Month: January 2020

Art Pepper – Saturday Night At The Village Vanguard

  • KILLER sound throughout with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades – exceptionally quiet vinyl too  
  • This is Art Pepper at its best, and if anyone can capture the realism of a live jazz club, it’s the engineers and producers at Contemporary, in this case Bob Simpson and Lester Koenig
  • One of the man’s most enjoyable albums – the sound here was bigger and livelier than any other – above all it’s balanced, avoiding many of the problems we heard on other pressings
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The great altoist was clearly excited to be playing at the famous New York club, and his rhythm section — pianist George Cables, bassist George Mraz and drummer Elvin Jones — consistently stimulates his imagination.”

This album features the great Elvin Jones on drums, plus Geoge Cables on piano and George Mraz on bass.

We played all four volumes of Art Pepper’s Village Vanguard series recently, and this copy was one of the best of the bunch. It features an intense live version of Pepper’s tune The Trip, from the wonderful album of the same title, as well as extended versions of the tunes You Go To My Head and Cherokee. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “NEVER would I have thought a single record could make this kind of difference…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pink Floyd’s Albums Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for Dark Side of the Moon

Dan, our letter writer, is a new convert to the world of Hot Stampers. Although his system is modest by his own admission, the sound he was able to conjure up in his living room was “…a revelation…” A good Dark Side can have that effect on you.

Hi Tom,

I received this DSOTM yesterday…

First I played the 180gm 25th anniversary release, so I listened to the first side. While it didn’t necessarily ‘grab’ me, I sat through and listened, with the assumption that I really needed to get a feel for this to do a somewhat critical A/B listening experience.

Then I put this Hot Stamper on.

From the very beginning, I heard vocals I never heard before, in my 12 years of listening to this album. There was such a dramatically engaging ‘dreamlike’ flow to the music, that I have never experienced before! The soundstage was so 3-dimensional, the speakers disappeared, and moment after moment, I completely forgot I was sitting in my living room!

NEVER would I have thought a single record could make this kind of difference… it was TRULY one of those rare experiences – a revelation, of recreating an actual concert in one’s listening room.

While my system is quite modest by most accounts, this is a new chapter in the music playback book, to hear/ listen to something that is so lifelike, everything else disappears.

I look forward to enjoying this for a lifetime.

Sincerely,
Dan E.

Dan started out by emailing me about having some records cleaned, especially a copy of the Dark Side on Heavy Vinyl remastered for the 25th Anniversary of its release, by Doug Sax with the assistance of Kevin Gray (basically just using Kevin’s mastering chain).

My less-than-artful reply:

Dan, this is not a good sounding record. Cleaning it won’t help it much. Boosted top, zero ambience, it’s a dog on most levels.

My excuse for being curt? Simply this: Who has time to waste talking about a bad sounding record? The world is full of them. Their shortcomings are obvious to anyone with even a halfway-decent stereo. (Apparently such stereos are in shorter supply than one would think.) But everything is relative; the Heavy Vinyl beat Dan’s SACD, so he naturally concluded that it must be pretty good, since SACD is widely considered the latest and greatest digital software around.

But we here at Better Records think all this digital foolishness is a load of crap and a dead end.

The reason we think that is that we have access to amazing sounding pressings of records like Dark Side, and they have the kind of sound no CD or digital media of any kind has — in our experience — ever had. We call them – you guessed it — Hot Stampers.

When Dan asked if we had a Hot Stamper that would blow his mind and blow that Heavy Vinyl version right out of the water, I said “Hell yeah we do!”

The rest is history I guess.

By the way, there’s a reason Dark Side is considered to be one of the ten best sounding rock and pop albums in the history of recorded media: It’s absolutely one of the most amazing sounding records I have ever heard in my life.

(Check out the writeup for the copy that blew our minds many years ago.)

It’s the kind of record that makes all the hard work and money you’ve put into your stereo over the years pay off.

And if you haven’t put a lot of hard work and money into your stereo, you don’t know what you’re missing.

Further Reading

Julie London / Julie Is Her Name – A Boxstar Bomb from Bernie

More of the Music of Julie London

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Julie London

A Hall of Shame pressing from Cisco / Impex / Boxstar.

One question: Where’s the Tubey Magic?

We would never have pointed you in the direction of this awful Boxstar 45 of Julie Is Her Name, cut by Bernie Grundman in 2009, supposedly on tube equipment. I regret to say that we actually sold some copies, but in my defense I can honestly and truthfully claim that we never wrote a single nice thing about the sound of the record. That has to count for something, right? (more…)

Oscar Peterson – Plays The Jimmy McHugh Song Book

  • This superb Oscar Peterson album boasts a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one and an outstanding Double Plus (A++) side two – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • The piano has heft, the drums are big, and everything is relaxed and natural – this copy is doing pretty much what we want a top quality ’50s Peterson album to do
  • Songs you know well – I’m In The Mood For Love; On The Sunny Side Of The Street; I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, etc.
  • The last in the “Oscar Peterson Plays” series – Oscar puts his sublime touches to these timeless Jimmy McHugh classics
  • “[Peterson’s] sound was consistently classy and first rate here, as it was for his entire career… impeccable taste and technique and the best songs out there…”

(more…)

Harry Belafonte – Sings The Blues – Superb Living Stereo Sound from 1958

More of the Music of Harry Belafonte

More Titles on Living Stereo

If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good 1958 All Tube Analog sound can be, this killer copy may be just the record for you.

Naturally the vocals have to be the main focus on a Harry Belafonte record. He should sound rich and tubey, yet clear, breathy and transparent.

To qualify as a Hot Stamper the pressings we offer must be highly resolving, not crude and ambience-challenged the way so many modern LPs seem to be.

You should be able to hear every element of the recording, with the voice and instruments surrounded by the natural space of the studios in which the recording was made.

This Copy

This copy is super spacious, sweet and positively dripping with ambience. Talk about Tubey Magic, the liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny. This is vintage analog at its best, so full-bodied and relaxed you’ll wonder how it ever came to be that anyone seriously contemplated trying to improve it.

The Analog sound of this pressing makes a mockery of even the most advanced digital playback systems, including the ones that haven’t been invented yet. I’d love to play this for Neil Young so he can see what he’s up against. Good Luck, Neil, you’re going to need it.

THIS is the sound of Tubey Magic. No recordings will ever be made like this again, and no CD will ever capture what is in the grooves of this record. There actually IS a CD of this album, and youtube videos of it too, but those of us in possession of a working turntable could care less.

Truly a Spectacular Demo Disc in its own right. (more…)

Mott The Hoople – Mott

  • Incredible Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on both sides, this copy will blow the doors off anything you’ve played
  • Both of these sides are rich and musical, solid down low, with Tubey Magic for days – forget the dubby domestic pressings, this is the sound you want for Mott
  • Bill Price engineered in 1973 – he’s the man behind The Clash’s Best Sounding Album, London Calling
  • AMG raves “This sounds better, looser, than All the Young Dudes, as the band jives through “All the Way From Memphis” and “Honaloochie Boogie,” beats the living hell outta “Violence,” swaggers on “Whizz Kid,” and simply drives it home on “Drivin’ Sister.”

This CBS Orange Label early British LP has the big British Rock Sound we love here at Better Records. Phenomenally rich and sweet, with meaty bass and a smooth top, it’s the kind of sound you find on the best Ken Scott recordings from the early ’70s.

Bill Price engineered this one as he did for many of Mott’s albums. His claim to fame in these parts is London Calling, but his credits run into the hundreds for classic rock records starting in the ’60s right through to the ’80s.

We were surprised (although we shouldn’t be by now) that so many copies were slightly thin and dry. The first track on side one, the big hit All the Way From Memphis, tends to have a problem in that area more than the tracks that follow. (more…)

Gershwin / Concerto In F & Rhapsody In Blue / Previn / Kostelanetz

More George Gershwin

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of George Gershwin

  • This Columbia Six Eye has Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound for the Rhapsody in Blue on side two – reasonably quiet vinyl too, especially for an early stereo LP
  • As would be expected, both sides are exceptionally rich and Tubey Magical, but the clarity, deep bass and powerful, dynamic sound of side two surprised the hell out of us – we’ve never heard the work reproduced with this kind of authority or fidelity
  • The first two movements of the Concerto in F found on side one earned a solid grade of Double Plus (A++) for their full brass and especially clear, solid, present piano, one with practically no trace of vintage analog tube smear
  • Performed with consummate skill and attention to detail – the results are magnificent!

Finally, the sound we’ve been searching for – rich, tubey and real, with nicely textured strings. The piano is solid, rich, high-rez and percussive — there is hardly any Old School smear or hardness to be heard, always important to the proper reproduction of any piano recording, whether the music is jazz, classical or rock. (We talk about smeary, hard pianos on many of our listings for those of you who take the time to read them.) (more…)

Jimmy Reed – The Best of Jimmy Reed

xxxxx

  • This wonderful compilation finally arrives on the site with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish
  • Here is the pure sound of The Blues, captured in its raw beauty on this hard-to-find Vee-Jay album
  • The energy is jumpin’ on this early pressing, with Jimmy and his guitar front and center, right where they belong
  • Forget whatever dead-as-a-doornail Heavy Vinyl record they’re making these days – if you want to hear the Tubey Magic, size and energy of this wonderful music, a vintage pressing like this one is the way to go

(more…)

Harry Belafonte / Belafonte at Carnegie Hall – Our Shootout Winner from 2006

More of the Music of Harry Belafonte

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now

Harry Pearson brought this record to the attention of audiophiles with his TAS list a long time ago, and rightfully so: it’s an amazing recording.

We happen to love the music too, which makes it one of the most recommendable records we have ever offered. If you can find a better combination of demo disc sound, with music worth the hassle and expense of reproducing it properly, more power to you. We sure can’t.

Because this is a live recording, because it has lots of natural instruments as well as a vocal, because it was recorded in the Golden Age by one of the greatest labels of all time, RCA, by Bob Simpson no less — for this and many other reasons, it has to be considered one of the most amazing recordings in the history of the world.

That said, it is our contention (and the basis of our business model) that the brilliant quality of the recording can only be appreciated if you have the pressing that captured the sound that the engineers recorded. In other words, a Hot Stamper.

From an audiophile point of view, you get to hear live musicians and all the energy they bring to this music, all on the stage at the same time: strings, brass, percussionists, and Harry Belafonte front and center. Tube mics (and not too many of them), a tube tape recorder, RCA’s superb engineering and all-tube mastering chain ensure that the “breath of life” is captured intact.

I know of no better live popular vocal recording on the planet.

The best sounding versions we played are cut super-clean; the brass and strings have dead-on correct textures and timbres.

As good as some pressings are, the best pressings are clearly a step up in class. The brass has more weight and body and richness. Same with the strings. The voice gets fuller and sweeter and less sibilant, while still maintaining every nuance of detail. The presence is startling; Belafonte is absolutely in the room with you. (more…)