Hot Stamper Pressings of Rock Records that Sound Better on Big Speakers at Loud Levels
If you’re a fan of big drums and jump out of the speakers sound, this is the album for you.
We rarely have Get The Knack in stock, but we do have a good selection of other debut albums.
This Monster Power Pop Debut by the Knack is an AMAZINGLY well-recorded album, with the kind of wall to wall big beat live rock sound that rivals Back in Black and Nevermind — if you’re lucky enough to have a copy that sounds like our Shootout Winning pressings do. (If you’re not, then it doesn’t.)
This is a Rock Demo Disc that is very likely to lay waste to whatever rock Demo Disc you currently treasure — certainly in some areas of sound reproduction.
My Sharona is simply stunning here. You just can’t record drums and bass any better. That’s why it’s a lifelong member of the prestigious none rocks rarder club. We love the sound of punchy drums and these are as punchy as they get.
And let’s not forget the song Lucinda. It’s got exactly the same incredibly meaty, grungy, ballsy sound that Back in Black does, but it managed to do it in 1979, a year earlier!
Mike Chapman produced this album and clearly he is an audiophile production genius. With a pair of Number One charting, amazing sounding Pop albums back to back — Blondie’s Parallel Lines in 1978 and this album early the next year — how much better could he get?
Real Studio Space
One of the qualities we heard on the more transparent copies of the album is huge studio space around the drum kit, especially the kick. We love that “unbaffled” sound; it allows the long-delayed reflections off the back wall to be heard clearly. (Or is it reverb? Who knows?)
Until we got our EAR 324 in 2007, we had trouble getting a good picture of just what was happening in the space of the studio or concert hall, but now those reflections are as clear as a bell on record after record, from The Planets to Physical Graffiti.
The advent of top quality stand alone phono stages is, in our opinion, one of the most important revolutions in audio in recent times.
Room treatments that allow that three dimensional studio or concert hall space to be recreated in your very own living room are another.
Here at Better Records we are fans of big speakers and loud levels, a combination that allows this record to be as powerful and moving as it should be.
We love that sound and have been proselytizing for equipment capable of recreating it in the home for more than 30 40 years. It is simply impossible for speakers this size to reproduce the power of all the drums and bass on Get the Knack.
They can’t move enough air to sound like live music, and if they can’t move enough air to sound like live music, what good are they?
Further Reading