording
  • “…One is almost tempted to think that Charles was toying with audience expectations by mixing unabashedly sentimental slow tunes with the far more bluesy, satisfying, and upbeat numbers, such as his surprisingly brassy, punchy treatment of “Cry Me a River.”

This ’60s LP has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern pressings cannot BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back. (more…)

The Three / Self-Titled – Our Direct Disc Copy from Way Back

Hot Stamper Pressings of The Three Available Now

DEMO QUALITY, MASTER TAPE SOUND (!) on BOTH SIDES!

Hey, wait a minute, this is the direct to disc version, there is no Master Tape. How can it have Master Tape Sound?

Simple. It’s the RARE copy that actually sounds like this one. Most Eastwind pressings — like pressings on any label — do not convey all the information of the master tape that you know must exist because you HEAR it on some copies. Some Direct Discs have much more of the sound that was cut live directly onto the acetate than others. This is one of those, one of the ones with MUCH MORE SOUND! 

This is my favorite piano trio record of all time. Joe Sample, Shelly Manne and Ray Brown only made one album together, this one, recorded direct to disc right here in Los Angeles for Eastwind in the Seventies. Joe Sample for once in his life found himself in a real Class A trio, and happily for jazz fans around the world he rose to the occasion. Actually it was more like an epiphany, as this is the one piano trio album I put in a class by itself. All three of The Three are giving us the best they’ve got on this one. When it comes to piano trio jazz, there is none better.

So Many Takes

There are two takes for the Direct Disc, the second of which is terrible and the first of which we are offering here. The wrong take is so bad I simply cannot stand to listen to it anymore, no matter how good the sound is. And most of the direct disc copies do not sound all that good anyway, truth be told.

The only combination of music and sound that makes any sense to us here at Better Records is take 1 of the direct disc, the 45 RPM from tape version and the 33 on Inner City.

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Sonny Rollins – Rollins Plays For Bird

More Sonny Rollins

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Rudy Van Gelder

  • Stunning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or very close to it throughout – this is the first copy to hit the site in many years and it is as good a pressing as we have ever heard
  • These Blue Label Prestige stereo pressings from the ’60s put everything else we played to shame – this is the Real Sound of Sonny Rollins at his peak in 1957
  • It’s beyond difficult to find good sound for the music of Charlie Parker, but this Sonny Rollins Hot Stamper LP gives you just that for some of Bird’s most famous tunes, backed with excellent performances from the likes of Kenny Dorham and Max Roach

This album is Rollins at his BEST. Allmusic gives it Four Stars and the Users rate it even higher, Four and a Half. The album released before this one was the legendary Saxophone Colossus, an album we would love to do more shootouts for, if we could only find them.

When the sound is as good as it is here, that’s the kind of jazz record that makes us sit up and pay attention. This quintet features trumpeter Kenny Dorham, pianist Wade Legge, bassist George Morrow and drummer Max Roach.

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The Pretender – Our Four Plus Shootout Winner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jackson Browne Available Now

UPDATE 2024

Our lengthy commentary entitled outliers and out-of-this-world sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how to go about finding them.

We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.

Nowadays we often place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that, out of the blue, reveal to us sound that fundamentally changes what we thought we knew about these often familiar recordings.

When this pressing (or pressings) landed on our turntable, we found ourselves asking “Who knew?“

Perhaps an even better question would have been “how high is up?”

Our Four Plus Listing

Amazing FOUR plus A++++ sound, so good we rated it beyond our usual top grade of Triple Plus. Without a doubt it’s the best sounding Jackson Browne record ever made, and this copy backs up everything we say and more.

Side one was super transparent, with breathy, present vocals. What really blew us away on this one is the sheer size and openness of the soundfield. We were so impressed that we went beyond our usual top grade of A+++, something we rarely do. But when a copy like this comes along and sets a new standard for an album’s sonic potential, there’s nothing else we CAN do!

Side two was every bit as good! Absolutely As Good As It Gets! Big and open, solid and rich, this one is doing absolutely everything we could ask it to. The soundstage is HUGE, and the transparency and separation between parts are stunning. If you’re looking for Demo Disc Jackson Browne sound, this is it.

Demo Disc Sound

This is one of the all time great rock / pop Demo Discs — the sound of the best copies is so rich and full-bodied it makes most other rock records sound positvely anemic. As I’m sure you know by now, especially if you own a copy or two, pressings of The Pretender don’t usually sound like Demo Discs. In fact, most copies of this record are mediocre at best — thin, grainy, and flat sounding.

This copy is none of those things. And it positively MURDERS the famous MoFi pressing. Click on the Aural Excitement tab above to read more on that subject. (more…)