Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Available Now
If you’re a fan of Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s fifth album, and you know, or at least suspect, that the British original pressings are more than likely to be better sounding than most, you might find yourself in a bit of a quandary, pocketbook-wise.
Early British pressings in audiophile playing condition aren’t easy to find, and they don’t tend to be cheap when you do find them.
Ah, but there is a fairly cheap and exceptionally easy solution: just buy the Shout Heavy Vinyl reissue from 2008.
It says it’s made from the master tape, it has a replica of the original packaging, and even comes with a poster.
What could go wrong?
The sound could be shit — NFG in our shorthand — that’s what could go wrong.
- The top end could be overly-textured, tizzy and hot, the kind that constantly calls attention to itself.
- The bass could be smeary and thick.
- And the overall presentation of the music could be veiled and recessed.
Alas, the money you thought you were saving buying this potentially wonderful flat, quiet pressing made from the master tapes ends up flushed down the tubes. Now what?
Now you have to do what you should have done to begin with: find yourself a real British pressing.
Or even a French one. Surprisingly, the French Manticore pressings can be very good. They are not competitive with the better Brits, but if you saw one for cheap and picked it up, you might like it enough to keep it.
I can’t remember ever playing any other French pressing that wasn’t awful. The French Beatles pressings are terrible sounding. I should know, I bought a bunch of them without reading the label carefully. I had no idea there were 70s Parlophone pressings that looked just like the British ones but were made in France.
Shout
We don’t know anything about this label, but we do know the pressing they released of this album sounds a lot like the hundreds of other Heavy Vinyl pressings we have taken the time to put into a shootout. You can read all about them below.
Heavy Vinyl
Here are some of our reviews and commentaries concerning the many Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years, well over 200 at this stage of the game.
Even as recently as the early 2000s we were still somewhat impressed with many of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings. If we had never made the progress we’ve worked so hard to make over the course of the last twenty or more years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues so many audiophiles seem impressed by.
Some audiophile records sound have such poor sound, they had me so pissed off I was motivated to create a special ring of hell for them.
Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, especially the ones comparing our records to their Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered counterparts, we know that our customers see things the same way.
Further Reading