Month: October 2019

Stevie Wonder – Down To Earth

More Stevie Wonder

You’ll find outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides of this mono pressing of Stevie’s 1966 release – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
Powerful sound throughout – huge and present with amazing clarity and smooth vocals – definitely not the sound of AM radio (thank god)
The cover’s still in the shrink on this collector’s edition – we may never see another this nice!
The Big Hit here is Thank You Love and it sounds just right

We love Stevie’s records from back in the day, 1966 in this case, but man, trying to find them in audiophile playing condition is almost impossible. We paid a pretty penny for this Collector Quality copy and we’re glad we did. (more…)

Blondie – Autoamerican

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DEMO DISC SOUND on this A+++ Hot Stamper Side One! This is one KILLER New Wave Pop Record. All the Blondie magic you could ever want is in these grooves! The truly POWERFUL sound of this Power Pop Band really comes through on this Bad Boy, or should we say Bad Girl? Whatever. This was the Hands Down Hot Stamper Winner of our latest shootout. Man, we had a ball with this one.

To be fair, consistency is the problem with this album, with some songs being absolute Pop Masterpieces (The Tide Is High on side one, Rapture on side two), but other tracks falling short of the standard set by Parallel Lines, where every track bar none was a gem of songcraft and High Gloss Pure Pop Production.

Still, what’s good is good, and the sound is STUNNING, with real Demo Disc qualities. The Right Pressing of the Right Stamper.

As expected, if you clean and play enough copies of a standard domestic major label album like this one, sooner or later you will stumble upon The One, and boy did we ever. One of our copies was OFF THE CHARTS with presence, breathy vocals, and punchy drums. It was positively swimming in studio ambience, with every instrument occupying its own space in the mix and surrounded by air. There was not a trace of grain, just the silky sweet highs we’ve come to expect from analog done right.

This is of course the premise behind Hot Stampers themselves. They are out there to be stumbled upon. You can’t tell what pressing from what era from what country is going to be The One (Keanu, are you listening?) until you actually sit down, clean and play a big pile of them. We found a source for this title sealed and managed to pick up over a dozen new copies, and those, along with some other used ones we had laying around, comprised our data pool. (more…)

Frank Sinatra – Point of No Return

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More Point of No Return

This vintage stereo pressing of Sinatra’s 1962 release boasts outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
Both sides are big and full, with a nice extended top end and wonderfully present vocals
About as quiet as they come — Mint Minus Minus on both sides (with two issues, noted below)
“… someone persuaded the singer to make the album a special occasion by reuniting with Axel Stordahl, the arranger/conductor who helped Sinatra rise to stardom in the ’40s. Sinatra would never sing these standards with such detailed, ornate orchestrations, and, as such, the album has a feeling of an elegy.”

Check out the AMG review for the story behind the album, which teams Frank up with his former collaborator Axel Stordahl, who arranged and conducted the album. The results are wonderful.

We love doing the work that it takes to find Sinatra albums from his prime recording days that actually sound the way we want them to — lively and fun. This means slogging through lots of bad pressings in order to find gems like this one. But hey, that’s what we do. We love it when a record with music this good can be found with sound like this.

Believe me, these Capitol pressings don’t usually sound like this. From the very first notes you hear Billy May’s colorful arrangments come to life in a way you are very unlikely to have heard before. (more…)

Bread / Self-Titled

More Bread

More Pure Pop

Side two of Bread’s debut here — the one that shows the heaviest influence of The Beatles, this being 1969 — is smoother, silkier, and sweeter than any copy we’ve EVER played. There’s TONS of life and energy and the clarity and resolution are nothing short of superb. The sound is clean and clear without losing any of the Tubey Magical Warmth we prize so highly here at Better Records. The bottom end here is deep and punchy with stellar definition. Side two rates an A++ to A+++, the best we’ve heard. (It may not get any better.) Bruce Botnick only recorded one album with Bread but it’s clearly one of the best sounding in their catalog, no surprise there. (more…)

Copperfields – Our First Shootout Winner

More of the Music of Dillards

For the first time on the site, Hot Stamper sound for The Dillards! Those of you who enjoy the country-fried style of the Flying Burrito Bros., Gram Parsons or The Byrds will probably get a lot out of this one. We paired up our best sounding side one with our most impressive side two to create this QUIET A+++ / A++ 2-pack. Great sounding pressings for this band are tough to come by, so don’t let this one slip past you if you’re a fan!

We’ve been trying to find great sound for this band for years, but it is one tough task. For one thing, it’s difficult to find clean copies out in the bins and even when we do most of them don’t sound that hot. It took years worth of purchases to get enough of these together for a shootout, and even then very few of them delivered. We couldn’t even come up with a copy with two great sides, so we paired up the two pressings that had the best sound for either side.

The side one here is killer earning our top grade of A+++. The sound is open and transparent with a very wide soundfield, giving lots of room to each of the musicians.

This side one had the best bottom end we heard anywhere. It also had excellent presence, lots of energy and natural texture all around. It couldn’t be beat and I’d be very surprised if you could find a better one.

The side two of this set is nearly as good, smooth and sweet with lots of extension in the extremes. Many copies suffered from a veiled midrange that robbed the instruments of texture, but this one was cleaner, clearer and more transparent. We gave it an A++.

Flip either of the rated sides over to hear what separates a Hot Stamper pressing from the rest! (more…)

Martin Denny / Primitiva – Our Shootout Winner from 2011

This original looking and fairly quiet Liberty Black Label Stereo LP has Super 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 — maybe not quite as much as some of the best early Denny recordings, but plenty nevertheless. The tonality is actually dead on the money, a quality that the most tubey recordings rarely exhibit; they can easily get overly lush and turn murky. (more…)

The Electric Light Orchestra / Self-Titled – Our Shootout Winner from 2012

More Electric Light Orchestra

More of our favorite Art Rock Records

A++ sound on both sides for the crazy and wonderful debut album from ELO, an album that almost never sounds good! We had a bunch of these on hand and put them to the test recently. Most of them did not have the kind of sound that we were hoping for, but with enough copies on hand we were able to find a couple of winners. This one had our highest rated side one (A++ was as far as we wanted to go) and one of the better side twos as well. It isn’t a Demo Disc by any means but if you’re a fan of the band I’m sure you’ll be surprised at how much better a Super Hot Stamper like this one communicates the music.

We really enjoy the music of ELO, but it’s tough to find good sounding copies of their albums. We’ve been collecting copies of this album for years but it wasn’t until recently that we heard one that sounded good enough to be worthy of the Hot Stamper designation. (more…)

Thoughts on the Sound of Chicago II from an Early Shootout

More of the Music of Chicago

Chicago-Loving Audiophiles of the World, gather round, this is the week [sometime in 2010] we took on one of the toughest challenges in all of Analog Rockdom — Chicago II.

Ever played one? Then you know that the average copy of this album is an unmitigated DISASTER. The smeary sub-gen brass alone is enough to drive you from the room.

To a list of the album’s faults you can confidently add some or all of the following: blurry out of control bass; opaque veiled mids; rolled off highs, or no highs, whichever the case may be, common to virtually every pressing you find: plain old distortion; and, last but not least, the kind of compressed, lifeless sound that manages to make even the best songs on the album tedious.

And that’s not easy to do — this one album spawned not one, not two, but three still-catchy tunes that get played plenty these days.

This Copy

Two Super Hot or Better sides for three and four, which is very unusual, and two other quite good sides for one and two, making this a consistently good copy all around. Let’s break it down.

Side One

A+ to A++. Better brass transients than most of the 360 copies, but lacks the fullness those pressings have going for them. Horns are present and lively, voices a bit thinner than ideal.

Side Two

A+ to A++. Just the reverse of side one (see why it’s so hard to predict?). Big and Rich sounding, with lots of tubey magic, but a bit too smooth.

Two big hits on this side: Make Me Smile and Colour My World.

Side Three

The Real Sound, finally! Clear extended top, transparent and spacious, breathy vocals, big bass — it’s doing it all. One copy of all the pressings we played had a better side three. This one murdered the others.

The big hit is on this side: 25 or 6 to 4. Also Fancy Colours, one of the best songs on the album.

Side Four

WAY off the charts. Without a doubt the best sound on the entire album. No copy sounded better. It’s White Hot.

Side One

Movin’ In
The Road
Poem For The People
In The Country

Side Two

Wake Up Sunshine (Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon)
Make Me Smile
So Much To Say, So Much To Give
Anxiety’s Moment
West Virginia Fantasies
Colour My World
To Be Free
Now More Than Ever

Side Three

Fancy Colours
25 or 6 to 4
Prelude
A.M. Mourning
P.M. Mourning
Memories Of Love

Side Four

It Better End Soon
1st Movement
2nd Movement
3rd Movement
4th Movement
Where Do We Go From Here

AMG Review

The contents of Chicago II (1970) underscore the solid foundation of complex jazz changes with heavy electric rock & roll that the band so brazenly forged on the first set. The septet also continued its ability to blend the seemingly divergent musical styles into some of the best and most effective pop music of the era.

Lee Morgan / Search For The New Land

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Note Recordings Available Now

This QUIET, hard-to-find Blue Note Blue Label LP has EXCELLENT SOUND AND MUSIC!

It’s transparent, open and spacious with deep, tight bass. The piano has nice weight to it and the trumpet has the right amount of bite.

The lineup here is excellent, including Grant Green, Herbie Hancock, Billy Higgins, Wayne Shorter, and Reginald Workman.

This is an Older Jazz 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 developed in the early 2000s and have since turned into a fine art.

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.

(more…)

Getz-Gilberto – Our Shootout Winner from 2012

Hot Stamper Pressings of Bossa Nova Albums Available Now

We have been trying to find great sound (on reasonable surfaces) for this album for YEARS — I kid you not — but this 2-pack is the first Hot Stamper version to ever hit the site.

We have fired up this shootout multiple times since 2006 and been left empty-handed each and every time, right up until the latest go-around. We have sunk an insane amount of dough into trying to find killer copies because we love the music so much, but we just haven’t had much to show for it.

If you love this Brazilian-flavored cool jazz as much as we do, you might want to snap this one up because who knows when or if we’ll find another one.

Stan Getz is a truly great tenor saxophonist, the cool school’s most popular player. This LP is all the evidence you need. Side one has those wonderfully relaxed Brazilian tempos and the smooth sax stylings of Stan Getz.

Side two for me is even more magical. Getz fires up and lets loose some of his most emotionally intense playing. These sad, poetic songs are about feeling more than anything else and Getz communicates that so completely you don’t have to speak Portugese to know what Jobim is saying. Call it cool jazz with feeling.

Side one here has good bass, wonderful transparency and more presence than we heard elsewhere. The female vocals sound excellent and the sax is full bodied with clear leading-edge transients.

The side two of this set is even better, more extended up top and incredibly smooth and sweet overall. It’s got the impressive presence of the first side but could stand to be a bit fuller.

Both sides are a bit noisy as is pretty much always the case with this record — a big reason why we’ve struggled so hard with this album. The other big reason is that most copies just plain sound mediocre or worse, which you can find out for yourself by flipping over either of the Hot sides in this set.

This is an All Time jazz classic and it’s a shame we can’t find more great copies. This one isn’t going to be a top Demo Disc for any of you but it will give you two sides that show you how lovely this music sounds when you’re lucky enough to get a hold of a copy that’s not poorly mastered and obscured by seriously noisy vinyl.