Month: March 2021

Grand Funk Railroad – Closer To Home

More Grand Funk Railroad

  • You’ll find Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides of this KILLER Grand Funk pressing
  • Closer to Home is supposed to be a hard rockin’ Power Trio record, and on the better pressings such as this one that’s exactly what the hell it is!
  • A tough record to find in audiophile playing condition these days – it took us years to get this shootout going
  • 4 stars: “… the record that really broke them through to the level of metal masters such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath … instead of the excess force of other bands, such as MC5, Grand Funk Railroad are able to retain the often-elusive melodic element to their heavy compositions.”

Our best Hot Stamper pressings are BIGGER and BOLDER sounding than we ever expected.

You get more ambience, natural tape hiss, loads of energy, and more. Most copies were too murky, smeary and opaque to be taken seriously but this one was dramatically cleaner and clearer, without sacrificing the richness and warmth of vintage 1970  analog in the least. (more…)

Art Blakey – Selections From “Golden Boy”

More Art Blakey

  • An amazing sounding copy with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on the second side and solid Double Plus (A++) sound on the first
  • Both sides here are incredibly big, rich, present and musical with tons of Tubey Magic, a lovely bottom end, and plenty of space around all of the players
  • “Based off the play, written by Clifford Odets and William Gibson, Golden Boy was a socially conscious musical about a Harlem prize-fighter trying to escape his working class roots. A somewhat obscure Blakey release, Golden Boy nonetheless features plenty of improvisatory, hard bop firepower.” 

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Festival of Russian Music – Reviewed in 2008

Living Stereo Orchestral Titles Available Now

200+ Reviews of Living Stereo Records

Excellent sound, more mid-hall than some other RCAs. This is the Victrola version of the Shaded Dog of Festival.

Some of these pieces are amazing in Reiner’s hands, Marche Slave, for example.

Russlan and Ludmilla is also superb here.

The sound is dynamic and powerful with very little distortion or noticeable compression.

Reiner is excellent on music like this.

It should go without saying that this pressing kills the awful Classic Records pressing.

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Tchaikovsky – Concerto for Violin & Orchestra / Oistrakh

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

More Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin

  • Presenting THE sleeper Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto recording of the (previous) century
  • One of the better sounding copies we played with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound throughout
  • The orchestra is big, rich and tubey, yet the dynamics and transparency are first rate
  • One of the most shockingly REAL and full-bodied violins we have yet to hear on record

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ZZ Top – Tres Hombres

More ZZ Top

  • An outstanding copy of Tres Hombres with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout
  • This is the right sound for this album – take it from us, it is not easy to find a copy with the size, clarity, balance and energy of this vintage pressing
  • A very difficult record to find with audiophile playing surfaces these days – this is one of the few “survivors” to have come our way over the last five years or so
  • 4 1/2 stars: “ZZ Top finally got their low-down, cheerfully sleazy blooze-n-boogie right on this, their third album. As their sound gelled, producer Bill Ham discovered how to record the trio so simply that they sound indestructible, and the group brought the best set of songs they’d ever have to the table.”

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Jimmy Witherspoon – The Blues Is Now

More Jimmy Witherspoon

  • Witherspoon’s wonderful 1967 release makes its Hot Stamper debut with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from first note to last
  • Spacious and transparent, this copy has the three-dimensional soundstaging and natural vocal reproduction that makes these kinds of records such a joy to play (and in the process a record this good makes a mockery of the veiled, lifeless, ambience-free sound of the modern Heavy Vinyl reissue)
  • 4 stars: “The Blues Is Now is arguably the finest of these [late ’60s Verve] recordings, and Witherspoon’s voice is in top form and hugely expressive. A late-night blues classic, this is Witherspoon at his most relaxed and assured and is a joy to listen to.”

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Sarah Vaughan and Count Basie – Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan

More Sarah Vaughan

More Count Basie

  • A KILLER copy of this superb collaboration with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on side two mated with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound on side one
  • On a copy this good, Vaughan will appear as a living, breathing person right in your very own listening room – we call that “the breath of life,” and this record has it in spades
  • Here is what’s best about vintage analog – sound that is exceptionally spacious and three-dimensional, relaxed, full-bodied and natural
  • 4 stars: ” Basie’s Orchestra and pianist Kirk Stuart are purely in a supporting role behind the magnificent voice of Sarah Vaughan… her wide range and impeccable musicianship carry the day.”

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The Recordings of Tony Bennett – These Are Some that Didn’t Make the Grade

More of the Music of Tony Bennett

When we last played them, nothing about these two titles was impressive. Certainly not the sound. If you’re a die-hard fan and you see one or the other for cheap, by all means, pick them up.

Those of you looking for top quality vintage vinyl should stick to the man’s better albums, of which there are some but they are very hard to come by in audiophile playing condition.

We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a public service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.

You can find these two in our Hall of Shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound. Some of these records may have passable sonics, but we found the music less than compelling.  These are also records you can safely avoid.

We also have an Audiophile Record Hall of Shame for records that were marketed to audiophiles for their putatively superior sound. If you’ve spent any time on this blog at all, you know that these records are some of the worst sounding pressings we have ever had the displeasure to play.

We routinely play them in our Hot Stamper Shootouts against the vintage records that we offer, and are often surprised at just how bad an “audiophile record” can sound and still be considered an “audiophile record.”

Harry “Sweets” Edison & Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis / Simply Sweets – A Sleeper from Pablo

Another Record We’ve Discovered with (Potentially) Excellent Sound…

and One We Will Probably Never Shootout Again

  • Some records never justified the time and money required to find Hot Stamper pressings of them in order to make it worth our while to do them again. This is one such album, and the link above will take you to many more.
  • The sound of this superb jazz quintet is big, lively, open and clear with Tubey Magical richness
  • The legendary engineer Val Valentin put this one on tape, brilliantly – he’s the man behind some of our All Time Pablo favorites
  • “Trumpeter Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison and tenor saxophonist Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis always made a potent pair. They both possessed immediately identifiable sounds, were veterans of Count Basie’s Orchestra and never had any difficulty swinging.” — Allmusic

Both sides of this outstanding pressing are big, rich, tubey and clear. Few other copies in our shootout held this kind of sound.

Titles such as this one are the reason we put so much time and money into hunting down and auditioning every Pablo jazz record we can get our hands on — because some of them sound like this one. Who else was recording jazz this good in the late ’70s and well into the ’80s?

And don’t say Concord. There are maybe five great sounding records on that label. Pablo has ten or twenty times that many, and that’s a conservative estimate. We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Norman Granz for starting the Pablo label and keeping the quality as high as he did. (more…)