Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bob Dylan Available Now
You just can’t beat a well-produced, well-engineered Columbia from this era. There’s a richness and a naturalness to the sound that’s almost completely disappeared from the modern world of music, and by “modern world” we mean both modern recordings and modern remasterings of vintage recordings.
Practically none of them ever have the qualities of this wonderful record from 1969.
You really do have to go back to these old originals to find it. And then you have to find just the right old originals for it to be there. Here are the notes for one we played not long ago.
As you can see from the notes, side one of our most recent White Hot stamper shootout winning copy was doing everything right. We marvelled at these specific qualities in the sound:
Track three
- Big and spacious and lively
- The vocals and guitars are big and weighty and jumping
Track one
- Spacious and great size and detail
- Vocals jump out
- Realistic acoustics
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, side one of this copy came out on top, earning a grade of 3+, but the side two of another copy showed us there was potentially even more presence to Dylan’s vocals in the recording than we had assumed. As a consequence, we felt it best to drop side two’s grade a half plus to 2.5+.
Track one
- Tubey bass
- Weighty
- Very full vocals
- A bit veiled but better than most
Track one on side two was doing practically everything right, but it slightly lacked presence, and for that we dropped the grade one half plus to 2.5+.
Midrange presence is one of the most important qualities of any rock or pop recording we might evaluate, and for a Bob Dylan album it is absolutely essential.
You want Dylan to be front and center, neither recessed nor behind a veil.
To aid you in doing your own evaluations, here is a list of records that we’ve found to be good for testing midrange presence.
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.
And make sure to take notes about what you are hearing, good and bad.
In the commentary included with every Hot Stamper pressing of the album, we highlight some problems to watch for on Nashville Skyline, having played scores of copies over the years.
Sure enough, side two of this very copy suffered from one of those problems. How prescient of us!
Some of the more common problems we ran into during our shootouts were slightly veiled, slightly smeary sound, with not all the top end extension that the best copies have.
You can easily hear that smear on the guitar transients; usually, they’re a tad blunted and the guitar harmonics don’t ring the way they should.
These problems are just as common to the 360 label original Columbia pressings as they are to the later red label LPs. Smeary, veiled, top-end-challenged pressings were regularly produced over the years. They are the rule, not the exception.
No Red Label copy has earned a top grade in more years than I can remember, if ever.
Stick with the 360s on Nashville Skyline if you want the best sound.
One side falling short of the full A+++ happens more often than not. One out of five records that has one shootout winning side will have a matching shootout winning other side.
The math works like this. 3+/3+ records go in this section, which currently holds 24 titles as of 11/2024. Records with at least on 3+ side go in this section, and there are 123 of those as of the same date, five times as many.
You know what’s unusual about these notes?
They’re the kind of notes we’ve 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, many of the most thrilling records we’ve ever played came from the same decade this record came from: the 60s.
(Other phenomenally good Must Own rock and pop titles from 1969 can be found here.)
Once you hear sound like this, you are not likely to forget it.
It sets a standard that modern remastered records simply cannot meet.
Further Reading