Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Graham Nash Available Now
Our last shootout for this album took place in 2021. I wish we could keep the record in stock but finding the right stampers these days is not easy.
Still, as a favorite album of mine, I listen to the album regularly, just not on vinyl. Both the standard CD and the cassette I have sound right to me, sounding very much like the original record.
Recently I was playing the album and heard a song that sounded an awful lot like it might have been produced by the same team that recorded David Crosby’s first album, If Only I Could Remember My Name.
If you’re up for it, listen to the Crosby, then play the Nash and see if you can spot it. Feel free to leave your impressions in the comments section below.
Digging Deeper
Songs for Beginners is one of those albums that made me want to dig deeper into audio. After every improvement I managed to make to the system, Songs for Beginners would be one of the records that I would play (at very high volume) to see what changes I had brought about.
All the best changes — the ones I kept — always made the album sound better than I had last heard it. Over the course of decades the sound became amazingly good, a true Demo Disc that belonged in the company of Tea for the Tillerman or Dark Side of the Moon.
Back in the 70s and the 80s, not so much later as I had found plenty of other tough test discs by then, it helped me dramatically improve the playback quality of my system, which, to be honest, had a very long way to go, although I sure didn’t know that at the time. I thought it sounded great.
Early on in the history of our track by track breakdowns, written in order to aid listeners in testing their stereos and the other copies of the record they might own, we did a breakdown for the album which you can read here.
If you can’t find a nice original, whatever you do, don’t buy the awful Classic Records pressing of the album. They ruined it.
Want to find your own killer copy?
Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that tend to win our shootouts.
As of 2024, shootouts for Songs for Beginners should be carried out:
Nothing else will do for a big, dynamic, powerful recording such as this.
Better Days in the mid-70s
Songs for Beginners couldn’t make me an audiophile; I already was one. It did, however, make me a more dedicated audio enthusiast. It’s precisely the kind of record that rewards the 40 50-plus years I’ve put into this hobby, trying to get it as well as hundreds — now thousands — of other wonderful records to sound their best.
When I first acquired Audio Research tube gear (ARC SP3-A & D-75A) in the mid-70s I thought I had arrived. The sound was glorious compared to the Crown transistor amp and preamp they replaced in my system. It was truly a giant leap forward.
Little did I know that I had a much, much longer journey ahead of me (which would, truth be told, not include ARC gear for long). By 2007 we were tube free and have never looked back. There was never any reason to. Records were sounding better and better with each passing year.
Further Reading