Month: January 2025

Even In The Quietest Moments and Your 1977 Ears – There’s No Going Back

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Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Supertramp Available Now

By 1977 I was a huge fan of the band, having first discovered their music on Crisis (1975) and Crime (1974), in which order I honestly can’t remember.

I played their albums all the time, especially Crisis.

The first Supertramp album I bought on audiophile vinyl would have been Crime of the Century by Mobile Fidelity, which came out in 1978.

Every right-thinking audiophile had that one — MoFi sold over a hundred thousand of them (along with a hundred thousand of Aja, Touch and one or two others).

And why not? The sound was killer on the systems of the day. Lots of slam down low (but not really that low, although it seemed plenty low at the time), lots of extra top up high, lots of phony detail, just what the old school stereos of the day, like mine, needed.

Crisis? What Crisis? followed in 1975. It was the Supertramp album that sent me over the top. I played that album relentlessly. Before long Art Rock was at the top of my list anytime I wanted to have an immersive musical experience, and that, for an obsessive audiophile like myself, meant almost every day.

Supertramp, Yes, Roxy Music, 10cc, Eno, Crack the Sky, ELO, Bowie – it’s all I wanted to listen to back then, and it encouraged me to keep upgrading my equipment whenever I had the money, although I admit to being completely clueless about all of that at the time. More on that subject here.

A year and a half later EITQM followed. It too became a staple of my musical diet. Man, I played that record till the grooves were worn smooth.

I thought the sound of my domestic pressing was killer at the time, too. Crisis was a demo disc at my house and this was right up there with it. Now the obvious question is, did I have a good sounding copy, or did my stereo not reveal to me the shortcomings of my LP? Or maybe my ears were not well enough trained to hear what was wrong.

Those of you who have been doing this for a long time know the answer: any or all of the above, probably all, and nobody can know just how much of each.

And there is no way to find out because you are not that person anymore.

Your 1977 Ears… and Mine

Even if you could recreate your old stereo and room, and find your original copy, there’s one thing you can’t do, and that’s listen to it with your 1977 ears.

Every time you play a record and listen to it critically, your ears get better at their job.

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John Coltrane – Expression

More John Coltrane

  • Both sides of this original Stereo Impulse pressing were giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for, earning superb Double Plus (A++) grades – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Huge space, size and clarity, with Tubey Magical richness befitting the 1967 recording dates of these sessions at Van Gelder Studio
  • That Tubey Magic is surely long gone by now, so those of you looking for this kind of sound on a modern pressing should face it: that ship has sailed
  • 4 stars: “Recorded at two sessions in early 1967, Expression represents John Coltrane’s final recording sessions just months before his death. It’s remarkable that [the album] is not some world-weary harbinger of death and sickness, but an endlessly jubilant affair. Even in what must have been a time of tremendous pain and darkness, Coltrane’s single-minded quest for understanding and transcendence took him to places of new exploration and light.”

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Oliver Nelson – More Blues and the Abstract Truth

More Oliver Nelson

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this original Impulse pressing (only the second copy to hit the site in years)
  • The sound is everything that’s good about Rudy Van Gelder‘s recordings – it’s present, spacious, full-bodied, Tubey Magical, dynamic and, most importantly, alive in that way that modern pressings never are
  • It typically takes us at least many years to get a shootout for this album going (our last one was in 2019), and that’s with searching the web everyday, hoping that a clean copy with the right stampers will pop up for sale
  • 4 stars: “… there are some strong moments from such all-stars as trumpeter Thad Jones, altoist Phil Woods, baritonist Pepper Adams, pianist Roger Kellaway and guest tenor Ben Webster (who is on two songs).”

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Billy Joel / Songs in the Attic

More of the Music of Billy Joel

  • Demo Disc live rock concert sound on this vintage Columbia pressing, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades
  • The sonics have so many wonderful analog qualities when you get a good copy — the hardness of the typical pressing just disappears, leaving surprisingly transparent and sweet sound on virtually every track
  • The WHOMP factor here is off the scale. There are few studio recordings that have these kinds of dynamics. We forget how compressed most of them are. It takes a record like this to show you how much life there is in live music
  • 4 stars: “Songs in the Attic is an excellent album, ranking among his very best work… even if Joel wasn’t a celebrity in the early 70s, his best songs of the era rivaled his biggest hits.”

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In the Court of the Crimson King – An Overview

Hot Stamper Pressings of Progressive Rock Albums Available Now

If you have the Atlantic pressing, from any era, you have not yet begun to hear this record at its best.

The domestic original was cleary mastered from copy tapes, which results in its dubby sound. It’s such a well recorded album that even its second-generation sound quality is still better than much of what came out in 1969.

UK Polydor reissue? Passable, not really worth the labor to put them in a shootout just to have them earn mediocre-at-best grades.

The same can be said for some of the earliest UK Pink Label Island pressings.

None of them has ever won a shootout and probably none of them ever will.

(A number of Pink Label Island pressings that never win shootouts can be found here.)

As a rule, we don’t buy them, for two reasons:

  1. They are expensive to buy in clean condition, and
  2. Their sound quality does not justify paying the premium price sellers typically ask.

We leave them to the record collectors who like to collect originals.

The Mobile Fidelity pressing is surprisingly good, one of their best.

Rumor has it that they stopped making their version when Editions EG came out with a Half-Speed mastered pressing of their own, which, like most Editions EG records in our experience, sounds about as awful as any copy of the album can.

We and our customers are audiophiles. We like to collect records with good sound. If we have our heads on straight, we don’t care what pressing we buy as long as it’s the one with the best sound.

Of course, not everybody agrees with us about that, but enough of you out there do, such that our business is sure to continue to prosper in the years to come.

In the Court of the Crimson King is an album we think we know well, one that checks off a number of important boxes for us here at Better Records:

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Freddie Hubbard – Straight Life

More Freddie Hubbard

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Trumpet

  • This early CTI pressing boasts solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER on both sides
  • Full-bodied, warm and natural with plenty of space around all of the players, this is the sound of vintage analog – accept no substitutes
  • The sound is everything that’s good about Rudy Van Gelder‘s recordings – it’s present, spacious, full-bodied, Tubey Magical, dynamic and, most importantly, alive in that way that modern pressings never are
  • 5 stars: “Recorded between trumpeter Freddie Hubbard’s better-known classics Red Clay and First Light, Straight Life is actually arguably Hubbard’s greatest recording.”

Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in exceptionally clean shape. Most of the will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG

Straight Life is a great album for anyone who wants to hear some well recorded, seriously adventurous jazz. We freely admit that side one is fairly ‘out there,’ but side two balances it out with much more accessible, melodic material. A wonderfully sensitive and emotional version of “Here’s That Rainy Day” closes out the side with George Benson proving to be an especially sympathetic accompanist on guitar.

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Tchaikovsky on Classic Records and the TAS List

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

We used to like the Classic Records pressing of LSC 2241 a lot more than we do now, a case of live and learn.

Our tube system from the 90s was very different from the one we are using now.

That system was noticeably darker and by all accounts far less revealing when we had auditioned the Classic sometime in the 90s, and those two qualities did most of the heavy lifting needed to disguise its shortcomings. We mistakenly noted:

HP put the Shaded Dog pressing (the only way it comes; there is no RCA reissue to my knowledge) on his TAS List of Super Discs, and with good reason: it’s wonderful!

The rest of our commentary still holds up though:

But for some reason he also put the Classic Records Heavy Vinyl reissue on the list, and that record’s not even passable, let alone wonderful. It’s far too lean and modern sounding, and no original Living Stereo record would ever sound that way, thank goodness. 

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Beethoven / Brahms – Violin Sonatas / Szeryng

More of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

More of the music of Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

  • Szeryng and Rubinstein’s performance of these wonderful violin-piano duos appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) Living Stereo sound or close to it throughout this original Shaded Dog pressing
  • These are just a few of the things we had to say about this incredible copy in our notes: “big and rich and 3D violin”…”sweet and lively and roomy”…”very rich and present”…”great size and energy”
  • Both of these sides are Tubey Magical, lively and clear, with richness and warmth that only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer
  • Here you will find exceptionally three-dimensional sound, expanding the space of your listening room from wall to wall and floor to ceiling
  • This copy also showed us the balance of clarity and sweetness we were looking for in the violin – not many recordings from this era can do that, and not even most RCA’s, to be honest

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A.C. Jobim – The Composer of ’Desafinado’ Plays

More Antonio Carlos Jobim

More Bossa Nova

  • With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from first note to last, this original Stereo Verve pressing could not be beat
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “sweet and spacious and lively”…”lots of texture”…”very detailed and relaxed and open and rich”…”sweet and transparent flute”
  • Both of these sides are clean, clear and dynamic yet still full of rich, warm 1963 Tubey Magical analog sound
  • We love the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim here at Better Records and we think this album is his best – no serious jazz collection should be without it
  • 4 1/2 stars: “A dozen songs, each one destined to become a standard — an astounding batting average.”

We’re big fans of Jobim here at Better Records, and this pressing was one of the best from our most recent shootout. We had a wonderful time listening to a big pile of pressings — the sound (and music) were out of this world. We were shocked at just how well recorded this album is.

We consider this Jobim album a Masterpiece. It’s a recording that belongs in any serious jazz music collection.

Others that belong in that category can be found here.

We’ve played a ton of different versions, including imports, originals, reissues (all stereo), and one lone mono, which was so ridiculously bad sounding we tossed it right out of the competition and into the trade pile.

For those of you playing along at home, we are not going to be much help to you here in finding your own Hot Stampers. Every version had strengths and weaknesses and all are represented in the listings we will be putting up on the site.

Phil Ramone

Credit engineer Phil Ramone for correctly capturing the sound of every instrument here: the guitars, piano, flutes, strings, drums, percussion instruments — everything has the natural timbre of the real thing. I used to think this recording erred on the bright side, but not the Hot Stamper copies. They are tonally right on the money. (When the balance lacks lower midrange the sound gets lean, which causes the strings to seem brighter than they really are, a not uncommon problem with some of the pressings we played.)

Claus Ogerman

The string arrangements by the phenomenally talented producer/arranger Claus Ogerman surely contribute a great deal to the beauty of this music, and much of its “feel.” This is the man who made Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim such an original and powerful departure in Sinatra’s body of work. He continued to work with Jobim on a number of follow-up albums, including A Certain Mr. Jobim (1967) and Wave (1967). From 1963-67 he arranged some 60-70 albums for Creed Taylor’s Verve and then went on to work with him extensively at CTI.

And what would Breezin’ be without Ogerman’s lush strings? Not to be too unkind, but probably just another George Benson album.

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Listening In Depth to Gaucho, The Band’s Last Good Album

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Gaucho.

Here are some albums currently on our site with similar track by track breakdowns.

Of all the great albums Steely Dan made, and that means their seven original albums and nothing that came after, there are only three in our opinion that actually support their reputation as studio wizards and recording geniuses.

Chronologically they are Pretzel Logic, Aja, and Gaucho. Every sound captured on these albums is so carefully crafted and considered that it practically brings one to tears to contemplate what the defective DBX noise reduction system did to the work of genius that is Katy Lied, their best album and the worst sounding. (Those cymbal crashes can really mess with your mind if you let them. To get a better picture of the DBX sound, just bang two trash can lids together as close to your head as possible.)

The first two albums can sound very good, as can Royal Scam, but none of those can compete with The Big Three mentioned above for sonics. A Hot Stamper copy of any of them would be a seriously good sounding record indeed.

Side One

Babylon Sisters

The tom intro is a great test for transparency. On most copies those opening drums are flat and lackluster. When it’s done right, you can hear the room around the drums, and that’s a mighty fine sounding room!

Also, pay attention to the bell in the left channel at the beginning of the song – if it’s sharp and doesn’t really sustain, you’re probably dealing with the typical extension-challenged copy. If it’s shimmery with a natural sounding decay you may very well be in store for some great sound.

On most copies the saxophone that intermittently pokes its head out will get smoothed over, losing its bite and getting lost in the mix. Much the same can be said for the background singers — they can easily sound veiled and get lost in the mix.

From the time they start singing “Babylon sisters” until they reach the final “shake it!” there should be a crescendo of volume and intensity.

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