Month: January 2022

Chico Hamilton – The Further Adventures of El Chico

More Chico Hamilton

More of Our Favorite Records on Impulse

  • Insanely good Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish and the first copy to ever hit the site! 
  • These sides, recorded brilliantly by one of our favorite engineers, Bob Simpson, are big, full-bodied and present, with plenty of Tubey Magic and set on a a huge, three-dimensional soundstage
  • The record features the amazing Gabor Szabo along with other top players like Clark Terry and Ron Carter
  • Great pop jazz with excellent sound; if you’re a fan of Gabor Szabo, this music will be right up your alley

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What Other Live Rock Record Sounds This Good?

Hot Stamper Pressings of British Blues Rock Albums Available Now

One of the best — if not THE best — rock concert albums we have ever heard. Can you imagine if Frampton Comes Alive sounded like this? If you want to hear some smokin’ Peter Frampton guitar work from the days when he was with the band, this album captures that sound better than any of their studio releases, and far better than FCA on even the best copies.

Grungy guitars that jump out of the speakers, prodigious amounts of punchy deep bass, dynamic vocals and drum work — the best pressings of Rockin’ The Fillmore have more firepower than any live recording we’ve ever heard.

We know about quite a few records that rock this hard. We seek them out, and we know how to play them.

Who knew?  We didn’t, of course, until not that many years ago (2014 maybe?). But we are in the business of finding these things out. We get paid by our customers to find them the best sounding pressings in the world. It’s our job and we take it very seriously.

Did any audiophile reviewers ever play the album and report on its amazing sound? Not that we are aware of.

Do they have the kind of playback systems — the big rooms, the big speakers, the freedom from compression and artificiality — that are required to get the most from a recording such as this one?

Doubtful. Unlikely in the extreme even.

They don’t know how good a record like this can sound because they aren’t able to play it the way it needs to be played.

And when was the last time you read a review of a record that hadn’t just been reissued on Heavy Vinyl?

There was a time when audiophile reviewers wrote about exceptionally good sounding vintage pressings they had come across. Harry Pearson comes immediately to mind, but there were many others following his lead. Now it seems few of them can be bothered. More’s the pity.

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Letter of the Week – “The overall tonal balance is fantastic. Big, room filling sound.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jackson Browne Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

I am taking my time going through all my hot stampers one by one. Still waiting for my cartridge to break in so I know things will only get better!

This album is amazing. I forgot how good it was. Only had the cassette back in the day and loved playing it in the car. The overall tonal balance is fantastic. Big, room filling sound. Jackson’s voice is just so well centered in the mix. I think your rating may have been a bit conservative. Hard to believe it can sound much better. Side 2 is probably my favorite and sounds even better than side 1 to my ears–but it is close. Another winner for sure!

Thanks!

Rob

Rob,

Glad you liked it!

As for the notes about the grades, we don’t keep them around, but we liked two copies better than that one, which just goes to show you can never know how good it can get until it gets that good. That is the only way to know: to hear it for yourself. That is what shootouts are for.

This is what the forum posters fail to understand. They think they have a Hot Stamper when what they actually have (maybe!) is a good sounding record. They don’t know how amazing the record can sound — so much more amazing than the one they own, probably — so they assume they have something good, maybe even the best.

They probably do not, but who really knows? The shootout would supply the data they need to support their conclusions, and since they could not be bothered to conduct one, they have no data to back up their opinions.

The “probably” you see in the above two sentences is there for a good reason. We make a point of being clear about what we can know and we cannot know, and we cannot know what a record sounds like until we play it.

This is obviously true for those of us who try to listen as critically as possible, but we also know that it is just as important to think about records the right way.

Mistaken thinking keeps audiophiles from making progress in this hobby just as much as bad equipment and bad records do.

When it comes to stampers, labels, mastering credits, country of origin and the like, we make a point of revealing very little of this information on the site, for a number of good reasons we discuss here.

The idea that the stampers are entirely responsible for the quality of any given record’s sound is a mistaken idea, and a rather convenient one when you stop to think about it. Audiophiles, like most everybody else on this planet, want answers.

But in the world of records, there aren’t many.

There is only the hard work that it takes to come up with the best answer you can under your present circumstances, and by that we mean: your present equipment, your present tweaks, your present room, your present electrical quality, your present listening skills, your present table setup, et cetera, et cetera.

Not to mention the present condition of your ears.

With every change to your system, the record you used to like the best could turn out to be second-rate compared to the record you used to think was second-rate but has now become first-rate. What changed? Who knows?

This, of course, drives most audiophiles crazy, so they ignore or downplay their own inconvenient findings. Instead they refuse to believe their own two ears!

The Biz

Being in the shootout business means we have no way to avoid such realities, which is why it is so easy for us to accept them.

The amateurs and professionals alike who review records for audiophiles want there to be clear-cut answers for every album they write about. Uncertainty and trade-offs upset them no end.

We recognized twenty years ago that the empirical pursuit of record knowledge, practiced scientifically, must be understood as incomplete, imperfect, and provisional.

That is not going to change no matter how upsetting anyone may find it.

Thanks for writing,

Best, TP

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Aerosmith – Done With Mirrors

More Aerosmith

  • Big and solid guitars, with great bass, full vocals, and tons of Tubey Magic – this the way to hear the band
  • 4 stars: “Unlike the records that preceded it, Done with Mirrors is powered by the same smart-assed lyrics and filthy guitars that formed the core of Aerosmith’s best songs… it marks the beginning of their remarkable comeback.”

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The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan – Our Favorite from His Early Days

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bob Dylan Available Now

The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan is clearly our favorite of the early Dylan albums for both music and sound. We’re picking up both mono and stereo copies when we see them clean (which is rare) and both the mono mix and the stereo mix can sound out of this world.

Hearing these great songs sound so intimate and lifelike on a top-quality pressing can be a sublime experience. We should know; we enjoyed the hell out of this very copy.

The best sides are amazingly spacious, full-bodied, natural and clear with great presence.

It’s clear these classic songs have stood the test of time: Blowin’ in the Wind; Girl from the North Country; Masters of War; A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall; Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right and many more. A Folk Classic from 1963 that should appeal to any fan of early Dylan.

Did I mention all the great songs?

  • Blowin’ in the Wind
  • Girl from the North Country
  • Masters of War
  • A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
  • Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
  • Bob Dylan’s Dream
  • Talking World War III Blues

… and five more

These modern classics make this Dylan album, his second, clearly the strongest of his first four. You have to wait for his fifth album, Bringing It All Back Home, to find material this consistently brilliant and groundbreaking.

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Marty Robbins – Portrait of Marty

More Country and Country Rock

  • A KILLER sounding copy with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from the first note to the last
  • The kind of Tubey Magical, tonally correct, spacious sound on this stereo 360 pressing from 1962 is nothing less than an audiophile THRILL
  • The Analog sound here makes a mockery of even the most advanced digital playback systems, including the ones that haven’t been invented yet!
  • If you’re a fan of Marty’s, this vintage record from 1962 belongs in your collection.

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Huey Lewis and The News – Fore!

More Huey Lewis and The News

  • The band’s 1986 follow-up to Sports finally arrives on the site with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or very close to it on both sides
  • The open, spacious soundstage and full-bodied tonality here are obvious for all to hear – huge, punchy, lively and rockin’ throughout
  • This copy will show you just how big, lively and POWERFUL this music can be on the right pressing
  • “This is by far one of the absolute best releases by Huey Lewis & the News. Powerful, hard-hitting, and quite emotional. . . for those of you who like hard-hitting, powerful rock music from the ’80s era.”

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Chabrier / Espana & more / Bernstein

More of the Music of Emmanual Chabrier

The Chabrier side of this 360 label record has SUPER HOT STAMPER sound, which is positively SHOCKING for a Columbia recording. Dry, shrill and lean, most Columbia pressings don’t last ten seconds on our turntable these days — but this one sure did! Played it all the way through as a matter of fact. (We love Espana. Who doesn’t?)

Is it as rich and tubey magical as the best Londons, RCAs and Vanguards from the Golden Age? No, not really — that would be a bit much to expect. It does have some of that sound, and that alone is remarkable considering how few Columbia pressings have any at all. (more…)

ZZ Top – Afterburner

More ZZ Top

  • Bass and body are key to the best pressings, along with Rock and Roll energy, and here you will find plenty of all three
  • A syth-rock followup to Eliminator featuring hits including “Sleeping Bag,” “Stages,” and “Rough Boy”
  • “Afterburner presented ZZ Top as dystopian blade runners, ascending to the sterile environs of their space compound instead of running around the desert killin’ varmints.”
  • If you’re a ZZ Top fan, a killer copy of their album from 1985 might just need a home in your collection

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Chopin, Rachmaninoff et al. / Richter

More of the Music of Sergei Rachmaninoff

  • This original White Dog Stereo pressing (just missed the cutoff for “Living Stereo” but the sound is awesome anyway) boasts STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or very close to it on both sides
  • A WONDERFUL collection of solo piano works performed by one of our favorite pianists, Sviatoslav Richter
  • The piano is present and clear, with no practically no smear whatsoever – both sides are dynamic and open with plenty of weight
  • Recorded live in concert on December 26, 1960, at Carnegie Hall in New York, and December 28, 1960, at Mosque Hall in Newark

This vintage RCA pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

The Piano

On the transparent and tonally correct copies it is clear and full-bodied. The piano in a solo recording such as this often makes for a good test.

How easily can you see it and how much like a real piano does it sound? 

If you have full-range speakers some of the qualities you may recognize in the sound of the piano are WEIGHT and WARMTH. The piano is not hard, brittle or tinkly. Instead, the best copies show you a wonderfully full-bodied, warm, rich, smooth piano, one which sounds remarkably like the ones we’ve all heard countless times in piano bars and restaurants.

In other words like a real piano, not a recorded one. Bad mastering can ruin the sound, and often does, along with worn-out stampers and bad vinyl and five-gram needles that scrape off the high frequencies. But some copies survive all such hazards. They manage to reproduce the full spectrum of the piano’s wide range on vintage vinyl, showing us the kind of sound we simply cannot find any other way.

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