Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin Available Now
We love the way RCA recorded Heifetz back in the day, the day in this case being 1960. We usually have a good supply of vintage Heifetz titles on the site at all times. They often have our favorite performances, and the best copies, as the notes for the one below make clear, can have absolutely amazing sound.
As you can see from the notes, side one of a recent shootout winning copy was doing everything right.
However, we had a side two that was slightly better than the side two you see here. When we played the two best copies back to back, this side one came out on top, earning a grade of 3+, but the side two of another copy showed us there was even more three-dimensionality to be discovered in the recording than we thought. Consequently this side two was dropped a half grade to 2.5+.
This is exactly why we do shootouts. If you really want to be able to recognize subtle (and not so subtle!) differences between pressings, you must learn to do them too.
You know what’s unusual about these notes?
They’re the kind of notes we have never written for any Heavy Vinyl reissue, even for the one that won our shootout not long ago.
They are the kind of notes that make it clear to us what a sham the modern Heavy Vinyl pressing tends to be, even those that are done right.
No modern record we’ve ever played has ever had anything even approaching this kind of Big As Life sound, and we doubt one ever will.
Records like this vintage vinyl pressing are thrilling in a way that very, very few records ever are.
Surprisingly, at least to some, many of the most thrilling records we’ve ever played came from the same decade this record came from: the 60s.
Once you hear sound like this, you are not likely to forget it.
It sets a standard that modern remastered records have never been able to meet.
Further Reading