This is an RCA Living Stereo reissue LP with EXCELLENT SOUND. The strengths of this particular LP are not hard to hear: super quiet vinyl, which no original would have, and super transparent mids and highs, again something that no original (in our experience) has ever had.
Like most of Rubinstein’s records on RCA, there is no real weight to the piano, but at least on this pressing the smear and noise common to practically every original is GONE!
Lovely music too.
This vintage Columbia 360 Stereo pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely begin to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back. (more…)
Hot Stamper Pressings of Exotica Recordings Available Now
Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now
This Bob Thompson record never even made it to the hall of shame. Like hundreds of other albums we’ve played and found wanting, we never bothered to make a listing for it.
I don’t recall its specific shortcomings, but I vaguely remember that it basically just sounded too much like an old record. Some stereo systems of a more forgiving nature can mask the faults of records like these and even make them somewhat enjoyable.
Such is decidedly not the case with our system. Just the opposite in fact. Our stereo is designed to ruthlessly expose the shortcomings of every record we play, precisely the job we need it to do.
We are in the fault-finding business. A stereo such as ours allows us to recognize and describe the manifold problems of hundreds of records that others with — we assume — less revealing equipment do not seem bothered by.
We learned about the strengths and weaknesses of records the old fashioned way. We auditioned them by the thousands over the course of the 37 years we’ve been in business.
Unlike other record dealers catering to audiophile clientele, physically playing old records all day is how we make our money. In the case of this Bob Thompson Living Stereo from 1960, engineered by none other than the often-brilliant Al Schmitt, we were hoping to find top quality sound and music with acceptably broad appeal.
If we found those two things, we could then get hold of a bunch of copies — probably for cheap, let’s be honest — clean them up, shoot them out and sell the best sounding, quietest copies to our customers for prices that would more than cover the time and money it typically takes for our crack staff to carry out each of those operations.
It didn’t work out that way for On the Rocks. Most of the time it doesn’t with albums sporting cool covers from artists that we know practically nothing about. But we do it anyway. It’s how we discover records that few people know have the potential for audiophile sound quality. We know of no other way to do it, and we especially like knowing things that other people don’t know.
White Hot Stampers for side two — WOW! Check out the track listing for that side: Stage Fright / The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down / Across the Great Divide / This Wheel’s on Fire / Rag Mama Rag
Pretty hard to beat that batch of Band songs; practically every one is a classic. And considering how difficult it is to get a good sounding copy of the albums those songs are taken from, this double album is a great way to go if you love The Band. The performances are uniformly excellent, and the live horn section adds a lot to the fun and energy of the music.
The same can be said for Little Feat’s live album, Waiting for Columbus. We’ve been trying to find Hot Stampers on that one for years with little luck. Guess we’ll just have to keep trying.
[That was 2009. We have been selling Hot Stamper pressings of WFC for about ten years now.]
This very nice looking RCA Direct-to-Disc LP of guitar music has excellent sound.
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.