Month: June 2022

Cowboy Junkies – Whites Off Earth Now!!

More Cowboy Junkies

More Debut Albums of Interest

  • An outstanding copy of the band’s debut album – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This pressing is well balanced, yet big and lively, with such wonderful clarity in the mids and highs as well as an open and spacious soundfield
  • “Whites Off Earth Now!! establishes the spare country blues sound that took the band to international fame with their next album.”
  • “… it’s fascinating to hear their signature country-on-valium sound develop. Margo Timmins sings beautifully.”

This vintage Latent Recordings 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. (more…)

Love / Self-Titled – Killer Sound from Bruce Botnick

More Love

More Psych Rock

  • An original Gold Label stereo pressing of Love’s debut album with excellent Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout
  • Exceptionally quiet vinyl doesn’t begin to do this one justice – I simply cannot remember a time that a copy with sound this good played this quietly, and we have been doing shootouts for Love for 15 years or more
  • A classic from 1966, a combination of proto-punk and psychedelia featuring “My Little Red Book,” “Hey Joe” and more
  • The first Love album is without a doubt the punchiest, liveliest, most POWERFUL recording in the Love catalog
  • Engineered by none other than Bruce Botnick, here is the kind of massive bottom end weight and energy that we like to call WHOMP
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Love’s debut is both their hardest-rocking early album and their most Byrds-influenced…”

Some of you may not know this music, but it’s a true Must Own Psychedelic Gem from the ’60s, a record no rock collection should be without, along with other groundbreaking albums from the ’60s such as Surrealistic Pillow, The Doors’ debut, the first Spirit album and too many others to list.

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Stevie Ray Vaughan – Forget Layered Depth and Pinpoint Imaging

More of the Music of Stevie Ray Vaughan

Hot Stamper Pressings of Electric Blues Albums

This copy gets Stevie’s room-filling guitar to sound about as rich and powerful as a recording of it can. When playing this record, first make sure the volume is good and loud. Now close your eyes and picture yourself in a blues club, with the volume ten times louder than your stereo will play. Electric Blues played at loud levels in a small club would sound pretty much like this album does, a bit messy but also real.  

If you’re one of those audiophiles who insists on precise soundstaging with layered depth and pinpoint imaging, forget it. That’s not in the cards. The producers and engineers were going for the “live in the studio” sound with this one (and most of his other albums it seems), which means it’s a bit of a jumble image-wise.

But that’s the way you would hear it performed live in a club, so where’s the harm? (more…)

Buffalo Springfield – Self-Titled (Compilation from 1973)

More of the Music of Buffalo Springfield

More Country and Country Rock

Sonic Grade: D

The tonal balance is right on the money on the better pressings, but because this is a compilation, it is made from copies of the master tapes, not real master tapes themselves, so it will always have that blurry, smeary, opaque, airless, sub-generation-tape sound.

Love the music, but you really need to have the real albums to hear these songs at their best.

Hey, that’s what we hear on most of the Heavy Vinyl we audition. Imagine that.

One high point though: the complete nine minute long version of Bluebird. If you see the album for cheap, buy it for that song

A1   For What It’s Worth 3:00
A2   Sit Down, I Think I Love You 2:30
A3   Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing 3:26
A4   Go And Say Goodbye 2:19
A5   Pay The Price 2:35
A6   Burned 2:14
A7   Out Of My Mind 3:05
B1   Mr. Soul 2:35
B2   Bluebird 9:00
B3   Broken Arrow 6:13
B4   Rock ‘N’ Roll Woman 2:44
C1   Expecting To Fly 3:29
C2   Hung Upside Down 3:24
C3   A Child’s Claim To Fame 2:09
C4   Kind Woman 4:10
C5   On The Way Home 2:25
C6   I Am A Child 2:15
D1   Pretty Girl Why 2:24
D2   Special Care 3:30
D3   Uno Mundo 2:00
D4   In The Hour Of Not Quite Rain 3:45
D5   Four Days Gone 2:53
D6   Questions 2:52

Tchaikovsky and the Musical Heritage Society – Bill Kipper Is The Man

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

This is an older review from at least ten years ago and perhaps more. We no longer sell the MHS pressing of this recording, or any MHS pressing for that matter.

We much prefer the Heifetz recording for RCA from 1958. We’ve identified about 170 orchestral recordings that offer the discriminating audiophile the best performances and top quality sound. The right pressings of the Heifetz (the ones with Hot Stampers) have earned a place on that list.

For our review for the MHS pressing of the concerto, we noted:

MHS remastered the original 1967 Melodiya tape in 1979 in order to produce this record, dramatically improving upon the sound of the version that I knew on Angel, which shouldn’t have been too hard as the Angel is not very good.

Wait a minute. Scratch that. MHS didn’t cut the record, an engineer at a mastering house did. Fortunately for us audiophiles, the job fell to none other than Bill Kipper at Masterdisk.

Think what a different audio world it would be if we still had Bill Kipper with us today, along with the amazingly accurate and resolving cutting system he used at Masterdisk.

As far as we can tell, there are no records being produced today that sound remotely as good as this budget subscription disc.

Furthermore, to my knowledge no record this good has been cut for more than thirty years. The world is awash in mediocre remastered records and we want nothing to do with any of them, not when there are so many good vintage pressings still to be discovered and enjoyed.

The likes of Bill Kipper are no longer with us, but we can be thankful that we still have the records he and so many talented others mastered all those years ago, to enjoy now and for countless years to come. Keep in mind that it’s all but impossible to wear out a record these days with modern, properly set up equipment, no matter how often you play it.

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Borodin / Symphony No. 2 / Tchaikovsky / Francesca Da Rimini / Varviso

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Imports on Decca & London

More Classical ‘Sleeper” Recordings We’ve Discovered with Demo Disc Sound

This London Whiteback pressing (CS 6578) has SHOCKINGLY GOOD sound; in many ways it deserves to be called a Demo Disc. It has at least one quality that one virtually never hears on an audiophile reissue: a smooth, natural top end. This record only sounds correct and “real” at louder volumes, in the same way that a live orchestra often sounds a bit lifeless in the quiet passages, only to get exciting, big and powerful when the score calls for it. For this to happen on record you need real dynamics and tonal neutrality.

We have not heard many audiophile reissues pull these things off either, just two of the reasons we no longer carry them.

And you can find all the other reasons on the site easily enough. We can’t stop talking about how disappointing Heavy Vinyl sounds to us now.

We graded both sides AT LEAST A++, a bit vague we admit; we just don’t have enough copies to know if the sound could get much better.

We played a good many vintage classical LPs that day and this was clearly one of the best sounding, so we feel this grade should be accurate, perhaps even conservative.

Credit for the sound must go to the Decca engineers, of course, but also to the hall that the L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande played in, where so many of the great Ansermet recordings were made. This recording is from 1968. Ansermet died in 1969. One imagines that he was perhaps not able to conduct at this stage of his life and turned his wonderful orchestra and hall over to Varviso, a man better known for conducting operas at the time.

Side One – Borodin

At Least A++, with the kind of Golden Age sound that has rarely if ever been realized in the modern era. Big, wide and deep, with smooth, rich orchestral sound, these are the kind of records that let you forget the sound and just enjoy the music. The performance is taken a brisk pace, rarely a bad thing.

More reviews and commentaries for recordings of the Second Symphony.

Side Two – Tchaicovsky

At Least A++, and a lovely work that has never made it to the site in Hot Stamper form before, hint hint.

Rich, with deep bass, big stage, huge space and so 3-D, this is what we love about vintage recordings. And a great performance as well.

Letter of the Week – “I was dumbfounded when the horn blast opening the title track practically leapt out of my speakers.”

More of the Music of The Beatles

More Customer Letters that Extoll the Virtues of Our Beatles LPs

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

Hey Tom,   

Just wanted to say I was blown away by this copy. Having lived with the MoFi pressing since the box set first came out in the 80’s I was dumbfounded when the horn blast opening the title track practically leapt out of my speakers. I am so impressed that I just placed an order for 3 more Hot Stamper Beatles vinyl. It’s time to replace the MoFi.

Honrado L.

Thanks for writing, Honrado.

You’re not the only person who wants to get rid of their half-speed mastered records after playing a Beatles pressing that is mastered in real time and pressed properly.

And, if you are still buying modern pressings that are not half-speed mastered, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl too.

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Buffalo Springfield – Last Time Around

More Buffalo Springfield

  • Relaxed, rich and tubey, yet clear, this is the kind of sound you always wanted from The Buffalo Springfield but had no way to hear, until now
  • Some of the best songs the band ever wrote are right here: I Am A Child, Kind Woman and too many more to list
  • If Buffalo Springfield Again deserves a Five Star rating then Last Time Around does too – it’s equally brilliant, and a real Desert Island Disc for yours truly

These two sides are relaxed, rich and tubey, giving you exactly what you would expect from a Top Quality pressing — without the noise, veiling and distortion that you’re used to hearing on the copies you picked up locally, or the one you mistreated back in the day (didn’t we all?).

When you get hold of the right copy and know how to clean it right, you find that some of these pressings are a damn sight better than the most audiophiles think they are.

The kind of MIDRANGE MAGIC on this pressing let us hear into the music in a way we (and you too I’m guessing) never imagined was possible.

Most copies have no bass, no real top, and are compressed so badly they sound more like cardboard than vinyl. But not this copy. It breaks the mold, revealing to the world (well, our world anyway — the world at Better Records) that those badly recorded Buffalo Springfield records from the ’60s weren’t so badly recorded after all.

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Tom Petty – Full Moon Fever

More Tom Petty

  • Full Moon Fever returns to the site on this original UK pressing that boasts a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple (A+++) side two mated to an excellent Double Plus (A++) side one
  • Big, full-bodied, clean, clear and spacious with a huge bottom end and tons of rock energy
  • Forget the dry, flat domestic LPs – these UK pressings are the only ones with the Tubey Magical richness the music needs
  • 4 1/2 stars: “.…the real reason Full Moon Fever became Petty’s biggest hit is that it boasted a selection of songs that rivaled Damn the Torpedoes. Full Moon Fever didn’t have a weak track… [it] might have been meant as an off-the-cuff detour, but it turned into a minor masterpiece.”

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Passion Flower Is Better Music with Better Sound than For Duke

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pablo Recordings Available Now

This is one of the all time great Pablo sleepers.

Why is no one else writing about records like these? The music is wonderful and the sound is top drawer on the best copies. If you’ve tried and failed with other Pablo Zoot Sims records, fear not: this title is one of the best we have ever played, musically and sonically.

The ensemble is huge, probably at least a dozen pieces at any given time, and all that energy is captured on the best copies with tremendous engineering skill. The lively arrangements are by none other than Benny Carter, a man who knows his jazz. His career started in the ’20s(!) and lasted into this century if you can believe it. I consider myself fortunate to have seen him play locally when he was more than 90 years old. He stlll had it, kind of.

What to Listen For

Clarity and transients.

Thickness and fatness were common problems with Passion Flower — many copies were overly rich and somewhat opaque. It’s not necessarily a bad sound, but it becomes more and more irritating as you find yourself struggling to hear into the musical space of the studio. Smear is a problem too; many copies were lacking the transient information of the best.

In a nutshell, our Hot Stamper pressings are the most transparent copies that are tonally correct, with the least amount of smear.

Better Sound than a Direct Disc?

Musically Passion Flower is everything that For Duke isn’t, and although it may not be a Direct to Disc recording, it sure sounds better to these ears than that pricey TAS List Super Disc. The insufferably dead room For Duke was recorded in has forever ruined the album for me. I can’t stand that sound (which helps explain our aversion to Heavy Vinyl around these parts — the sound of the new remasters is consistently lacking in space, ambience and three-dimensionality).

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