Month: June 2019

This Budget Surprise Symphony Is Our Favorite

This vintage RCA Living Stereo Camden LP has Super Hot Stamper sound on both sides. It’s one of the best Camdens, if not actually THE best.

In true Living Stereo fashion, a natural, realistic concert hall perspective unfolds before you. As we noted about side one: it’s rich, smooth, sweet and tubey — what’s not to like? 

Fjeldstad’s performance is excellent as well. Fjeldstad, you may remember, is the man behind the definitive Peer Gynt on Decca (SXL 2012). His recordings may not be common but they have never disappointed. If you can’t own all 104 of Haydn’s symphonies, make sure that at least this one is in your collection.

Side One

A++, rich, smooth, sweet and tubey — what’s not to like? Lovely sheen on the strings. The loudest parts get a bit congested — what Golden Age recordings don’t suffer from compressor distortion? — but other than that this side has the Living Stereo sound we love.

Side Two

A++, and interesting in this respect: the highs are missing at the beginning, making the sound somewhat dark, but about one inch in on the side they come back, and they come back so nicely, along with many other fine qualities, that the overall sound is actually better than side one! We averaged it out to A++.

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Fullness Is Key on Straight No Chaser

More of the Music of Thelonious Monk

What a recording! If you want to hear just how good Monk’s great big rich piano sounds, look no further. 

Rudy Van Gelder, eat your heart out. This is the piano sound Rudy never quite managed. Some say it’s the crappy workhorse piano he had set up in his studio. Others say it was just poorly miked. Rather than speculating on something we know little about (good pianos and the their miking) let’s just say that Columbia had the piano, the room and the mics to do it right as you can easily hear on this very record.

Side Two

Listen to Monk vocalizing — this copy is so resolving you can hear him clearly, yet the overall sound is warm, rich and smooth in the best Columbia tradition.

Speaking of warm, rich and smooth, this is important to the horn sound too. Most copies could not make the sax as full-bodied and free of honk as we would have liked. This one did, earning lots of points in the process. Hard to fault and definitely hard to beat.

Side One

Very clear but as we said above, finding all the fullness is the toughest job in the mastering and pressing of this album. Still, quite good and better than most.

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From Elvis in Memphis – MoFi Reviewed

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Elvis Presley

Sonic Grade: B-? C+?

As you can imagine, this album changed everything for Elvis. I first heard it the way I heard so many albums back in the late ’70s and early ’80s: on the Mobile Fidelity pressing.

I was an audiophile record collector in 1981 when this album was remastered and if MoFi was impressed enough with the sound and the music to offer the album to their dedicated fans, of which I was clearly one, then who was I to say no to music I had never heard?

Soon enough I would learn my lesson about MoFi’s A&R department. The MoFi release of Supersax Plays Bird, a record that had virtually nothing going for it, was the last time I took their advice seriously.

Turns out, they did a pretty good job on the Elvis album, not that I would have had any way to know that. Back then it would never have occurred to me to buy a standard RCA pressing and compare it to my Half Speed mastered with tender loving care, pressed-in-Japan, double-the-price-of-a-regular disc LP.

A decade or thereabouts later it would be obvious to me that MoFi had fooled around with the sound and that the right (heavy accent on the word “right”) real RCA pressing would be more correct and more natural (though probably not as quiet of course, but advances in cleaning technology fixed most of that and left MoFi in the dust). (more…)

Letter of the Week – “Just when I don’t think it can get better a 3+ copy shows me how wrong I am.”

More of the Music of Van Morrison

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom,    

The Van Morrison blew me away. The difference between a 1 [Hot Stamper A+] or 2 [Super Hot Stamper A++] and the WHS 3 [White Hot Stamper A+++] is staggering.

I have consistently been amazed at the improvement with the 3+ copies. Just when I don’t think it can get better a 3+ copy shows me how wrong I am.

My listening is improving as well, or more accurately I’m getting spoiled.

Mike H.

Andre Previn & His Pals – Gigi

  • A KILLER sounding original Black Label Stereo pressing with Triple Plus (A+++) sound from the first note to the last    
  • If you have never heard an All Tube Analog piano trio recording by Roy DuNann from the Golden Age of Tape, you are really in for a treat with this phenomenal sounding LP
  • Exceptionally (I’m tempted to write impossibly) quiet vinyl throughout – Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus
  • “André Previn’s ten records for Contemporary during 1957-1960 were among the finest jazz recordings of his career… Best known among the songs are “I Remember It Well” and “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” but the trio also uplifts and swings the other lesser-known tunes.”

This vintage Contemporary Black Label pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “I played the hell out of my CTA and Chicago 2 back in the day when they came out. Never sounded anything like this.”

More of the Music of Chicago

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Chicago

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom,   

Received my Chicago 2 Hot Stamper last night. Played side 4 A+++ first. Didn’t expect it to sound so amazing. Reminded me of my Miles Davis Kind of Blue where you say zero distortion, zero compression. No shrillness, no muffled vocals, just clear music. All instruments come through with clarity. Relatively quiet too. And this goes for most of the 4 sides of the album.

I played the hell out of my CTA and Chicago 2 back in the day when they came out. Never sounded anything like this. Thanks for a super record.

Steve E. 

Listening in Depth to What We Did On Our Holidays

More of the Music of Richard Thompson

This RARE Island Sunray British Import LP has Hot Stamper sound, full of the Tubey Magic you expect from a British Folk album in 1969 (and the unavoidable sonic shortcomings you should expect if you know much about this band and their records).

It’s without a doubt the nicest copy we have ever seen, the acquisition of which was purely a matter of luck, as early pressings are virtually impossible to find in anything but beat-to-death condition. 

The “haunting, ethereal” vocals of the lovely Sandy Denny (or Alexandra Elene McLean Denny as she’s listed on the sleeve) are sublime on this British early copy.

Some of you may recognize her voice from a ditty called ‘Battle of Evermore,’ found on a grayish ’70s rock album that no one even bothered to name. Wonder what ever became of that group? No doubt by now their story is lost to the sands of time. I have to say I thought the music was pretty good though.

The sound varies greatly from track to track. We played the first three songs on each side and guessed that the rest would fall in line with the average of the three we heard.

Side One

The third track gets the balance of tubes and clarity about right.

The second track has a Fleetwood Mac bluesy sound with grungy guitars and surprisingly sweet and breathy vocals.

The first track has too many tubes and sounds “dubby.”

Side Two

Again, the first track is rich but a bit too tubey.

Track two gets it right — still Tubey Magical but clear and clean, some of the best sound we heard.

Track three is the same way, rich and sweet and maybe a bit fat but that’s the way these British Folk Albums are supposed to sound, if our experience with dozens of them can serve as a guide.

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Brewer & Shipley – Our Four Plus Shootout Winner from 2012

Hot Stamper Pressings of Hippie Folk Rock Albums Available Now

Our lengthy commentary entitled Outliers & 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.

Here is our review from 2012 for this amazing sounding breakthrough pressing.

It’s records like these that aer the payoff for all the money, time and effort you’ve put into your system.

This White Hot Stamper side one of our beloved Tarkio, Brewer and Shipley’s Folk Rock Masterpiece, is without a doubt the BEST SOUND we have ever heard on any pressing bar none. This side sets a standard that no other copy on any side could touch. True, we awarded a Triple Plus grade to an amazing side two copy, but this side one is still the better of the two. We could easily have called it Four Pluses but chose to go with the simpler A+++ and this explanation.

However you frame it, this side is OFF THE CHARTS in a big way. It’s amazingly rich, yet clear and transparent as any we played — what a combination!

This, like Dark Side and so many other White Hot Stamper records we offer to the discriminating audiophile, is ANALOG at its finest. To our knowledge there hasn’t been a single record mastered in the last thirty years with this kind of sound, and we know whereof we speak: we’ve played them by the hundreds.

A Desert Island Disc for me with wonderfully NATURAL sound. This copy had the ULTIMATE Side One (A+++) and a very competitive Side Two (A++), making it the King of our Shootout. If you love this record as much as you should, this is the copy to own. I would love to keep it for my desert island, but we know there is surely a deserving soul out there who will treasure it as much as I do, and probably play it a lot more often, so if you know the album at all this is your chance at greatness. (And I still haven’t found a desert island I’m all that partial to anyway.)

Not Really One Toke Over the Line

Please don’t assume that this album has much in the way of uptempo country rockers like One Toke Over the Line, Flying Burrito Brothers style. Nothing could be further from the truth. Practically every other song on the album is better, almost all of them are taken at a slower pace, with none of them having the “poppy” arrangement of that carefully calculated Top Forty hit. The rest of the music on the album, the music you probably don’t know, is much better than the music that you do know if what you know is that song.

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Breakfast In America – MoFi Reviewed

More of the Music of Supertramp

Sonic Grade: C-

The MoFi Standard Operating Procedure of boosting the top end does this album no favors; it’s positively ruinous in fact. How dull does a system have to be to make this record sound right? Pretty damn dull.

And the bad bass definition just adds to the phoniness.

The average domestic copy is not that great either, so let’s give the MoFi a somewhat forgiving grade of C minus.  

More recently we played a copy that was too smooth. Go figure!

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Letter of the Week – “What the #$%@ did you guys do to make the record sound so good?”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Frank Zappa Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom,  

I received your “Hot Stamper” rated version of Frank Zappa’s Waka Jawaka Hot Rats yesterday and was able to listen to it last night. I’m not sure if you know what the initials WTF stand for. So with apologies, I will spell it out. What the #$%@ did you guys do to make the record sound so good? Did you really just listen to record after record until you came across this one? Are there tricks? Did you spray some magic fairy dust on it? Is it gonna wear off?  

I’ve been listening to my personal copy intently for the last few days and I really doubted if your copy could sound very much better than mine. Because my copy sounds damn good. But the copy you sent me rated “Hot Stamper” was off the charts. it wasn’t just in the clarity of the detail of the instruments and the soundstage. It’s so wonderful to listen to. What a treat! Is it worth 10X more than a decent copy of it commonly available? Yes. Absolutely. At least to me. In the same way that my Clear Audio turntable is worth the 10X times more than it cost me for the Rega Planar 2 I bought used 20 years ago. The listening experience is transformed into something much more realistic than ever before. I’m sure this record will be one of my very favorites to listen to for the next 20 years! (more…)