The New York Times review for these performances called them “matchless” and we see no reason to disagree! With Super Hot Stamper sound for No. 100, “Military”, we’re confident you will have a very hard time finding better sound and music from Haydn than is found on this original Black Label Vanguard Stereophonic Demonstration Disc.
Side one, containing Symphony No. 100, “Military,” is smooth and rich and full of tubey magic, the kind of analog sound that has not been recorded for more than thirty years. Because the top end is not boosted and phony like most audiophile pressings, you can play a record like this at much more realistic levels without fatigue or harshness.
Try that with the average Reference or Telarc.
The sound is a bit distant, mid-hall we would call it, but wide and full of depth the way these vintage recordings often are.
Side two has Symphony No. 101, “Clock”, another famous work from the master of the form and well-played by Mogens Woldike and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra.
This side suffers from a problem endemic to vintage pressings from all eras: smear. There is a notable loss of texture to the strings on side two compared to side one.
More Entries from Tom’s Audiophile Notebook
The Riverside pressings we’ve auditioned of both The Thelonious Monk Orchestra – At Town Hall and Thelonious Monk Quartet Plus Two – At The Blackhawk were just awful sounding.
The OJC reissues of both albums from the 80s, although better, were not overflowing with the rich, natural, relaxed analog sound we were looking for either.
Ah, but a few years back (2015, maybe?) we happened to drop the needle on one of these Monk Milestone Two-Fers. Here was the sound we were looking for and had had so little luck finding up until then.
Which prompts the question that should be on the mind of every audiophile:
What are the rules for collecting records with the best sound quality?
The answer, of course, is that there are no such rules and there never will be.
There is only trial and error. Our full-time staff has been running trials — we call them shootouts and needle drops — for more than twenty years now, with far more errors than successes. Such is the nature of records.
If you’re a fan of Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, Nick Lowe, Joe Jackson and a few other lesser-knowns from this era, Squeeze is the band for you. I put them right up there with Elvis Costello and Peter Gabriel in the pantheon of Best British Pop Music Bands of All Time.
Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti has long been a favorite album of mine, a Desert Island Disc if you will, with some of the most powerfully produced, intelligently written and passionately performed songs in the entire Squeeze canon.
There’s plenty of Tubey Magical richness and smoothness on the best British pressings — such as this one — qualities the domestic pressings are sorely lacking, having been mastered from dub tapes. If you want to hear this music right on vinyl, it’s British or nothing, and with one of our Hot Stamper pressings it’s British and everything — everything that’s good about this recording is captured on these sides.
What to Listen For
The overall sound needs to be rich and tubey, not dry, thin or modern.
Clarity and space are nice but not if they come at the expense of the smooth, rich, natural sound of tubes (whether there are tubes in the chain or not).
For more What to Listen For advice on other titles we have auditioned, please click here.
This record sounds best to us this way:
For more modestly helpful title-specific advice, click here.
We finally pulled together enough clean copies for a big shootout recently and most of them sounded the way you’d probably expect — thin, bright, and grainy. But not this one! It was doing pretty much everything we wanted it to, giving you the kind of life and energy this music needs to work its magic.
We were impressed with how rich and punchy this copy sounded after hearing dozens of dry, thin, lifeless pressings over the years. Once we had heard that at least one copy sound good we proceeded to gather up every LP we could get our hands on and make this shootout happen.
Unfortunately, most of what we ended up playing had the kind of mediocre sound we had been suffering through for decades. The best copies had real energy, surprising dynamics, and lots of that ’70s Tubey Magic we love so much and never tire of talking about. (It’s also a sound that you will have a very hard time finding on most Heavy Vinyl pressings being made these days, as you doubtless know.)
The best pressings have (relatively; this is still Joe Walsh album we’re talking about) rich, warm guitars and vocals, supported by tight, punchy bass. Most copies were far less energetic and dynamic than this one. Excellent transparency as well.
All in all, this is pretty much as good as it gets for Joe Walsh in 1974. The very next year he would become an Eagle and help those boys knock it out of the park with Hotel California, their indisputable Magnum Opus.
Hot Stamper Pressings of Psych Rock Albums Available Now
This is a very old review. The sound of this “greatest hits” compilation, on even the best copies, is unlikely to be good enough to qualify for Hot Stamper status these days.
We will never really know of course, as we no longer buy these pressings or take the time to clean and play them.
Love is a shockingly well-recorded band, one that deserves to be heard on top quality vintage pressings.
Our review from way back when:
This album was made from dub tapes and has some of that dubby sound (smeary, veiled, lacking in space), but in its defense we can say that it was very well mastered from those copy tapes and for the casual fan of the band is worth picking up if the price is right.
We had a chance to shootout a handful of copies recently and didn’t hear any others that could compete with this Elektra Original Pressing. We are HUGE fans of Love and this copy will show you why.