The guitars on this record are a true test of stereo fidelity. … most of the pressings of this record do not get the guitars to sound right. … on a copy with a bit too much top end they will have an unnatural hi-fi-ish sparkle. 

This kind of sparkle can be heard on many records Mobile Fidelity made in the ’70s and ’80s. Tea for the Tillerman, Sundown, Year of the Cat, Finger Paintings, Byrd at the Gate, Quarter Moon in a 10 Cent Town — the list of MoFis with sparkling acoustic guitars would be very long indeed, and these are just the records with prominent acoustic guitars!

(On a side note, if you want a very different sounding Mobile Fidelity record, try anything mastered by Jack Hunt. They are every bit as wrong, but in the tonally opposite direction: murky, fat and way too smooth. This is the sound favored by another audiophile label, this one, and the fact that audiophiles actually buy into this kind of third-rate sound is confounding to say the least.)

Next time you drop the needle on a Mobile Fidelity record — one of the ones pressed in Japan and mastered by Stan Ricker; the Anadisq series tends to have the opposite problem, no top end at all — listen carefully to the acoustic guitars and tell me if you don’t think they sound a tad sparkly.

We’ve all heard acoustic guitars up close, at parties and coffee shops and what-have-you. They don’t really sound like that, do they? I should hope not.

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