Month: November 2024

Linda Ronstadt – Lush Life

More Linda Ronstadt

More Nelson Riddle

  • A vintage copy of Ronstadt’s 1984 release with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this stunning copy in our notes: “big and weighty”…”huge and rich and dynamic vox”…”3D and jumping out of the speakers”…”big bass”…”silky and huge”
  • Getting the strings to sound sweet and rosiny, not smeary and hard, is no mean feat, but it’s the kind of thing the best Hot Stamper pressings are guaranteed to give you on any of Linda’s American Songbook period albums
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, but once you hear just how killer 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
  • “What’s New illustrated that Linda Ronstadt was no longer interested in contemporary pop, and since it was a surprise success, there was no reason not to repeat the formula on Lush Life. Working again with Nelson Riddle, Ronstadt runs through several pop standards — ‘When I Fall in Love,’ ‘Sophisticated Lady,’ ‘Falling in Love Again,’ ‘It Never Entered My Mind’…”

(more…)

Mapleshade Thinks Female Vocals Are Good for Turntable Setup

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

Years ago, in a section on their site, Mapleshade recommended a female vocal for turntable setup and mentioned Blue by name.

How much deep punchy bass is there on Blue? Barely a trace in the piano, that’s it. Blue is a good record for testing some sonic qualities, not at all good for testing others.

Our advice: do not limit yourself to a female vocal recording when setting up your turntable.

We use Bob and Ray Throw a Stereo Spectacular because it is BIG.

How big is Blue? How big can it get? How big is it supposed to be?

We asked that very question about a Heart album we liked to test with years ago. As you can imagine, it is an impossible question to answer when one has only a single copy of the album.

Blue is simply not a good test for size, power, weight or energy.

These things are very important to us — we talk about them in almost every Hot Stamper listing we write — and if you are not the kind of audiophile BS record lover whose collection is full of Sarah McLachlan and Patricia Barber “vinyls,” they should be every bit as important to you as they are to us.

They are what make music fun and exciting.

Don’t you want your music to be fun and exciting?

We sure do. It’s practically a three word definition for the kinds of records we sell.

(more…)

Jethro Tull – Stand Up

More Jethro Tull

More British Blues Rock

  • A Stand Up like you’ve never heard, with solid Double Plus (A++) grades throughout this vintage UK import – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • This is a true Tull Classic – my favorite by the band – and a very tough record to come by with this kind of sound and surfaces that play this well
  • Both of these sides give you richness, Tubey Magic, clarity and resolution few copies can touch, including most Pink Label Island pressings, especially the early ones
  • “Stand Up! has great textural interest, due, in part, to a more sophisticated recording technique, in part to the organ, mandolin, balalaika, etc., which Anderson plays to enrich each song. The band is able to work with different musical styles, but without a trace of the facile, glib manipulation which strains for attention.”

Need a refresher course in Tubey Magic after playing too many modern recordings or remasterings? These UK pressings are overflowing with it. Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead-on correct tonality — everything that we listen for in a great record is here. We must give thanks to the brilliant engineer Andy Johns.

This record is the very definition of Tubey Magic. No recordings will ever be made that sound like this again, and no CD will ever capture what is in the grooves of this record. There is of course a CD of this album, quite a few of them I would guess, but those of us with a good turntable could care less.

Tubey Magical acoustic guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this recording. Simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum, along with richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and especially from modern remasterings).

If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all-analog recordings are known for — this sound.

(more…)

The Eagles – One Of These Nights

More Eagles

 More Country and Country Rock

  • INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound brings the Eagles’ first Number One album to life on this early Asylum label pressing
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “big and rich”…”vox silky and relaxed”…”tubey and great detail!”…”huge and rich and weighty”
  • On a copy such as this one, the soaring guitar solo of the title track really comes alive – assuming you have it turned up good and loud
  • “Lyin’ Eyes” and “Take It To The Limit” sound the way they should – we guarantee you have never heard them sound remotely as good as they do here
  • A top quality side two is not easy to find on this album – they are consistently one half to one full grade lower than side one – but not this side two, which won the shootout and is certainly as good as we have ever heard
  • There are some bad marks (as is sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records) on “Take It To The Limit,” but once you hear just how incredible sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and just be swept away by the music
  • 4 stars: “…a lyrical stance — knowing and disillusioned, but desperately hopeful — had evolved, and the musical arrangements were tighter and more purposeful. The result was the Eagles’ best-realized and most popular album so far.”

This is one of the toughest Eagles albums to find with good sound, which is why only a small handful ever make it to the site. This album may never sound quite as good as Hotel California or the self-titled debut, but there are some wonderful songs here and a Hot Stamper pressing like this brings them to life in a way most pressings cannot begin to do.

The better copies are richer and sweeter. When you turn them up, they really come to life. When you play the better sides at rock music volumes they really rock. When a copy is cut really clean, as the best ones are, the louder you play them the better they sound. They’re tonally correct at loud levels and a bit dull at what we would call “audiophile” levels. That’s the way it should be.

Here is the one comment which really gets to the point of the better pressings: “guitar solos rise above.” The big solo on the title track just soars on this copy like we’ve rarely heard in the past.

This is the guitar sound that Bill Szymczyk achieved with the band that Glyn Johns had not. Of course, Johns had never tried; he saw them as a country rock band. The Eagles saw themselves as a rock band, it’s as simple as that.

Also note on side one that the loud choruses and huge guitars on the second track, “Too Many Hands,” hold up on this side one amazingly well. It’s a great test track as well as the first, providing positive confirmation that what you will hear for the song “One of These Nights” — the size and the power — will carry all the way through this side one.

(more…)

Magical Mystery Touring – Our View from the Nineties

beatlmagic_depth_1176424879

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

We discuss in detail what we’re listening for and what the best copies seem to do well that the run-of-the-mill copies simply do not.

If you own a copy of the German MMT, play yours and listen for what we’re listening for. It’s all laid out in the track commentary below.

Side One

Magical Mystery Tour

The fact that this is a key track should be obvious to anyone who has ever played the album. If you don’t have a good copy of the MMT this song will take your head off. Only the German pressings have any real hope of getting it right — the MOFI, British, Japanese, domestic, etc. are uniformly awful in my experience: aggressive and irritating, the worst being the MOFI I would guess.

The German ones break down into three groups – too smooth; just right; and a bit bright or thin. Now remember, almost every copy of this record I played had the exact same stamper numbers. You can’t tell one from another except by dropping the needle on them. There is no visual clue on the record to associate with the sound, no possibility of bias. What comes out of the speakers is all I had to go by.

And it’s easy to confuse the overly smooth ones with the best ones, because on the song MMT smooth is a good thing . But when is smooth too smooth? That’s where track two comes in.

The Fool On The Hill

This song is full of airy flutes, woodwinds and the like. They should sound harmonically extended, delicate and sweet. We talked about the sound of the flutes on another record recently, Blood, Sweat & Tears. It’s as a good a test for this album as it is for that one.

Having said that, what separates the killer copies from the merely excellent ones is the quality of the flute sound. When you can hear the air going through the flute, and follow the playing throughout the song, you have a superbly transparent copy with all the presence and texture of the best. If the flute sounds right Katz’s voice will too. The sound will be Demonstration Quality of the highest order. Want to shoot out two different copies of this album on side one? Easy. Just play this track and see which one gets the flute right.

On the best copies Paul’s voice is amazingly present. You should feel as though you could reach out and touch him. Which means there are two basic elements to listen for in this song, both of which must be proportional and balanced. First, the flutes must sound open and airy. Then, Paul’s voice must retain its lower-midrange body and warmth without sounding veiled or thick in any way, yet have excellent presence. Not too many copies, maybe one out of ten, can really pull it off. It’s amazing when they do though!

If the first track is alive but not aggressive, and Fool sounds the way I describe it above, the only thing left is The Walrus Test. Feel free to skip to the last track if you like.

(more…)

Trying to Get at the Truth with Transistors

More Entries from Tom’s Audiophile Notebook

In 2007 we did a shootout for The Four Seasons on RCA and noted the following:

For those of you with better tube gear, the string tone on this record is sublime, with that rosin-on-the-bow quality that tubes seem to bring out in a way virtually nothing else can, at least in my experience.

Our experience since 2007 has changed our view concerning the magical power of tubes to bring out the rosiny texture of bowed stringed instruments.

We have in fact changed our minds completely with respect to that rarely-questioned belief.

It’s a classic case of live and learn, and represents one of the bigger milestones in audio that we marked in 2007, a year that in hindsight turns out to have been the most important in the history of the company.

Everything changed dramatically for the better for us sometime in 2005. That’s when we discovered the transistor equipment we still use to this day.

We found a low-power integrated amp made in the 70s that was vastly superior to our custom-built tube preamp and amp. We had an EAR tube phono stage at that time, which we quite liked.

UPDATE 2025

We recently hooked up our old 834p phono stage in the system and did not like the sound at all.

Things change. Boy do they ever!

In 2007 we auditioned the EAR 324P transistor phono stage and immediately recognized it would take our analog playback to an entirely new level, one we had simply never experienced before and really had never thought could possbily exist.

(more…)