Month: October 2019

Wes Montgomery – Goin’ Out of My Head

More Wes Montgomery

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Guitar


  • Incredible Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides, this early stereo copy blew the competition away with its size, Tubey Magical richness and vibrant jazz energy 
  • Once again Oliver Nelson’s Big Band arrangements take the music to another level – the guy’s a genius
  • “…it’s a classic big-band album, with smart charts by Nelson and stolen moments of Montgomery’s guitar grandeur and romantic truth scattered throughout.”

This White Hot Stamper Shootout Winner has the REAL Wes Montgomery/ Oliver Nelson / Creed Taylor/ Rudy Van Gelder MAGIC in its grooves. You will not believe how big, rich and full-bodied this pressing is on both sides. Since this is one of Wes’s better albums, hearing these sides was a THRILL for us and we’re hoping it will be as big a thrill for you too.

Everything that’s good about this era of RVG’s recordings, Wes’s music and those glorious Oliver Nelson arrangements is here. For my part let me just say that this is clearly the best sound I have ever heard for Goin’ Out of My Head.

It’s BIGGER, richer, more immediate, more present and dramatically more Tubey Magical than the other copies we played, yet there is no sacrifice in transparency or clarity. This is tube mastering at its finest. Not many vintage tube-mastered records manage to balance all the sonic elements as correctly as this copy did.

And if you own any modern Heavy Vinyl reissue, we would love for you to be able to appreciate all the musical information that you’ve unknowingly been missing. Speakers Corner remastered some Montgomery titles in the 2000s if memory serves, and they were passable at best. Any copy we offer on our site will be dramatically better sounding.

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Little Feat – Leaner and Cleaner Just Won’t Cut It

More of Our Favorite Rock and Pop Test Discs

More Speaker Advice

To our way of thinking, this is the kind of record one should bring to one’s favorite stereo store to properly judge their equipment.

They can play female vocals; they do it all day long.

But can they play The Last Record Album and have it sound musical and involving? Can they get it to ROCK?

Will they even turn it up loud enough to find out? My jaded money is on no, for all three. 

Rockin’ The Last Record Album is a much, much tougher test than what they are used to, one that their systems will struggle to pass. (That’s what makes it a good test, right?)

Leaner and cleaner — the kind of audiophile sound I used to hear everywhere I go — is simply not going to work on this album, or Zuma, or Houses of the Holy, or the hundreds of other Classic Rock records we put up on the site every year. There has to be meat on those bones. To switch metaphors in the middle of a stream, this album is all about the cake, not the frosting.

Bear that in mind when they tell you at your local salon that the record you brought with you is at fault, not their expensive and supposedly “correct” equipment. I’ve been in enough of these places to know better. If you’ve put your audio time in, their excuses should fall on deaf ears. 

Whose Fault Is It?

Most copies of this album are ridiculously dull and compressed. The band itself sounds bored, as if they lack faith in their own songs. But it’s not their fault. Whose fault it is is never easy to fathom; bad mastering, bad tapes, bad vinyl, bad something else — whatever it is, that thick, lifeless sound turns this powerfully emotional music into a major snooze-fest. It’s positively criminal but it happens all the time. It’s the reason we have to go through a dozen copies to find one that sounds like this. (more…)

Ten Years After / Self-Titled – Reviewed in 2008

I had no idea the band’s first album was recorded this well. I expected it to sound something like an old Rolling Stones Decca — tubey magical but plagued by a fair amount of compression, distortion and limited at both ends of the frequency spectrum. 

Instead, when the needle hit the groove, out of the speakers poured truly MASTER TAPE SOUND! Who knew? Clear as a bell, super-transparent, zero-distortion, spacious, and tubey magical in the best sense of that phrase — not fat and sloppy, but rich and sweet. To my ear there is practically no processing to the sound.

For a recording from 1967 to sound this good is a bit of a shock. Sgt. Pepper came out in 1967, but it’s full of studio trickery. The kind of purity and freedom from distortion that characterizes this Ten Years After record puts it at the opposite end of the artificial recording spectrum. I can’t think of another record from this far back that has this kind of sound. More than anything it proves it could be done; they had the technology.

Oh how far we have fallen. And you can be sure of one thing: the domestic pressings are not going to sound like this one. The Moody Blues on domestic Deram pressings are a joke next to the imports. Those tapes are in England, baby, and I doubt they ever crossed the pond.

Elgar / Enigma Variations / Monteux / LSO

More of the music of Edward Elgar (1857-1934)

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

This famous Shaded Dog, containing two superb performances by Monteux and the LSO, has many of the Golden Age strengths and weaknesses we know well here at Better Records, having played literally hundreds upon hundreds of these vintage pressings over the last twenty years or so. 

Both sides earned sonic grades of at least A+ to A++ (with side one being just a bit better than that but maybe not quite A++). The sound is rich and sweet and full of Living Stereo Magic!  

The wonderful sounding tube compressors that were used back in the day result in quieter passages that are positively swimming in ambience and low-level orchestral detail. Tube compression is, in large part, what we mean when we use the term Tubey Magic. (If you want to know what Zero Tubey Magic sounds like, play some Telarcs or Reference Recordings from the ’70s. Or a modern digital recording on CD.)

But all that sweet and rich Tubey Magic comes at a price when it’s time for the orchestra to get loud. It either can’t, or the louder passages simply distort from compressor overload. Fortunately on this copy the orchestra does not distort, it simply never gets as loud as it would have in a real concert hall, clearly the lesser and more preferable of the two evils. (more…)

Iron Butterfly – Dubby Da-Vida

More of the Music of Iron Butterfly

The craziest thing we learned in our shootout is that something close to half of all the yellow label, authentic, non-record-club Atco copies we played had clearly been mastered from a dub tape on side two, the side with In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.

We’re guessing that at some point after 1968, when it came time to recut the record, the cutting master for side two was either damaged or couldn’t be found. Not a problem the label says to itself, we have a safety tape we can copy and use for side two.

Problem solved, except for the fact that on those copies In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida sounds like a cassette playing on a machine with worn out heads. The sound is smeary, veiled, small and recessed — all but unlistenable.  (more…)

Bob Dylan – Self-Titled

  • An outstanding MONO copy of Bob Dylan’s self-titled debut (recorded in mono) with Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish 
  • Both sides here have the immediacy, the warmth and the studio space the red label reissues fail to reproduce
  • “… a sterling effort, outclassing most, if not all, of what came before it…”

This is a true solo album — Dylan himself plays the guitar and harmonica — and it’s a lot of fun to hear a young (20!) Bob playing the way he might have played in the coffee shops and folk clubs of Greenwich Village.

This is clearly a recording that sounds best in mono. The stereo copies put the vocal, guitar and harmonica — you know, the sounds that the one skinny kid in the middle of the room is making all by himself — in separate locations widely spaced in the soundfield. This sound may have been cool when playing on the old consoles of the day, but on a modern system it’s just plain ludicrous. (more…)

Harry Nilsson / Nilsson Schmilsson – A Simply Vinyl Disaster

More of the Music of Harry Nilsson

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Harry Nilsson

Sonic Grade: F

A Hall of Shame pressing and another Simply Vinyl pressing debunked.

Awful in every way. Made from a dub of the master tapes and then mastered poorly.

Phill (That’s Two L’s) Brown

I recently looked up the engineer for the album and am rather shocked that I never paid much attention to his body of work before.

He assisted on some amazing sounding records, many that we’ve auditioned and some that we’ve done Hot Stamper shootouts for and know to be superb recordings:

  • Arthur Brown – Crazy World of Arthur Brown
  • Joe Cocker – With a Little Help From My Friends (Superb)
  • Small Faces – Ogden’s Nutgone Flake
  • Traffic – Mr Fantasy (WOW! The Best of the Best)
  • Jimi Hendrix – All Along The Watchtower
  • Rolling Stones – Beggars Banquet
  • Steve Miller Band – Sailor
  • Spooky Tooth – Spooky Two (Superb)

And these are a sample of favorites he engineered:

  • Harry Nilsson – Nilsson Schmilsson
  • Jeff Beck – Rough and Ready
  • Robert Palmer – Sneakin’ Sally Through The Alley
  • Roxy Music – Manifesto

The first and third can be superb, the other two merely good in our experience.

Duke Ellington – Yale Concert (and its dubbed in audience)

There is some interesting mic placement going on with this recording. Some of the instruments seem to be off-mic, creating an unusual effect that has its charms.

Only one song was actually recorded live, Boola Boola. The rest of the material was taped in the studio and an audience dubbed in.

Why the had trouble with the mics in the studio is beyond me.

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Terry, Hubbard, Gillespie, & Peterson / The Alternate Blues – Our Shootout Winner from 2013

With Hot Stamper sound on both sides, this Pablo disc shows you what three of the greatest trumpeters of the last fifty years can do given the opportunity, nay, the encouragement, to let loose on a handful of classic slow blues jams. Many of the tracks here run in excess of eight minutes, giving the players plenty of space to explore, yet practically all of them are taken at a fairly slow pace, what used to be called a “slow drag”, making them that much more involving and emotional. These are not your classic “blowing sessions” where the players try to outdo each other. No, this is something quite different.

Norman Granz revered the classic “jam session,” of which this is a prime example; he produced dozens for the various labels he owned over the years. Playing this album we can see why. The heart of the blues is here in every measure.

Clark Terry is joined here by Freddie Hubbard and Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet, with strong support from Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, Joe Pass and Bobby Durham on drums.

The album was recorded in 1980 by Dennis Sands, one of my favorite Pablo recording engineers, the man behind the brilliant Farmer’s Market Barbecue and many others. (Soon enough he crossed over to films and has done the sound for more than 250 to date. He must be pretty good to get that much work, and you can be sure he makes a lot more money for his film work than he would for recording jazz dates.) (more…)

Eric Clapton – E.C. Was Here

More of the Music of Eric Clapton

More Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Eric Clapton

  • Superb sound for this UK import pressing with both sides earning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades, which means that this LP had some of the best sound for the album we heard in our shootout all day
  • Forget the dubby domestic pressings – here is the energy, the dynamic power, the low end whomp, and the Clapton-live-in-your-listening-room presence you’ve never experienced on the album before, guaranteed
  • “E.C. Was Here makes it clear that Clapton was and always would be a blues man. The opening cut, “Have You Ever Loved a Woman,” clearly illustrates this, and underlines the fact that Clapton had a firm grasp on his blues guitar ability, with some sterling, emotionally charged and sustained lines and riffs… [the album] remains an excellent document of the period.”

These Nearly White Hot Stamper pressings have top quality sound that’s often surprisingly close to our White Hots, but they sell at substantial discounts to our Shootout Winners, making them a relative bargain in the world of Hot Stampers (“relative” being relative considering the prices we charge). We feel you get what you pay for here at Better Records, and if ever you don’t agree, please feel free to return the record for a full refund, no questions asked.

Two Very Special Tracks

Check out Clapton’s superb arrangements and performances of two of the best songs from his short-lived Blind Faith period: Presence of the Lord and Can’t Find My Way Home. They’re two of the highpoints on an album filled with good material that does not seem to get the credit it is due. I bought this album when it came out in 1975 and never really got into it. Of course I had an inferior domestic pressing and a stereo that couldn’t have done the album justice anyway, but in my defense I would have to say that there really wasn’t any such stereo system on the face of the earth; we still had a long way to go. (more…)