Month: June 2021

The Ramsey Lewis Trio – Down To Earth

More Ramsey Lewis

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

  • Down To Earth finally makes it to the site with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish
  • A truly superb recording with huge, spacious, dynamic, lively sound – Tubey Magical richness is a big plus too
  • As soon as the needle hit the groove on a copy we had picked up locally we knew the sound was top notch – the excellent music was a plus as well (!)
  • 4 stars: “Their concise interpretations (only two songs are longer than 3:15) feature swinging solos by Lewis and respect for the melodies. The music is quite accessible while still being jazz oriented. Worth picking up.”

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Jazz Giant – Is the OJC Really 100x Worse?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

The OJC versions of Contemporary Records are typically thin and somewhat opaque, as well as tizzy up top, the kind of sound one often hears on CDs (and that CD lovers for some reason never seem to notice, or bothered by, who can say?).

Some OJC pressings, however, can be excellent — when you are lucky enough to chance upon the right copy.

The pressings that were mastered and put out by Contemporary in the mid-70s (until they were bought by Fantasy) are almost always superior to the OJCs, but these rules of thumb break down so badly and so often that the only workable approach is just to play as many different copies of the album as you can get your hands on and simply let them sort themselves out sonically.

This of course is exactly how we conduct our shootouts. We make a lot of mistakes, but when all is said and done, we rarely fail to come up with the goods, the goods being phenomenal sounding pressings of important music, pressings that are dramatically superior to any others.

Although we’ve liked the OJC of Jazz Giant in the past, last time around the OJC versions were quite a bit thinner, smaller and less energetic than our real Contemporary stereo pressings. They were a big step down from our killer Shootout Winner.

The notes for that copy read “100x better” if that tells you anything (!)

A clear case of live and learn.

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Peter Gabriel’s So – An Overview

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Peter Gabriel Available Now

We wrote this about a killer copy that came our way years ago:

Here is a copy of So with the big and bold Peter Gabriel sound we love.

If you want your art rock to actually rock as well as be arty, this is the copy for you.

It’s not a perfect recording by any means, but when it sounds this good you can just forget its shortcomings and marvel at how consistently good the material and the production are.

No Mean Feat

It’s exceptionally hard to find good sounding copies of this album. With a digital recording such as this, the margin for mastering error is very slim. Most copies just aren’t worth the vinyl they’re pressed on. More often than not they will sound harsh, gritty, grainy, edgy, and thin.

We did a shootout many years ago that taught us a few things. The most surprising finding? The Brit copy I had in my own collection sucked — how about that! As a rule, I like the Brit pressings best for PG, but that rule got broken after playing all these domestic copies, some of which really sound good, clearly better than the Brits we had on hand.

Are rules made to be broken?

Yes they are.

This is a digital recording, and most of the time it is BRIGHT, SPITTY and GRAINY the way digital recordings tend to be, which plays right into the prejudices of most audiophiles for the “100% analog” approach they favor.

After hearing a bad copy, what audiophile wouldn’t conclude that all copies will have these bad qualities?

After all, it’s digital. It can’t be fixed simply by putting it on vinyl.

Ah, but that’s where logic breaks down. Proper mastering can ameliorate many if not most of a recording’s shortcomings. When we say Hot Stampers, we are talking about high-quality mastering doing exactly that.

Mass Produced Plastic Problems

But of course the mastering is only one part of the puzzle. I have multiple copies with the same stampers. Some of them are terrible, some of them are wonderful — you just can’t rely on the numbers to guide you with a piece of mass-produced plastic like this. You have no choice but to play the record to know what it sounds like. (And that’s a good thing. Keeps you honest. There’s no “cheating” when you have nothing to go by but the sound.)

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Fred Plaut Is One of Our Favorite Engineers

More Recordings by Fred Plaut

Reviews and Commentaries for the Recordings of Fred Plaut

Fred Plaut is one of our favorite recording and mixing engineers. Click on the link to find our in-stock Fred Plaut engineered or produced albums, along with plenty of our famous commentaries. 

Frederick “Fred” Plaut was a recording engineer and amateur photographer. He was employed by Columbia Records during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, eventually becoming the label’s chief engineer.

Plaut engineered sessions for what would result in many of Columbia’s most famous albums, including the original cast recordings of South Pacific, My Fair Lady, and West Side Story, jazz LPs Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis, Time Out by Dave Brubeck, Mingus Ah Um and Mingus Dynasty by Charles Mingus.

Wikipedia

Further Reading

Listening for Tubey Magic, Track by Track on Straight from the Heart

More of the Music of John Klemmer

Presenting another entry in our extensive Listening in Depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Straight from the Heart. Here are more albums currently on our site with similar Track by Track breakdowns.

The best copies give you dynamics and immediacy like you have rarely heard outside of the live event.

Hell, this record IS live; it’s live in the studio. It’s a direct to disc recording, what else could it be?

There is simply nothing getting in the way of the music. If you have the system for it, you can recreate the live sound of this session in a way that few other recordings allow you to do.

This copy had one quality not heard on most of the others: Tubey Magic. The sound is rich and full-bodied, practically free of grit and grain – this is the kind of sound one hears occasionally on the best tube equipment and practically nowhere else. Of course this is an all-transistor affair, but tubey sound is what ended up on the record, so go figure.

Many copies were slightly lean, making the sax a bit aggressive in places. The killer copies fill out the horn sound, giving it the needed weight and body that the real instrument would have, without adding a euphonically artificial richness that the real instrument wouldn’t.

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The Definitive Vinyl Version? Perhaps There Is a Third Way

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Available Now

If I had to choose one record that separates the men from the boys, the stereos that really work from the typical audiophile system you might read about in the magazines or hear at an audio show or high-end salon, Blue would make a darn good choice.

The problem there is that you have to be one serious record collector to have a great copy of Blue. But good pressings are out there, if you can clean and play them properly. This is exactly why we created a game you can play with Blue.

Naturally we are happy to do the shootouts for you and charge you the pretty penny the winners command, but for those of you who want to find out what’s wrong with the new Blue from Rhino and don’t want to buy a Hot Stamper from us, there is a third way: Blue, the game.

Finding a killer pressing of Blue may be difficult but it’s definitely doable. We are happy to help you get there, but the unfortunate reality is that most of the work has to be done by you.

Playing The Blue Game is designed to help you get started.

Further Reading

Jackson Browne – Hold Out

More Jackson Browne

More Singer-Songwriter Albums

  • Jackson Browne’s sixth album finally returns to the site with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish
  • Big, rich, energetic, with tons of Analog Tubey Magic, this early pressing has exactly the right sound for this music
  • “An exploration of the pull of work. stardom and bittersweet expectations.” – Rolling Stone

We had a huge stack of copies but most of them left us entirely cold. A mediocre copy of The Pretender is still a decent sounding record, but the average pressing of this one is just not going to get the job done. We suffered through some of the blandest records to hit the table in ages in the shootout, but I’m pleased to report that a small group of copies actually managed to impress.

So many copies we played were just thick and veiled, keeping Jackson’s vocals in the speakers stuck in a cloudy haze. Most of our copies lacked texture entirely, which really sucked the life out of the music. It’s a good thing this album sold so well in its day, because it took a TON of copies to find a few that actually sounded like the Jackson Browne we know and love from The Pretender, Late For The Sky and the wonderful first album. (more…)

Looking for 5 Star Albums? We’ve Got Hot Stamper Pressings of 100+

beck_truth_1610_1302710570Hot Stamper Allmusic Five Star Albums in Stock

Five Star Albums We’ve Reviewed

Like Truth here.

The soundstage is absolutely HUGE, while the presence and transparency of this copy go way beyond most pressings. Great rock and roll energy too of course — without that you have nothing on this album.

Note how spacious, big, full-bodied and DYNAMIC side one is. That’s why it’s White Hot. I am pleased to report that the whomp factor on this side was nothing short of MASSIVE. With tons of bass this side has what it takes to make the music ROCK.

One of the most surprising things we learned in our first big shootout from 2014 was how well recorded the album is. It’s yet another triumph from one of our favorite engineers, Ken Scott.

In many ways it sounds like the first Zep album, and that’s a good thing. The sound is a perfect fit for the music. In recent interviews Jeff Beck has been saying that Jimmy Page stole his idea for a Heavy Rock Band playing electrified blues. Based on the evidence found on the two sides of this very album I would say he has a point.

Keith Jarrett / Solo-Concerts (3 LP Box Set) – Reviewed in 2010

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

This is a very nice looking ECM Promo 3 LP set with Virtually No Sign of Play (VNSOP). The set comes with a 13-page booklet containing extensive liner notes and photographs.

We prefer the sound of these domestic pressings to the imports we’ve played.    (more…)

The Lonely Hours on Classic Records

More of the Music of Sarah Vaughan

Classic Records remastered this album back in the day, and I can see why: the average pressing on Roulette is borderline unlistenable.

Of course we didn’t know that when we started this shootout. We had found a nice sounding copy and subsequently went on the hunt for more. Little did we know how wide the variation in sound quality we would find on the original Orange Label pressings.

There was simply no denying that many of the copies we played were just too thin, shrill and pinched in the midrange to be of any interest to our audiophile customers.

As mediocre as Bernie’s Classic cutting may be, it’s still better than the average Roulette original one might throw on the turntable.

And you can forget the monos completely; they were by far the worst sounding of them all.

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