Month: November 2019

John Coltrane / Coltrane Plays the Blues – Our Shootout Winner from 2009

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ONE OF THE VERY BEST COPIES WE’VE EVER HEARD of this phenomenal album! This is PURE GOLD for the jazz-loving audiophile. I can count the number of jazz records we’ve played this year in a league with this one both sonically and musically on one hand. Both sides here are AMAZINGLY GOOD — exceptionally rich and full-bodied with superb transparency. Coltrane’s sax sounds OUT OF THIS WORLD with the lots of that airy, breathy quality that we just love here. The immediacy is OFF THE CHARTS!

We finally found enough clean copies of this album to do a proper shootout, and this Atlantic ’70s era copy blew us away with TWO SUPERB SIDES. The only time we’ve heard better sound for this album was on a flukish original — nearly every early pressing suffers badly from tubby bass, grain and smearing, so this copy should beat the pants off of most of ’em. Most of these later pressings are pretty bad too; it takes a LOT of copies to find one that’s nearly as good as this one. That’s why it has been two full years since you’ve seen a Hot Stamper copy hit the site!

The overall sound is open and spacious with lots of ambience and room around the instruments. The piano sounds Right On The Money with lots of weight, allowing you to really appreciate the percussive qualities of the instrument. We heard far more dynamics on this copy than elsewhere, which really conveys a sense of the group’s emotional performance. The bass is punchy and well-defined, the saxes have clear leading edge transients, and the drums sound just right. Coltrane fans are going to flip out over this one — guaranteed.

The very best originals might be just a bit better, but you’d have to pick up a ton of them to find a great one and that would set you back a whole lotta dough. We’ve played a ton of early pressings and found exactly one killer copy to date.

The typical Red and Green label pressing of this album lacks a measure of life and energy, not to mention some extension on the top end. The older Green and Blue label copies tend to be a bit smeared and lack some of the body of the later reissues. The reason this copy has such transparency and such an extended top end compared to other copies is obviously due, to some degree, to better cutting equipment.

I’ve NEVER heard a better recorded John Coltrane album in my life.

Not only that, but the music is every bit as good as the sound. Not only is Coltrane really playing his heart out, but the band is every bit as amazing, with very strong contributions from McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and Steve Davis on bass.

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McCoy Tyner – Expansions

Both sonically and musically, this is THE BEST McCoy Tyner album that we can recall ever playing! Expansions has long been a favorite around here — it’s got a great lineup (including Wayne Shorter and Ron Carter) and the most interesting set of songs that we’ve heard on a Tyner album.

Drop the needle on the last song, I Thought I’d Let You Know, for the best sound on the album. It’s rich and sweet with a BIG bottom end and a wonderful sounding cello. McCoy’s playing a lot like Bill Evans at his best on this song.

This is another album that’s frequently scooped right out of the bins by DJs and producers who like to sample the funky grooves. We almost never see this one and when we do they don’t usually sound like this, so if you like this kind of music you should jump on it! (more…)

Electric Light Orchestra – Eldorado

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More of our favorite Art Rock Records

  • An outstanding vintage pressing of Eldorado with solid Double Plus (A++) sound and vinyl that’s about as quiet as can be found
  • This pressing showed us a big, lively, musically involving Eldorado, one of the toughest nuts to crack in the entire ELO canon
  • There are some really awful UK pressings out there (and lots of bad domestics to be sure), so if you like the thrill of the hunt, make sure you have plenty of time and money to spend
  • 5 stars: “Eldorado was strongly reminiscent in some ways of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Not that it could ever have the same impact or be as distinctive, but it had its feet planted in so many richly melodic and varied musical traditions, yet made it all work in a rock context, that it did recall the Beatles classic.”

As a result of Jeff Lynne’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink production approach, it’s the rare copy that provides enough transparency and resolution to bring out all the elements in the incredibly dense mixes — with strings! – that Lynne favors. But when you find a copy that does, what a THRILL it is. (more…)

Fiedler / Boston Tea Party – Reviewed in 2010

This original Shaded Dog pressing of LSC 2213 from 1959 has EXCELLENT SOUND AND QUIET VINYL ON SIDE TWO, where you’ll find a wonderful rendition of Hernando’s Hideaway.

The sound is excellent — lively, full-bodied and super three-dimensional. Check out how great the castanets sound.

Side one is nothing special and a bit noisy in the right channel, so we’re really only charging you for the strong side two. Hernando’s Hideaway is really worth the price of admission alone, you’ll see.

As I’m sure you know by now, Fiedler on this sort of material is very hard to beat. (more…)

Stripped – Bad on CD, Way Better on Vinyl

The best record The Rolling Stones made in the last 20 years! Superb sound. Highly recommended.  The CD sucks and the vinyl is rare and pricey but worth every penny.

By 1995 records like this were only released on import vinyl and typically went out of print soon after they began their descent down the pop charts. I used to review them and sell the better sounding ones back in the day. Supplies were extremely limited and unpredictable – these small pressing run ’90s albums went out of print without warning and almost never came back. Once they were gone they were rarely ever reissued, although Simply Vinyl took a crack at filling that gap, with mixed results as I’m sure you know.

All of those factors conspire to make the cost of acquiring the mintiest pressings from overseas fairly high, and of course this is the main reason you have never seen the album on our site before. Be that as it may, we have this copy available and it is not only wonderful sounding but the music is every bit as good as I remember it.

You may remember that a controversy raged in the audiophile press at the time about how awful the CD sounded compared to the vinyl.  Turns out they had mastered the CD using some bad equipment, or a bad transfer of the tape, or some other such foolishness, and the result was that only us dinosaurs who had kept our turntables into the ’90s could actually stand to listen to the album. (more…)

Big Brother & The Holding Company Featuring Janis Joplin

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  • With two seriously good Double Plus (A++) sides, this was one of the better copies we played in our recent shootout
  • Most copies we played were too compressed or veiled to involve you in the music, but this one has the kind of rich, big, clear sound this Bay Area band needs to work its bluesy magic
  • Turn this one up good and loud (which you can do when the sound is right) and you’ll have a living, breathing Janis Joplin standing right between your speakers
  • A tough record to find with audiophile quality sound and clean vinyl, two reasons you rarely see it on the site

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Deep Purple – Mark I & II – Reviewed in 2009

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More British Blues Rock

This is a Minty looking EMI Import Double LP. It’s a compilation with a single LP dedicated to each era of the band’s early history. As with any compilation some tracks sound better than others here but don’t let the German sourced tapes scare you. These sound like really high quality tapes, close to, if not the actual, master tapes.

The second LP features the most recognizable and probably best lineup (Mark II) the band ever had, with songs such as Black Knight, Speed King, Smoke on the Water and Highway star, to name but a few. 

Bill Evans – I Will Say Goodbye

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  • Bill Evans’ 1980 release makes its Hot Stamper debut with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • Rich, smooth, sweet, and wonderfully natural, this is the sound we love here at Better Records
  • 4 stars: ” For his final Fantasy album, Evans, bassist Eddie Gómez, and drummer Eliot Zigmund perform memorable renditions of such songs as Herbie Hancock’s “Dolphin Dance”… Fine post-bop music from an influential piano giant.

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Tchaikovsky / Violin Concerto / Grumiaux – Our Shootout Winner from 2012

More of the music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

This White Hot Two-Pack of the most well-known and beloved violin concerto in the classical repertoire gives you a TOP performance with TOP quality sound from first note to last. No single copy had two sides as good as these, so we’ve combined two LPs to bring you the best Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto ever to hit the site.

In choosing these two sides we put special emphasis on the sound of the violin. Many copies suffered from a slight screechiness to the sound of the instrument, but we present here a violin that is rich and sweet, yet retains the full pallette of its complex harmonics.

Side One – Record One

A++, with Tubey Magic to die for. The sound is rich, with a bit of tube smear that does little damage to the overall sound. Big space, a solid bottom, and plenty of dynamic energy are in evidence throughout the side. There’s so much energy that, in comparison to some copies, this side almost sounded like it was running fast!

Side two of this LP earned a grade of A+ — it’s too smeary and dark for our taste. (more…)

Our History with Led Zeppelin’s Rock Classic from 1990 – 2010

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

In 2010 we wrote the following commentary in order to provide our readers with an overview of what we thought we knew about Zep II at the time. Please to enjoy.

This is undoubtedly one of the best, maybe THE best hard rock recording of all time, but you need a good pressing if you’re going to unleash anything approaching its full potential. We just conducted a shootout and heard MUCH more bad sound than good. You name it — imports, reissues, originals — we’ve played ’em, and most of them were TERRIBLE.

Especially the non-RL originals. That’s some of the worst sound we’ve ever heard.

If you see a “J” stamper, run for your life.

The best copies of Zep II have the kind of rock and roll firepower that’s guaranteed to bring any system to its knees. I can tell you with no sense of shame whatsoever that I do not have a system powerful enough to play this record at the levels I was listening to it at in one of our shootouts a while back. When the big bass comes in, hell yeah it distorts. It would have distorted worse at any concert the band ever played. Did people walk out, or ask the band to turn down the volume? No way. The volume IS the sound.

That’s what the album is trying to prove. This recording is a statement by the band that they can fuse so much sonic power into a piece of vinyl that no matter what stereo you own, no matter how big the speakers, no matter how many watts you think you have, IT’S NOT ENOUGH.

The music will be so good you be unable to restrain yourself from turning it up louder, and louder, and still louder, making the distortion you hear an intoxicating part of the music. Resistance, as well all know have learned by now, is futile.

The louder you play a top copy the better it sounds. Turn up Moby Dick as loud as you can. Now it’s starting to sound like the real thing. But drum kits play FAR LOUDER than any stereo can, so even as loud as you can play it isn’t as loud as the real thing. This is in itself a form of distortion, a change from the original sound.

If at the end of a side you don’t feel like you’ve just been run over by a freight train, you missed out on one of the greatest musical experiences known to man: Led Zeppelin at ear-splitting levels. If you missed them in concert, and I did, this is the only way to get some sense of what it might have been like. (Assuming of course that you have the room, the speakers and all the other stuff needed to reproduce this album. Maybe one out of fifty systems I’ve ever run into fits that bill. But we’re all trying, at least I hope we are, and it’s good to have goals in life, even ones you can never reach.)

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