Month: July 2019

Martin Denny – Exotica Volume II

  • Side two is White Hot – the sound positively JUMPS out the speakers
  • It’s shockingly 3-Dimensional, rich and Tubey Magical – you won’t believe it
  • Side one is quite good at A+ to A++ – it gets better as it plays
  • One of our favorite Martin Denny records – wonderfully spacious Exotica sound from 1957

This Liberty ’60s Label Stereo LP has Hot Stamper EXOTIC SOUND on both sides. The cover says it’s The Ultimate in Transistorized Stereophonic Hi-Fidelity Sound, but I hear an awful lot of Tubey Magical richness and sweetness. The tonality is actually right on the money, a quality that the heavily tubey recordings rarely exhibit: they can easily get overly lush and turn murky.

We played a big pile of Martin Denny records during our shootout, not having enough clean copies of any one of them to do it the way we would with rock or jazz records, and this pressing was one of the best we heard, musically and sonically. (more…)

Blues Breakers – A Must Own John Mayall Album

More British Blues and Blues Rock

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Eric Clapton Available Now

We’ve been searching for copies of Bluesbreakers for years — everyone wants a great copy of this Five Star Classic, the only album John Mayall ever made that we would consider a Must Own. After many, many years of experimentation and dozens of copies purchased we’ve finally discovered the British pressings that deliver the best sound we’ve ever heard for this music.

But they don’t come easy and they sure don’t come cheap, so don’t expect the floodgates to open with Hot Stamper after Hot Stamper hitting the site. We have a select few and it will be a year or two at the very least before we have a big enough stack of copies with which to do a shootout to find more.

A Landmark of British Blues from 1966

This is an Timeless Classic — Allmusic calls it “perhaps the best British blues album ever cut” — and it’s been a drag for years hearing it sound dull, lifeless, bland and small the way it does on so many copies. You may recognize these descriptors for what they are: signs that the pressing is made from a dubbed tape of the master .

Even worse are the versions that are bright, brittle and phony. When you’ve got a lineup like this you need the kind of space and soundstaging separation that lets you appreciate just what each of these guys is doing, instead of the muddled mess that many of us have all but given up trying to enjoy.

To qualify as a Hot Stamper, a must offer the transparency to let listener hear into the music and appreciate how the members of this group are playing as an ensemble to create this exceptionally powerful, moving and timeless music.

Credit engineer (and later producer) Gus Dudgeon with the full-bodied, rich, smooth, oh-so-analog sound of the best copies of Bluesbreakers. He’s recorded or produced many of our favorite albums here at Better Records, most notably the classic Elton Johns from the self-titled album onward. You can find many of them on our site and on our Top 100 list, including Elton’s Masterpiece, Tumbleweed Connection.

AMG Review

Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton was Eric Clapton’s first fully realized album as a blues guitarist — more than that, it was a seminal blues album of the 1960s, perhaps the best British blues album ever cut, and the best LP ever recorded by John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.

Standing midway between Clapton’s stint with the Yardbirds and the formation of Cream, this album featured the new guitar hero on a series of stripped-down blues standards, Mayall pieces, and one Mayall/Clapton composition, all of which had him stretching out in the idiom for the first time in the studio.

This album was the culmination of a very successful year of playing with John Mayall, a fully realized blues creation, featuring sounds very close to the group’s stage performances, and with no compromises.

Credit has to go to producer Mike Vernon for the purity and simplicity of the record; most British producers of that era wouldn’t have been able to get it recorded this way, much less released. One can hear the very direct influence of Buddy Guy and a handful of other American bluesmen in the playing.

Letter of the Week – “Great job on finding what for me is a new reference disk”

More of the Music of Elton John

More Reviews and Commentaries for Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

The entire letter can be found below, along with our general notes about the recording.

Hi, Tom:

Got a chance to try your Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road hot stamper, and wow! EJ has never been one of my favorite artists, my liking his earlier output to some degree, but in my opinion GYBR is his magnum opus and his high water mark, down from which he slid rapidly into mediocrity.

I have tried a number of pressings of this record and always found it to be a good, but not great, recording, which is a shame considering it is one of the few double LP’s extant without anything approaching filler material. So I tried my Direct Disk Labs version, which was OK, but sounded veiled compared to the MFSL version, actually not bad for one of their efforts.

But the cinemascape evolved entirely with the hot stamper, bringing these great songs to life in my listening room like few others I have heard. If you want to hear a demo disk performance of this record you won’t find it outside a hot stamper in my experience. EJ’s voice is front and center, rich and full, allowing me to hear every vocal inflection. I swear I could tell what EJ had for breakfast–eggs and chutney, even! Pianos were arrayed in space with the correct surface loudness, guitars crunched on Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, the drums on Jamaica Jerkoff were massive and dynamic, and the bass drum whacks on I’ve Seen That Movie Too had that sock-in-the-gut punch.

This hot stamper shows off the difference between a recording and a performance. Great job on finding what for me is a new reference disk.

Roger

(more…)

Dr. John – In The Right Place

  • Off the charts “Triple Triple” sound for this Must Own Dr. John album – both sides earned our top grade of A+++
  • SURPRISINGLY GOOD SOUND – who knew how well recorded this album was? (Certainly not the audiophile press)
  • We don’t know of any other Dr. John album with sound remotely as good, and the modern albums of his we’ve played were just awful
  • 4 1/2 Stars: “Dr. John finally struck paydirt here and was certainly In the Right Place. With the hit single “Right Place Wrong Time” bounding up the charts, this fine collection saw many unaware listeners being initiated into New Orleans-style rock.”

Punchy drums, solid bass, smooth vocals, extended highs — this album was produced, recorded and mastered by superbly talented individuals who deserve a lot of credit for the work they have done here.

If you like Little Feat this album should be right up your alley. And if you like this album and don’t know little feat, the link on the left will take you to their music. They’re one of the all time great bands of the ’70s (and still going as far as I know). (more…)

Chet Atkins – Travelin’

More Chet Atkins

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Chet Atkins

This original White Dog Black Label RCA pressing may not say Living Stereo on the label, but it sure has the kind of Living Stereo sound we audiophiles have come to love. It’s got the sound of RCA’s Nashville studios and Bill Porter’s engineering all over it, not to mention the kind of 1963 Tubey Magical Analog that would be long gone by the time the decade came to an end.

Along with George Harrison, who wrote the liner notes for Chet Atkins Picks on The Beatles, we’re proud to call ourselves Chet Atkins fans. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “Even on my modest system it’s AWESOME!”

More of the Music of The Cars

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Cars

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

Hey Tom,   

Just got done listening to The Cars Hot Stamper. Even on my modest system it’s AWESOME! I never heard The Cars sound like that before.

I’d like to upgrade this copy when a better one comes along. I’m now convinced and the decision is made, I’m getting an audiophile turntable and moving into vinyl. Thanks for your help. 

Mike Z.

Barney Kessel / Easy Like – Reviewed in 2005

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Barney Kessel Available Now

This is an original Mono Contemporary Yellow Label DEMO LP. The record plays EX++ to Mint Minus Minus — if you can stand some surface noise this is a very good sounding LP. The sound is good; however, it’s almost impossible to find quiet pressings of these old Contemporary albums. This is about as quiet as they get! 

“…the set features Kessel in boppish form with quintets in 1953 and 1956 featuring, either Bud Shank or Buddy Collette doubling on flute and alto. Kessel shows off the influence of Charlie Christian throughout the performances, with the highlights including “Easy Like,” “Lullaby of Birdland,” “North of the Border,” and the accurately titled “Salute to Charlie Christian.”  (more…)

Dvorak / Symphony No. 9 – Pros and Cons

More of the music of Antonin Dvorak

Presenting yet another remarkable Demo Disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording Technology, in this case 1961, with the added benefit of mastering courtesy of the more modern equipment of the ’70s, in this case 1970. (We are of course here referring to the good modern equipment of 40 years ago, not the bad modern mastering equipment of today.) 

Dvorák draws the musical threads together in the last movement, weaving new material with moods and themes from previous movements into a grand finale that resulted in extended cheering from the New York audience at its December 1893 premiere.

The New York critic W. J. Henderson raved: “It is a great symphony and must take its place among the finest works in the form produced since the death of Beethoven.”

This combination of old and new works wonders on this title as you will surely hear for yourself on either of these Super Hot sides. And the 1970 British vinyl plays mostly Mint Minus!

Side One

A++ to A+++, just shy of the sound of White Hot shootout winning side. The hall is huge, so wide and deep, spacious and open. The perspective is above all natural. A little more extension up top and this side would have been impossible to beat.

Solid, powerful tympani whacks — listen for them. Sweet woodwinds too.

Side Two

A++, big and lively, with good weight down low for the lower strings and percussion. The sound is slightly blurry and veiled, but about an inch in or so the highs come in stronger, the sound opens up and there is less smear.

A little more weight in the climactic fourth movement would have put this side over the top.

(more…)

Deja Vu – Our Four Plus Side Two from 2016

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and (Sometimes) Young

We award this copy’s side two our very special Four Plus A++++ grade, which is strictly limited to pressings (really, individual sides of pressings) that take a recording to a level never experienced by us before, a level we had no idea could even exist. We estimate that less than one per cent of the Hot Stamper pressings we come across in our shootouts earn this grade. You can’t get much more rare than that.

We no longer use this grade for a number of reasons we won’t go into here. Suffice to say, if you buy a White Hot Stamper pressing from us, you are getting the best sounding pressing we know to exist.

  • 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 most often place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that, out of the blue, revealed to us sound of such high quality that it dramatically changed our appreciation of the recording itself.
  • We found ourselves asking “Who knew?” Perhaps a better question would have been “How high is up?”

This FOUR PLUS (A++++) side two boasts insane energy, size and power. Deja Vu is one of our all time favorite albums at Better Records and one that almost never sounds THIS good.

If you play this copy good and loud, and have the kind of full-range system that plays loud and clean like live music, we guarantee you will be nothing less than gobsmacked at the size and power of the sound.

Just listen to the guitars during the solos — you can really hear the sound of the pick hitting the strings. The rhythm guitars sound meaty and chunky like the best sounding copies of Zuma and After The Gold Rush.

(more…)

Sonny Rollins & Coleman Hawkins / Sonny Meets Hawk – Great in Stereo

This is a TOP SHELF pressing, one of the most exciting jazz records we’ve heard in some time! We dropped the needle on side one of this RCA stereo pressing and were FLOORED. After evaluating it completely and awarding it our top grade of A+++, we flipped and were blown away to find that side two was every bit as good. And to top it all off, the vinyl plays quietly throughout. 

Think about this — due to the nature of our business we play tons of jazz vinyl every week, multiple pressings of multiple albums. And this record completely knocked us out.

If you’re a fan of classic jazz and superb sound, wouldn’t you like to hear what this one does on your system? (more…)