Month: April 2022

Albeniz / Falla / Spain / Reiner

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now

Spain has been an audiophile favorite for a very long time.

Everybody should know it by now, what with both Chesky and Classic Records having remastered it in the 90s, dismally of course, as neither of these companies have ever demonstrated that the slightest sense how lackluster, if not downright awful, the result of their efforts turned out.

No doubt Analogue Productions will see fit to ruin the recording the way they ruined Scheherazade.

This has never been one of the best Living Stereo titles in our experience.

The highest grade I would give it would probably be a B.

“Our experience” is the key phrase in the above sentence. I can’t say there aren’t amazing sounding pressings of the album, it’s simply the case that we have never played one.

If I saw one for cheap I would of course pick it up, but in the modern world of records, that is very unlikely indeed.

(more…)

Albert King – King of the Blues Guitar

More Albert King

More Soul, Blues, and R&B

  • An original Atlantic copy with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on both sides
  • Forget whatever dead-as-a-doornail Heavy Vinyl pressing they’re making these days – the Tubey Magic, size and electric energy of this vintage pressing simply cannot be beat
  • Marks in the vinyl are the nature of the beast with these early pressings – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • “These 17 tunes come from King’s most fertile period, his 1966-68 tenure at Memphis’s Stax Records…. King’s ripe and mellow vocals are a perfect match for the soul-drenched music while his dramatic string bends leap out.” — Marc Greilsamer

(more…)

Does It Seem to You That This Guy Knows Anything About Records? Any Records?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

I had posted one of his videos here under the heading “Does it seem like this guy knows anything about Dark Side of the Moon?”

That was too generous. Apparently he does not know anything about records period. Any records. Records with any titles.

That would include records with the title Led Zeppelin II, the subject of today’s commentary.

This video has to be The. Dumbest. Video. Ever.

(more…)

Tom Port Discusses Robert Brook’s Recent Shootout for Abraxas

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Santana Available Now

Robert Brook has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

If you are new to the audio game, and even if you aren’t, we think you will find much of value there. (If you already think you know it all, his blog will be of little use, but of course neither will mine. You already know it all!)

This link will take you to a comparison Robert Brook carried out between some copies of Abraxas: his own and a Hot Stamper pressing he borrowed from a friend.

I wrote to him about a few issues I had with his commentary.

Dear Robert,

Of course we love it when one of our records gives you the experience you had.

But there are some fine points we must keep in mind, so that our approach is presented as correctly as possible, with nothing that could be construed as hype or misinformation.

To start with, I would not say you can’t hack a hot stamper.

I would say it is very hard.

You could say something like: “Tom says his superior cleaning techniques make it hard to compete with him. If you have a copy with the same stampers as his, his will sound better most of the time simply because the right cleaning noticeably improves the sound’

Which means that you need a different stamper to beat mine. You need the stamper of the record that won our shootout, not the one that came in at 2+!

Anyone can do it is our motto.

It’s hard is also our motto. (We have a lot of mottos.)

We only beat your other copies on one side, so imagine if the copy you heard did not have that one great side? That is something to think about!

(more…)

Barbra Streisand – Stoney End

More Barbra Streisand

More Vintage Columbia Pressings

  • Superb Double Plus (A++) sound or very close to it throughout this original Columbia pressing
  • Amazingly Big, Lively and Tubey Magical, courtesy of the production chops of none other than Richard Perry
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…redefined Streisand as an effective pop/rock singer [and] was so far removed from what Streisand’s fans and her detractors thought her capable of that it stands as one of her major triumphs.”

(more…)

Spending More Time With The Beatles

beatlwitht_x20

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

To find the Hottest Stampers it helps to have piles and piles of minty British pressings. And lots of time on your hands. And lots of help. Fortunately, with a staff of ten and nothing else to do all day, we have all three.

This is a tough album to get to sound right, as long-time readers of our site surely know, but on a good copy it can sound wonderful. This one really delivers, with plenty of presence and energy as well as natural, balanced tonality.

So, What’s Out There?

We’ve heard copies that were smeared, murky, muddy, grainy, or all of the above. Almost all of them had no real magic in the midrange. And of course, we heard tons of copies with the kind of gritty vocals that you’ll find all over the average Parlophone Beatles pressing.

Early or Late Pressing?

So many Parlophone copies would have you think With The Beatles is a gritty, edgy, crude recording — especially if you made the mistake of buying an early pressing.

The early pressings are consistently grittier, edgier and more crude than the later pressings we played.

(more…)

This Lousy Gershwin Set Is on the TAS List?

More of the Music of George Gershwin

A Hall of Shame 3 Record set that had us asking: Why would anyone want to own these awful records? Isn’t the music of George Gershwin better than this?

TAS List or no TAS List, the performances of the works listed below are much too slow to be taken seriously.

This is one of those records that make you wonder what the hell some audiophile reviewers, including Harry Pearson himself, must have been smoking back in the day.

I get that The TAS Super Disc List is about sound, not music, but the sound is not that great here either, and the bargain vinyl is the typical gritty, grainy, noisy crap that VOX records tend to be made with.

(more…)

Julie London – Julie (in Stereo)

More Julie London

More Recordings Engineered by Ted Keep

  • This STUNNING vintage Liberty stereo pressing boasts Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from first note to last – exceptionally quiet vinyl for a Julie London album too (don’t get me started)
  • In-the-room presence, preternaturally breathy vocals, and boatloads of wonderful Tubey Magic
  • This amazing sleeper of a record belongs right up at the top of Ms. London’s oeuvre (25 albums strong) along with Julie Is Her Name – high praise indeed
  • 4 stars: “Usually put into a torch song setting, this release allows London to shed that garment and become jazzy. Instead of being sultry, she becomes dazzling and sparkling. She also becomes more adept at phrasing and timing and takes a risk or two in the tradition of a jazz singer.”
  • If you’re a fan of Julie’s, this is a Top Title from 1957 that we think belongs in your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1957 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

The great Jimmy Rowles plays piano, handled the arrangements and fronts the big group here, taking the music in a wonderfully jazzy direction that suits Julie’s vocal style perfectly. (more…)

Fleetwood Mac – Penguin

More Fleetwood Mac

More Recordings Engineered by Martin Birch

  • This early Reprise LP is a huge step up from most – this copy is full-bodied, smooth and musical – classic Fleetwood Mac sound
  • One of my favorite songs on the album is one of Christine McVie’s best from this period, Did You Ever Love Me – on this pressing it’s rich and sweet exactly the way it should be
  • “Fleetwood Mac’s first album made after the departure of Danny Kirwan features the additions of guitarist Bob Weston and singer Dave Walker… This album gave Fleetwood Mac its best U.S. chart showing yet…”

On the best pressings, the sound is positively JUMPING out of the speakers in a way that is completely unexpected. We often talk about the size of the soundfield on a particular pressing, side to side, bottom to top, and even more often about the energy found on one copy relative to another.

(more…)

Clark Terry – The Happy Horns of Clark Terry

More Clark Terry

More Jazz Recordings

  • Clark Terry’s three horn lineup album returns to the site with superb Double (A++) sound on both sides of this Impulse LP
  • It’s simply bigger, more transparent, less distorted, more three-dimensional and more REAL than most of what we played
  • Credit goes to Rudy Van Gelder once again for the huge space this superbly well-recorded ensemble occupies
  • 4 stars: “This all-star LP has plenty of memorable moments… The lively music is quite enjoyable.”

We dropped the needle on a copy of the album a couple of years ago and immediately we knew it would be a record worthy of a shootout — the sound was big and lively in the best tradition of Rudy Van Gelder’s recordings from the mid-’60s. His sound is the right sound for this style of music, that’s for damn sure.

(more…)