Month: October 2024

Santana – Moonflower

More Santana

More Records That Sound Better Loud

  • With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on sides two and three, and superb Double Plus (A++) sound on sides one and four, this copy of Santana’s 2-LP live album will be very hard to beat – exceptionally quiet vinyl
  • These sides are rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical with a big punchy bottom end
  • Turn it up and you will hear sound that is incredibly powerful and natural with remarkable presence, energy and weight down low
  • “Santana, which was renowned for its concert work dating back to Woodstock, did not release a live album in the U.S. until this one… Moonflower went Top Ten and sold a million copies, the first new Santana album to do that since 1972 and the last until Supernatural in 1999.”

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The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds

More of the Music of The Beach Boys

  • A Pet Sounds like you’ve never heard, with stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound from start to finish – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Fairly quiet for this pressing – noisy vinyl is the rule, not the exception
  • Forget whatever dead-as-a-doornail Heavy Vinyl record they’re making these days – if you want to hear the Tubey Magic, size and energy of this wonderful album, a vintage pressing like this one is the way to go
  • The Beach Boys revolutionized the popular music of the day with their genius for harmony, and a copy like this has their voices sounding the way they should
  • 5 stars: “The group here reached a whole new level in terms of both composition and production, layering tracks upon tracks of vocals and instruments to create a richly symphonic sound.”

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What to Listen For on My Favorite Things

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

An album like this is all about its Tubey Magical stereoscopic presentation.

If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good 1961 All Tube Analog sound can be — thanks to legendary engineers Phil Iehle and Tom Dowd — an outstanding pressing of this album is just what the doctor ordered.

What to listen for you ask?

A solid, full-bodied, clear and powerful piano. As we focused in on the sound of the instrument, we couldn’t help but notice what a brilliant player McCoy Tyner is.

This may be John Coltrane’s album, but Tyner’s contribution is critically important to the success of My Favorite Things.

(We rarely care much for Tyner as a leader, which is why you see so few of his albums on the site. Most of his Milestone recordings are terrible, so caveat emptor on those especially.)

Lately we have been writing quite a bit about how pianos are good for testing your system, room, tweaks, electricity and all the rest, not to mention turntable setup and adjustment.

  • We like our pianos to sound natural (however one chooses to define the term).
  • We like them to be solidly weighted.
  • We like them to be free of smear, a quality that is rarely mentioned in the audiophile record reviews we read.
  • Some of the other records we’ve discovered with top jazz piano sound can be found here

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Red Clay Is a RVG/CTI Masterpiece

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Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Freddie Hubbard Available Now

Red Clay is one of our favorite CTI albums – Red Clay (the song and the album) is Hubbard’s soul jazz masterpiece, and it’s a record that belongs in every audiophile’s jazz collection.

Lenny White drums up a storm on this album – on this copy he is playing right in the room with you.

If you’re a Hubbard fan, or perhaps a fan of early-70s soulful jazz, this title from 1970 is surely a Must Own.

We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” but with more of an accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Red Clay is a good example of a record most audiophiles may not know well but would benefit from getting to know better.

Hubbard was a master of funky jazz, and the song “Red Clay” is arguably the funkiest jazz track he ever committed to tape. At 12 minutes in length it is a transcendentally powerful experience — and the bigger your speakers and the louder you turn them up the more moving that experience is going to be!

The intro to “Red Clay” begins with a stylized free-form jam, sounding like a bop-jazz band of old, then takes form and solidifies into a groove of monstrous proportions. Ron Carter’s bass playing is stellar! It’s big and lively with tons of presence and energy.

5 stars: “This may be Freddie Hubbard’s finest moment as a leader, in that it embodies and utilizes all of his strengths as a composer, soloist, and frontman. [It] places the trumpeter in the company of giants such as saxophonist Joe Henderson, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Lenny White… This is a classic, hands down.”

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Respighi – The Birds / Brazilian Impressions / Dorati

More of the music of Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936)

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

  • This vintage TAS-approved Maroon Label Mercury pressing boasts excellent Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from first note to last
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • This copy is everything that a good Mercury should be: dynamic, open, immediate, exciting, and of course, with Dorati and the LSO, beautifully performed
  • Both “The Birds” and “Brazilian Impressions” are wonderful sounding – we guarantee you’ve never heard a better copy of both works
  • This is yet another amazingly good sounding Mercury recording engineered by Robert Fine and produced by Wilma Cozart

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Harold Mabern – Rakin’ and Scrapin’

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

  • An original Prestige pressing that was doing just about everything right, earning solid grades from top to bottom
  • You will be amazed at how big and rich and tubey the sound is
  • The OJC pressing we used to recommend is a very good sounding record, but until we heard these early pressings, we had no idea the album was this well recorded
  • We should know better by now – in our defense, let us just note how hard it is to find the originals of this album in anything even approaching audiophile playing condition
  • Remarkably spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied – this pressing was a solid step up over most other copies we played
  • Both of these sides are remarkably clean, clear, open, and transparent, with jazz energy to spare – thanks, RVG
  • 4 stars: “…this Prestige set features the excellent hard bop pianist Harold Mabern heading a quintet also including trumpeter Blue Mitchell, tenor saxophonist George Coleman, bassist Bill Lee and drummer Hugh Walker.”

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Motown Still Had It in 1982

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Marvin Gaye Available Now

With two superb Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides, this Midnight Love is certainly as good a copy as we have ever heard.

Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “round and punchy”…”jumping out of the speakers”…”good size and weight”…”spacious and relaxed percussion and vox”…”top detail” (side two).

Our post-it notes tell the album’s story. (By the way, if you like reading our post-it notes, we’re putting more and more of them on the blog these days. We talk about the importance of taking notes as part of the shootout advice we share. This post will help you with the basics.)

Drop the needle on “Sexual Healing,” then sit back and relax as the rich, warm sound of analog sets the mood!

There’s good frequency extension up top and down low, with plenty of meaty bass and silky highs (check out those bells).

This copy has two qualities which are essential for this music to really work its soulful magic: silky vocals and a BIG meaty bottom end.

Check out all the texture to the synths on Turn On Some Music – this is a highly resolving pressing which takes Marvin Gaye’s music — the last he would make before his death — to another level.

Many copies of Midnight Love suffer from a phony hi-fi-ish quality, sacrificing much of the warmth that is the all-important hallmark of analog. Is that any way to listen to this great Soul Classic? (My sources say no.)

Hey, want to find your own top quality copy?

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

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Letter of the Week – “Better Records has completely transformed my relationship with music listening…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Charles Mingus Available Now

Our good customer ab_ba decided to write us a letter, this being his third anniversary of being sold on the reality of Hot Stampers. (I have taken the liberty of editing some of it.)

Dear Tom and Fred,

Today marks my third anniversary of being your customer. It’s quite a milestone! Frankly, when I realized it’s only been three years, I was surprised. It has felt longer. I really want to thank you both, and I thought I’d take a moment to look back on it all.

    • Better Records has completely transformed my relationship with music listening, in so many ways it’s hard to enumerate them all. Great sounding records, of course, but so much more.
    • A fantastic stereo that’s so good that for the first time ever leaves me with zero desire to change anything about it.
    • A better understanding of how to attain music worth listening to.
    • Specific albums and musicians I would not have known about, that I now really treasure.
    • And, most surprising of all, some exceptionally good friends who I cherish as people, and not just as fellow travelers along this esoteric path.

For me personally, getting great sound at home was always a somewhat-angsty quest: “there must be something better.”

I sense that others feel that way about it too. But now, for me, my music listening is pure satisfaction. And that is thanks entirely to you.

Looking back on it with some nostalgia, I thought I’d note some of the milestones so far:

My first purchase was a Super Hot Stamper of Mingus Ah Um, for $300. I still viscerally remember the feeling when I made that purchase. I remember putting it on for the first time, and having the sound just explode out of my tiny B&W speakers, like nothing I had heard before.

It was so different from my MoFi One-Step of Ah Um, I instantly had all of my preconceptions shattered.
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Out of Our Heads – Mono or Reprocessed Stereo?

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

On this London LP, even though it states clearly on the cover that the record is electronically re-processed into stereo, the songs we heard on side one were in dead mono.

So much for believing what you read on album covers.

This Sonny Rollins pressing of Tenor Madness says it too has been remastered into stereo, but you would have a hard time hearing any left-right information coming from your speakers. On headphones, maybe, but speakers? Unlikely.

Even when a record has been been reprocessed from mono into stereo, it can still sound very good. Not the best, mind you, but good enough to easily wipe the floor with anything pressed by any audiophile label that we’ve ever heard of, and we’ve heard of pretty much all of them.

More on the subject of mono versus stereo.

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Rachmaninoff – Symphonic Dances / Johanos

Hot Stamper Pressings of Rachmaninoff’s Music 

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on both TAS-approved sides, this original Turquoise label pressing of this orchestral spectacular is doing just about everything right
  • Fairly quiet for a Vox pressing too – noisy vinyl is the rule and not the exception
  • It’s an extraordinary recording, and so wonderful on this pressing that after playing it, you may agree with us that few other classical Demo Discs are in its league (particularly on side two)
  • The bottom end on side two of this record is powerful and solid, and side one is not far behind in both those areas – this is the way to record tympani!
  • The sound is dynamic, lively and big – jumping out of the speakers and bringing the power and the vibrant colors of the symphony right into your listening room (also particularly on side two)
  • 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 opaque, muddy and thick enough to have us crying “uncle” after five minutes

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