Month: November 2019

Mussorgsky / The Power of the Orchestra – Awesome In Stereo?

More of the Music of Modest Mussorgsky

UPDATE 2022

This review dates from 2007. We recently played a copy of the album and did not care for the sound much, which you can read about here.

DEMO DISC QUALITY ORCHESTRAL SOUND like you will not believe. We put two top copies together to bring you the ultimate-sounding Pictures At An Exhibition. Folks, it doesn’t get any better than this for huge orchestral dynamics and energy.

One side of each copy rates A Triple Plus — our highest sonic grade. The sound is out of this world. 

We had to do it that way, for one simple reason: Pictures stretches over both sides of this record, and no copy we played had two good sides, which means that if you were to own only one LP of this set, some part of the work would not sound nearly as good as the rest. This is always a problem with classical recordings: one good sounding side is not enough.

On top of that there are always condition issues with old Living Stereo records. So few are quiet. We love the sound but the vinyl leaves much to be desired. Here are some comments from a previous comparison package (with minor changes of course). (more…)

Elvis Costello – Blood and Chocolate – Reviewed in 2000

Hot Stamper Pressings of Elvis’s Albums Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Elvis Costello

Some brilliant songs on this one: I Want You comes to mind, one of the best tracks Elvis ever laid down. This is not a pretty record — it’s lean, mean, rock and roll, if you’re into that sort of thing (which I am of course). (more…)

The Soft Parade – Our Shootout Winner from 2007

More of the Music of The Doors

This incredibly rare, exceptionally quiet Elektra Gold Label LP sounds AMAZING, As Good As It Gets (AGAIG)! The sound is BIG, RICH, and FULL-BODIED, exactly the way it should be.

As good as the Hot Stamper Big Red E Label copies can be, and that’s very good indeed, the right first pressing is still The King. It just can’t be beat. 

The difference might only be 5%, but on a big dynamic speaker playing at loud levels that 5% can really give the sound the boost it needs to go over the top into crazy Demo Disc Land.

How rare is a clean, properly mastered gold label original like this? So rare this is THE FIRST ONE WE’VE EVER LISTED on the site! I think I run into one like this about every five years. Most of the gold label pressings we come across are full of groove distortion, covered with scratches and skips, and often have no top end left after being ploughed with a bad needle.

I’m sure the console stereo on which I first played my copy of The Soft Parade tracked at five or ten grams. The fine squiggles that carry the most delicate extended highs gets shaved off pretty quickly at that weight, and once they’re gone they’re gone for good. We never noticed because the frequency response of the speakers in those cabinets probably topped out at 6k, if that. (This is why so many dealers on Ebay don’t hear the surface noise on the beat up records they sell — no top end, no surface noise to worry about! Works out great for everybody except us audiophiles who actually care about the sound of our records, not just the color of their labels.)

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The Sheffield Drum Record

More Direct-to-Disc Recordings

Reviews and Commentaries for Direct to Disc Recordings

This Minty looking Sheffield Direct-to-Disc LP has AMAZING SOUND. We played it against other pressings we had and this was clearly the winner. It’s lively, with a wonderfully extended top and bottom. We rate it about A++ – A+++ on both sides. 

The record features improvisations from Jim Keltner (one of the all-time great session drummers) and Ron Tutt (Elvis Presley’s studio drummer). The album is a member of the famous TAS list.

The Kinks – Kinda Kinks in Stereo

More of the Music of The Kinks

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Kinks

  • Very good Hot Stamper sound on both sides of this original STEREO copy of The Kinks’ sophomore release
  • You’ll find that there’s a healthy dose of the Tubey Magical Richness here, which is exactly what these recordings need in order to sound their best
  • The monos win the shootouts, but the better original stereo pressings can sound quite good on their own terms
  • “…this album showcased a much more sophisticated sound… it also put them right in the front of the British Invasion pack for seriousness and complexity, out in front of where the Beatles or almost any of the competition were in early 1965…”

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Joan Baez – Self-Titled in Stereo

More Pure Folk Recordings

  • Stunning sound on this original Vanguard stereo pressing with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to it
  • Glorious All Tube chain recording quality, kicked up a few levels on this pressing because it beat all comers on side one and came in close on side two, with vinyl that is going to play as quietly as any early pressing ever will
  • One of Joan Baez’s best sounding albums in our experience, shockingly free of artificiality – play it against your favorite female vocal to hear the difference
  • 140 weeks on the charts and Five AMG Stars: “…a brace of traditional songs (most notably “East Virginia” and “Mary Hamilton”) with an urgency and sincerity that makes the listener feel as though they were being sung for the first time…”

UPDATE 2024

In our most recent shootout, none of the stereo pressings we played were as good as the early mono pressings.

This former member of the TAS list is the kind of recording that has everything going for it: Golden Age equipment in a live acoustic with a simple arrangement for voice and guitar (or two).

The voice and the material come together nicely. If I were to recommend only one Joan Baez record it would surely have to be this one. Diamonds and Rust is a nice pop album but I think if you go back and play it today you will find that it sounds somewhat dated. Good folk tunes like the ones found on this album, however, never seem to go out of style.

The record sounds like a live demo session because that is exactly what it is:

In 1983 Baez described the making of the album to Rolling Stone’s Kurt Loder:”…It took four days. We recorded it in the ballroom of some hotel in New York, way up by the river. We could use the room every day except Tuesday, because they played Bingo there on Tuesdays. It was just me on this filthy rug. There were two microphones, one for the voice and one for the guitar. I just did my set. It was probably all I knew how to do at that point. I did ‘Mary Hamilton’ once and that was it…That’s the way we made ’em in the old days. As long as a dog didn’t run through the room or something, you had it…”

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The Dream Of The Blue Turtles – What to Listen For

More of the Music of Sting and The Police

More Records with Specific Advice on What to Listen For

Most copies we played had that edgy, harsh, digital ’80s sound, the kind that makes us wince.

Other copies lacked energy, others were just too bright, and most of them were full of grit and grain.

When the brass sounds too thin, as it did on a majority of our copies, the sound is positively painful.

It’s another one of those albums that sounds like it was designed to “pop” out of your speakers. You can really picture this one playing at all the audio shows back in the day. They were probably playing a CD, and, for all we know, it may have even sounded better than the average vinyl pressing.

TRACK LISTING

Side One

If You Love Somebody Set Them Free
Love Is the Seventh Wave
Russians
Children’s Crusade
Shadows in the Rain

Side Two

We Work the Black Seam
Consider Me Gone
The Dream of the Blue Turtles
Moon over Bourbon Street
Fortress Around Your Heart

AMG Review

After disbanding the Police at the peak of their popularity in 1984, Sting quickly established himself as a viable solo artist, one obsessed with expanding the boundaries of pop music. Sting incorporated heavy elements of jazz, classical, and worldbeat into his music, writing lyrics that were literate and self-consciously meaningful… he proves that he’s subtler and craftier than his peers.

Gerry Mulligan – The Gerry Mulligan Songbook Vol. 1

Hot Stamper Pressings of Top Quality Jazz Recordings Available Now

This original COLLECTOR QUALITY World Pacific Jazz LP has VERY GOOD sound and is EXCEPTIONALLY QUIET.

Zoot Sims, Al Cohen, Lee Konitz and Allan Eager all play on this record. A pretty hot lineup if I do say so.

Further Reading

If you’re searching for the perfect sound, you came to the right place.

Donovan / The Real Donovan in the Kind of Mono We Can Get Behind

More Donovan

Now here’s a mono record we can get behind! If more mono records sounded big and open the way this one does we would totally be on board with the current movement towards One Channel. (As that has not been our experience we remain skeptical.)

This is by far the best sounding, quietest pressing we have ever played. It boasts Super Hot Stamper sound on side one, backed with even better than Super Hot Stamper sound (A++ to A+++) on side two, and it’s pressed on exceptionally quiet vinyl (for Hickory anyway).  

Mono is in fact the secret to getting these early Hickory records to sound their best. The recordings are mono; the stereo pressings are simply electronically reprocessed. Now, that’s not always the kiss of death, but as a rule it doesn’t help the sound much and has the potential to cause tonality and imaging issues.

The Real Donovan is a compilation of singles, along with some tracks which have been sourced from the first two albums and an EP, as well as a couple of b-sides. (Hickory seems to have taken a page from Capitol here, as that’s exactly what The Beatles Second Album is. As I recall that album sold quite well in the states.) (more…)

The Red Labels on Fifth Dimension Can Rock (Well, Some of Them Can)

Hot Stamper Pressings of Sixties Pop Recordings Available Now

[UPDATE 2024: This commentary was written many years ago. In our most recent shootout, no Red Label pressing could compete with our best 360 Label Columbia originals.]

There was not another Red Label that could hold a candle to this copy in our recent shootout, and no 360 label copy could either. It’s the exception that proves the rule.

Does it have 100% of the Tubey Magic of the best 360 Label copies? Maybe not, but it has quite a healthy dose, and it does so many things so much better than any of the tube-mastered originals we played that it was simply no contest. There was nothing that communicated the music remotely as well as this Red Label copy did.

Last time around we wrote that the 360 Label original pressings were the only ones that could win our shootouts.

If you want to hear the real sound of The Byrds in early ’66, only the authentic original tube mastering chain seems to be able to get the job done. The Red Label reissues on Columbia can be decent, even good in their way, but they sure don’t sound like this record.

Needless to say this copy proved us wrong.

We also said this about our best 360 Label pressing at the time:

These old Byrds records tend to be seriously lacking in the frequency extremes, with not much deep bass or extension on the top end. This pressing has SOME extension on both ends, which is a lot more than most.

Aha, now it makes sense. Most of the better 360 pressings we’ve played did not have especially good extension on either end, but this record sure does. (more…)