Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now
Even though the Black label original of Jazz Gianot we played in our shootout held its own well enough, it did suffer from a slight case of “old record” sound.
Head to head with the best vintage reissues, it was a bit crude, didn’t extend fully on the top end, and wasn’t as resolving in the midrange.
The fact that it earned a Super Hot (A++) sonic grade means that it could not have sounded too much like an old record. It was still doing most everything right.
It just had a few sonic shortcomings we recognized were holding it back.
The reissues that beat it in the shootout showed us just how good the album could sound, maybe not night and day better, but definitely better, a full grade better.
The Black Label original we played would still beat the pants off the godawful Analogue Productions Heavy Vinyl pressing that came out in the 90s, the one mastered by the formerly-brilliant Doug Sax.
For those who may not have been collecting back then, we describe in great detail the bad sound of the Heavy Vinyl pressing that AP produced for their version of Way Out West in 1992.
Mobile Fidelity got into the reissue act in 1994, making murky-sounding records on 200 gram vinyl and calling them Anadisqs.
Classic Records started producing their bright, screechy reissues of Living Stereo titles that year as well.
It seems a lot of bad sounding records were being made back then!
Is it any different now? (If it is, please contact me at tom@better-records.com and tell me what you think the differences are. I am at a loss after playing these six Heavy Vinyl titles in 2024 and finding that all of them fell well short of the mark. What mark is that, you ask? Why, the mark set by their vintage counterparts.)
Back in those days we used to like a great many of the OJC pressings a lot more than we do now. Side two of the OJC was decent but side one at 1+ would not have made the cut. Doubtful we will ever bother to put the OJC pressing of Jazz Giant in another shootout. We didn’t like it last time either.
Why Shootouts
Is the Black Label Jazz Giant a bad sounding record?
Absolutely not. It is clearly a very good sounding record.
It’s truly a great recording when you can hear it right. It’s the kind of sound that most audiophiles would flip out over.
Starting in the 80s and continuing up to the modern day, it has been badly mastered a number of times, and that’s a shame.
None of the copies we’ve played in the last thirty years made by Contemporary has ever sounded less than “good.”
What the people making records these days think they’re doing is a mystery. Their records sure don’t sound very good to me.
And, as good sounding as the originals are, the right reissues are noticeably better. The reissues reveal qualities that the original is simply not capable of showing the listener.
Had owners of the originals heard such a reissue they would be in a much better position to weigh the pros and cons of both.
This is why we do shootouts. Every pressing has the potential to show you some quality you can’t hear on any other, some aspect of the sound you would not even know was possible.
White Hot pressings — on the right equipment — have the ability to put you in the presence of a recording with sound beyond what you thought was possible. Happens to us every week.
Further Reading