Month: October 2024

Al Stewart – Past, Present & Future

More Al Stewart

More British Folk Rock

  • With INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades from top to bottom, we guarantee you’ve never heard Past, Present & Future sound this good – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Both sides of this original UK pressing are rich and Tubey Magical, with powerful, note-like bass, incredible transparency and plenty of energy
  • We shot out a number of other imports and the midrange presence, bass, and dynamics on this outstanding copy placed it head and shoulders above the competition
  • Don’t waste your money on the sub-generation domestic pressings, they are clearly made from dubbed tapes
  • “…the record where Al Stewart truly begins to discover his voice [and] finally found his muse, focusing his songwriting and intent to a greater extent than ever before.”

It took us ages to track down copies of this album that didn’t sound flat, boring, and stuck in the speakers. We played a large number of Brit and domestic copies, and while both versions can sound lovely on the best pressings, there are certainly plenty of bad sounding versions out there from both countries.

This is the album that comes before Modern Times, Year Of The Cat and Time Passages in the Al Stewart discography, so if you’re a fan of any of those albums we imagine you’ll find a lot to like here.

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Sterling Cut By Far the Best Sounding Pressings of I’m Ready

Hot Stamper Pressings of Soul, Blues, R&B, etc. Available Now

Forget the reissue copies that come in the cover you see to the left, the one with a thin black border.

If you want to hear this album right, a Hot Stamper early domestic pressing is the only way to go.

And take it from us, you need to see the Sterling mark in the dead wax of your pressing to have any hope of hearing audiophile-quality sound.

As you can see from the notes above, the two reissue non-Sterling copies we played had hopelessly bad sound.

One was smeary, hard and hot.

The other was the brightest and most spitty.

Note that we didn’t deem it necessary to play side two of either copy. A one plus side one rules out the possibility of it being a Hot Stamper pressing.

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that consistently win our shootouts.

Based on our experience, I’m Ready sounds its best:

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Letter of the Week – “…an occult experience, as the sound emanating was totally inexplicable.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Elvis Costello’s Albums Available Now

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

Hey Tom,   

My nearly white hot stamper of “Armed Forces” has literally and honestly left me in tears. I didn’t know my system could sound so… elevated? Perfect? Whole?

Listening to “Two Little Hitlers” was an occult experience, as the sound emanating was totally inexplicable.

Understand, I own over 10 versions of this album. I have collected original UK pressings and I have one that I was pretty sure you couldn’t match. I’m a damned expert of “Armed Forces”. Pathetic, but true.

I was going to return this slab. I had made up my mind before I heard it that it’s going back. The old me, before I went though your transformative experience of Crowley-esq audio magik, said smugly that:

“This was just an experiment. I’m not going to spend that kind of money on a LP, especially when I own so many good versions.”

No. You’re not getting my copy of “Armed Forces” back. 

And I guess you’ll be hearing a lot more from me and my credit card.

Adam G

Thanks, Adam, occult experiences are exactly what we were going after.

Further Reading

Muddy Waters – I’m Ready

More Muddy Waters

More Soul, Blues, and R&B

  • This vintage copy (only the second to hit the site in nearly four years) boasts two INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides or close to them
  • If you’re looking for a Hot Stamper Blues album to add a little variety to your collection, you can’t do much better this copy of I’m Ready
  • “Waters and band provide these well-worn gems with a little new studio polish, but it is with the newer songs that the performers really shine… For new listeners trying to get a feel of what the blues is all about, I’m Ready and its bookends are the albums to start with. Once you experience a taste of Muddy Waters, you’ll be ready for more.”

*NOTE: On side one there is a mark that plays lightly ten times at the start of the first track.

Waters made three albums with Johnny Winters in the ’70’s, including this one. Muddy was still in great form, and the sound can be fantastic on the right copy. It’s not easy to find blues recordings that sound natural and honest while still giving you the energy, presence and clarity needed to bring the music to life, but this bad boy has exactly the sound we were looking for. (more…)

Song For My Father – Our First Shootout Winner

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Note Albums Available Now

UPDATE 2019

This commentary was written way back in 2008.

Since then we’ve learned a great deal about Blue Note and the work Rudy Van Gelder did for them.

Needless to say, we are now very big fans.

Most of the sonic complaints you see in our review from 2008 originated from our inability to clean the records properly, play them back properly, and to know which pressings and labels tended to have good stampers and which ones did not.

In 2008 we had a lot more research and development ahead of us, probably ten years’ worth. I thought I knew what I was talking about in 2008 with Song for My Father, but I clearly had a lot more to learn.

When we finally did hear some killer copies, we were knocked out by the quality of the sound.

Our Understanding in 2008

This is our first Hot Stamper listing for the album, and believe me, it’s not for want of trying. The best sounding original copies I had picked up over the years were far too noisy and scratched to be acceptable to audiophiles, not to mention the fact that the originals were (and are) replete with mastering issues that often exacerbate problems in the recording itself.

Trade-Offs

Having said all that, every Hot Stamper copy we found had its own mastering strengths and weaknesses — the tubey magic and fullness in the best originals isn’t really heard on the later pressings, but the later pressings have a clarity and freedom from obvious compressor and cutter-head distortion that makes them appealing in their own right, not to mention much better brass sound: more dynamic and less smeared.

Rudy, Nice Piano For a Change

One surprising finding was how good the piano sounds on the better copies. It has good weight, real solidity, and lacks that irritating “boxy” hard sound that you find on so many RVG recordings.

Pinched horns and boxy pianos are the hallmarks of most Van Gelder recordings; how on earth this guy is considered one of the greats is beyond me.

[Now of course we know better.]

We did this shootout after having played a few Contemporaries the day before, and the difference in the quality of the sound is nothing less than shocking. The Contemporary sound is so relaxed and musical, the RVG Blue Note sound so forced and artificial.

[Speaking of the piano sound Contemporary is famous for.]

But Contemporary never had the likes of Horace Silver in their stable of artists, and we love this music, so there was no alternative, we just had to dive in and hope for the best. And the best was pretty good.

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Who in His Right Mind Thinks The Sheffield Track Record Is a Super Disc?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Direct-to-Disc Recordings Available Now

Subtitled: Rock Instrumental Tracks For Audio Component Testing and Evaluation.

Harry Pearson calls this absolutely the best sounding rock record ever made.

If you don’t know anything about rock music, this is the kind of rock music you like.

Harry seems to have known very little about rock. Just check out the TAS List while he was still in charge and see how many real rock albums could be found there back in the day. He mistook these lame instrumentals for actual music with good sound, yet they have neither good sound, nor are they good music.

We cannot agree with HP as to the recording quality of the album either. The sound is surprisingly compressed, and the music is every bit as lifeless as the sound.

Some of the audiophile records I’ve played since I started Better Records in 1987 pissed me off so badly, what with their crappy sound and sometimes even crappier music, as is the case here, I felt they deserved to have their very own special audiophile sh*t list.

Now that I have a blog with unlimited amounts of space to review and categorize the awful records some audiophiles like, that is exactly where this hopeless release can be found.

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How Wide and Tall Is Your Copy of Little Queen? Compared to What?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Heart Available Now

Little Queen is yet another recording that only truly comes alive when you turn up your volume.

On the right system, this is a classic rock Demo Disc to beat practically anything you could ever throw at it.

Love Alive and Barracuda on this copy will deliver the full rock and roll power your system is capable of.

If you’ve got The Big Sound, this is the record that will show you just how big it is.

You get huge meaty guitars, big bass, a smooth top end, full-bodied vocals, powerful rock energy and dynamics, loads of richness and incredible transparency.

Wide and Tall

A key quality we look for in Hot Stamper copies of Little Queen is wide and tall presentation.

What exactly does that mean you ask? The best copies, the ones that really jump out of the speakers, tend to present some (usually high frequency) information higher and more forward than others. This is not hard to miss.

When you’re playing ten or fifteen copies of the same side of the same album and suddenly a cymbal crashes higher and more clearly than the others did in the part of the track you are testing, you can’t help but notice it. Wow! How did that get there?

Once you hear it you start to listen for it, and sure enough the next copy won’t do it, nor will the next. Maybe the one after that gets about halfway there: the cymbal crashes are higher than most, but not as high as the one that really showed you how high is up.

This is why we do shootouts, and why you must do them too, if owning the highest quality pressings is important to you.

Progress in Audio

And of course it all ties in with our revolutionary changes in audio commentary. If you’ve been making steady improvements to your system, or have better cleaning technologies, or better room treatments, or cleaner electricity, maybe ALL the Little Queen pressings do it now. They might ALL do something they never did before, and in fact they SHOULD be doing most things better now. 

Our last shootout was a while back. Since then many, many parts of the chain have undergone improvement. During this shootout we heard things in the recording we’d never heard before. This is the point of all this audio fooling around. It pays off, if you do it right. You have musical information waiting to be unlocked in your favorite recordings. It isn’t going to free itself. You have to do the work to set it free. Do it our way or do it some other way, but do it. You, more than anyone else, will be the one to get the benefit.

Problems Noted More Recently

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Why Do We Wait?

Hot Stampers and Audio Progress Go Hand in Hand

Practically all of our audio philosophy derives from the simple act of trying to get the stereo system to play the greatest recordings of all time with the highest fidelity possible.

For my first twenty years in audio — roughly 1975 to 1995 — I made change after change in my equipment and setup to improve the sound quality of the music I loved. It’s an article of faith we me that to get anywhere in this hobby, music must do the driving.

When I started my record business in 1987, I discovered that higher fidelity playback allowed me to do a better job of evaluating the records I was selling. By the late-90s, continuing improvements to that system were helping me to find — you guessed it — Hot Stamper pressings.

“‘How much progress shall you make?’ you ask. Just as much as you try to make. Why do you wait? Wisdom comes haphazard to no man.” — Seneca

Practicing the skills you seek to develop is the only sure way to get better at what you are trying to do.

But where have you ever seen those concepts applied to improving your own critical listening skills outside of this blog?

For those who want to improve in this devilishly difficult hobby of ours, the question that needs answering is:

What are some good ways to challenge yourself as an audiophile?

Turns out there are plenty, and they’re really not that hard. Better yet, none of them will cost you a dime.

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Buffalo Springfield – Self-Titled

More Buffalo Springfield

More Country and Country Rock

  • Boasting two seriously good Double Plus (A++) sides or close to them, this early Atco pressing was giving us the sound we were looking for on Buffalo Springfield’s debut LP
  • True, side one earned a minimal Hot Stamper grade of 1.5+, but we still guarantee that it will beat the pants off any Heavy Vinyl reissue, because every one of those that we played was ridiculously opaque, muddy and thick enough to have us crying “uncle” after five minutes
  • We rarely have this title in stock, mostly because it is purely a matter of luck when we’ve managed to chance upon enough clean copies of the commonly-abused album to get a shootout going
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings, but once you hear just how superb sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • 4 stars: “… this debut sounds pretty great, featuring some of their most melodic and accomplished songwriting and harmonies, delivered with a hard-rocking punch… The entire album bursts with thrilling guitar and vocal interplay, with a bright exuberance that would tone down considerably by their second record.”

For whatever reason, all the mastering engineers who cut this first album rarely managed to put any real top or bottom on the record. Why I can’t imagine. Highs and lows are on the tape; the best pressings prove it.

Listen for Tubey Magic, richness, bottom end, presence and freedom from distortion. The more copies you have tried in the past, the more astonishing the sound of this copy will be to you. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “I have been listening to a first pressing Decca, but your copy made it sound egregiously insipid.”

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

This LET IT BLEED is a gorgeous monster. Everything just jumps off the page, so to speak. I have been listening to a first pressing Decca, which I have owned for years, but your copy made it sound egregiously insipid. As I kept turning up the volume, the room seemed to be nodding its head and egging me on to keep increasing it. I never reached the point where too much was too much. Great copy.

The Mahavishnu EMERALD was brilliant. It brought out all the exciting dimensions of my system. The exquisite strings floated above the musical melee which tattooed its obligato deliriously across its raucous underbelly. The sound reached out like tongues of flame making the speakers completely disappear in their rocking wake.

This is an amazing record that projects and dances the music in every direction and then some. Everything is alive. So completely alive. A real treat. A great recording that tells me my system is completely responsive.

Phil

Phil,

We’ve known for a very long time — since roughly 2005 — what an awful pressing the original mono Decca is of the album.

When we last heard one, it did not evn pass the laugh test, and we never bought another.

Even the original Decca stereo pressings of the album are not that good, and at the prices being charged these days, a very poor choice if you want the best sound.

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