Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills and Nash Available Now
Sonic Grade: B-
Nice enough I suppose, but where’s the Midrange Magic?
The Classic 180g version was a revelation when it came out years ago. Bernie actually cut it pretty darn right. However, his mastering chain cannot compete with the one used on the best vintage pressings.
The evidence for this is overwhelming. There simply is no Bernie-Grundman-cut record that is the equal of the best pressings not cut on his current chain that I have heard over the years.
His old cutting system, the one that cut Stardust and Blue and much of the Contemporary catalog, was KILLER. Wonder what happened to it?
Having said that, the Classic version gets you 70-75% of the way there and gives you quiet vinyl to boot, so it must be appreciated for what it is: a very good reissue, maybe even the best one Classic ever made. But not the real thing. Not even close.
The track to play to hear exactly what I’m talking about is You Don’t Have To Cry. On the best copies the guitars and the tambourine are very clear without being aggressive. The voices should be slightly recessed in the mix, spread out across the center of the stage, and clearly surrounded by the big room the boys are standing in.
The best vintage pressings have a Tubey Magical midrange to die for on this track.
The Classic? Uh… not so much.
If that’s a quality you prize as much as we do here at Better Records, you need the real thing, a vintage pressing.
But not an original. This is an album that has one stamper and one stamper only that wins shootouts, and it is a reissue.
Further Reading
Even as recently as the early 2000s, we were still impressed with many of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings. If we’d never made the progress we’ve worked so hard to make over the course of the last twenty or more years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues so many audiophiles seem impressed by.
We’ll never know of course; that’s a bell that can be unrung. We did the work, we can’t undo it, and the system that resulted from it is merciless in revealing the truth — that these newer pressings are second-rate at best and much more often than not third-rate and even worse.
Some audiophile records sound so bad, I was pissed off enough to create a special list for them.
Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, especially the ones comparing our records to their Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed Mastered counterparts, we know that our customers see things the same way.