Month: June 2020

Muddy Waters – The Best of Muddy Waters

  • This outstanding copy of The Best of Muddy Waters boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound from top to bottom
  • Huge, Tubey Magical and lively, with solid weight down low and lots of space around all the instruments
  • Comprising twelve killer tracks, all originally released as singles, including Rollin’ Stone, Long Distance Call, Hoochie Coochie, and many more
  • 5 Stars: “The material this artist cut for Chess during this period is nothing short of a blues revelation. There has never been anything quite like it, before or after, and when one has heard Muddy Waters from this period, one has simply heard the best blues has to offer.”

Don’t be put off by the Best Of designation in the title. ALL these songs were recorded as individual tracks to be released on individual discs. Muddy Waters would go into the studio and cut a few “sides,” the best of which would be approved for distribution. There was no concept in those days of an “album.” Albums were basically just collections of songs, and that means lots of filler. What’s great about this pressing is that it gives you all the classics with none of the filler. (more…)

Johnny Nash – I Can See Clearly Now

  • Johnny Nash makes his site debut with this SUPERB pressing of his Number One Album, boasting Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout – mostly quiet vinyl too  
  • When we first dropped the needle on a copy of the album, we were knocked out by just how RICH and SMOOTH the chorus was on the title track
  • Here was a Top Quality Analog Recording to rival the best releases of 1972, one that we had practically never heard of – and of course, the shootout produced an even better copy that the one we’d auditioned
  • 4 stars: “Nash’s buoyant, breezy, optimistic classic proved to be a phenomenal record holding the number one pop position for four weeks… It’s a tribute to its high quality that I Can See Clearly Now was in print almost three decades after its original release.”

Seventies Analog

Produced in 1972, the best copies of I Can See Clearly Now are rich, smooth and sweet in the best tradition of the ANALOG record.

Less than ten years later the warm, rich analog sound we Old School Audiophiles prize would go completely out of style. Those later years were a difficult time for audiophiles who liked the pop music of the day but not the pop sound of the day. Heavy-handed processing, as well as the overuse of synthesizers and drum effects, with the whole of the production slathered in digital reverb, not to mention a puzzling lack of bass foundation, have resulted in many of the albums recorded after 1980 being all but impossible to enjoy on a modern high-end system.

For some reason, the ’70s seems to get little respect from audiophiles, when in fact a high percentage of the best recordings we know of were made in that arbitrarily designated ten year period. A rough count leads me to think that more than half of our Top 100 Rock Albums were recorded in the years spanning 1970-79, which is very unlikely to be a statistical anomaly.

The pool of well-recorded albums was simply wider and deeper. Great sounding records like this one were made by the hundreds, their numbers falling off precipitously in the decades that followed. Fortunately for us hard core analog holdouts, we have easy access to the best of the ’70s recordings, still widely available in their original format: the vinyl LP.

Like many of our favorites from the ’70s, this one is not well known in audiophile circles, but we hope to change that with this wonderful sounding pressing. Both the sound and the music are worth your time, and if you find that you don’t agree with us about the music or the sound, feel free to return the record, at our expense even. (more…)

Talking Heads / Speaking in Tongues – Our Shootout Winner from Way Back

More Talking Heads

White Hot Stampers discovered, hot enough to burn down the house! We just finished a HUGE shootout for the last great Talking Heads album and were as pleased as punch to finally hear a few copies of this album that deliver the same kind of magic that we’ve been getting on the better pressings of Little Creatures. Most copies of Speaking In Tongues are too flat, dry and veiled to get worked up about, but this one shows you that excellent sound for this album is indeed possible, albeit very difficult to find.

We’re serious Talking Heads fans here at Better Records, as you may have gathered by now. Not only is their music completely innovative and original, but their recordings are as well. That’s not to say that their records are Demo Discs along the lines of Tea For The Tillerman, Fragile or Abbey Road, but when you find a killer copy of any of their albums you can’t help but notice how much work they put into making them.

We played a ton of copies before we even heard a hint of the magic we were hoping for. Most of them sounded like CDs. When you turned up the volume, sure they got louder, but they didn’t really get any better. That’s a sure sign of a mediocre pressing, and it just kept happening over and over again in the shootout. Just as we were about to throw up our hands and give up, a copy hit the table with enough analog qualities to rope us back in. We added a little extra volume and started to hear the qualities that we needed from this music: rich, full mids; punchy bass; breathy vocals; and above all, ENERGY. On a Hot Stamper copy with the traits listed above, the music becomes involving and vital. If Burning Down The House doesn’t get you moving to the beat, what’s the point? (more…)

Squeeze – If I Didn’t Love You – “Tiny Collector’s Edition” 5 Inch Single

This is a brand new, unplayed British import pressing of the world’s smallest 7″ single — because it’s only 5″ across! The record plays at 33 RPM & has 2 songs, ’If I Didn”t Love You’ & ’Another Nail In My Heart’, two of the best songs on Argybargy.

Don’t buy this for the sound or the surfaces, buy it for the awesome coolness of having a unique Squeeze “Tiny Collector’s Edition.” 

The Kinks – To The Bone

  • The Kinks’ 1994 live release makes its Hot Stamper debut with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • The sound on this rare UK pressing is full-bodied and lively, with solid, present vocals, as well as excellent clarity all around
  • “… the bandmembers financed their acoustic greatest-hits record To the Bone themselves, releasing it on the U.K. independent label Grapevine. Naturally, Ray Davies’ songs work well in such a stripped-back setting… featuring a lovely version of “Waterloo Sunset,” possibly the most beautiful song of the rock & roll era.”

(more…)

Barbra Streisand – The Third Album

More Barbra Streisand

  • Streisand’s 1964 release eturns to the site with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • These 360 Label stereo originals are the only way to hear the Tubey Magic and space that is all over the original master tape
  • Frank Laico engineered at Columbia’s legendary 30th street studios – you can easily imagine how good the sound is
  • Ms Streisand sings a wonderful batch of standards on this one: My Melancholy Baby, Just In Time, It Had To Be You, As Time Goes By and 6 more

(more…)

Harvest Was a Struggle in 2008

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

Harvest is undeniably one of the most beloved albums in all of classic rock. We get letters all the time from customers hoping to get their hands on Hot Stamper copies, but we’ll never have the supply to keep up with the demand.

It’s a tough nut to crack, because a Hot Stamper Harvest has to get so many things right — the lovely pedal steel guitar on Out On The Weekend, the LSO on A Man Needs A Maid and There’s A World (engineered by Glyn Johns), Neil’s grungy electric guitar on Alabama, and so much more. 

Many copies we played would work for the heavy songs and then fall behind on the softer numbers. Others had gorgeous sound on the country-tinged numbers but couldn’t deliver any whomp for the rockers.

A Copy For The Ages from 2008

Side two of this copy has STUNNINGLY GOOD SOUND! It’s punchy and lively with some of the BIGGEST BASS we’ve ever heard for this album. You won’t believe the WHOMP on this record — just listen to how hard Alabama ROCKS! The overall sound is big, open, and spacious with amazing transparency and lots of extension up top. The vocals are Right On The Money — very present with loads of texture. We rate side two an A+++ — that’s Master Tape Sound, folks, As Good As It Gets!

Drop the needle on Old Man. On virtually every copy we audition the chorus vocals strain to the point of being unpleasant, but here they are smooth and sweet.

(more…)

XTC / Nonsuch – Reviewed in 2005

Two Virgin British Import LPs from 1992.

Playing this album I was strongly reminded of one of my all time favorites: Jellyfish’s Spilt Milk. Since that album came out a year after this one, there’s a very good chance they were influenced by this XTC record.

If you like this one you will probably like that one and vice versa.

This is an Older 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.)

(more…)

Harry “Sweets” Edison – Sweetenings

More Harry ’Sweets’ Edison

  • Edison’s superb 1958 release makes its Hot Stamper debut here, boasting Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides
  • The sound on this Roulette original is big, rich and LIVELY, with boatloads of Tubey Magic and three-dimensional space
  • It’s hard to imagine finding a copy with a better first side than this one, and side two is right up there with it
  • True, we did not have a big stack of copies for our shootout, but we recognize a killer pressing when we hear one
  • “Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison added something special to any date in which he took part, but these 1958 sessions he led for Roulette are especially enjoyable…. Edison’s trumpet swings effortlessly through a batch of standards and originals.”

(more…)

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – Disastrous Remasters from MoFi and Direct Disk Labs

More of the Music of Elton John

More Reviews and Commentaries for Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Sonic Grade: F (DD Labs) / D (MoFi)

If you have the Direct Disc Labs half-speed you have one truly awful record in your collection, so sucked out in the midrange, so compressed everywhere, what the hell were they thinking making this rockin’ album sound like that? It’s positively disgraceful. It makes MoFi look like they knew what they doing, and we know that sure isn’t true.

In truth we did not actually have a copy of the MoFi handy for this shootout, but in our defense let us just say that we’ve heard their pressing many times over the course of the last twenty years. It’s better than the DD Labs version but not good enough for me to want to play it — compressed and sucked-out like practically every record they ever made, just not as badly as the DD Labs version.

The most obvious problems with the sound of this album are ones common to many if not most rock records of the era: lack of presence, too much compression, smear, lack of weight from the lower mids on down — we hear lots of Classic Rock records with this litany of shortcomings. But it’s not the fault of the master tape, it’s probably not even the fault of the mastering engineer most of the time. It’s just plain bad pressing quality. The sound simply doesn’t get stamped onto the vinyl right and the result is one or more of the problems above. And if you don’t know how to clean your records properly, forget it, you have virtually no chance of hearing good sound on GYBR.

The Average Copy (more…)