More Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin
We’ve wanted to have Hot Stamper pressings of this album of Paganini’s Caprices (CS-6163) to offer our customers for years, not for the music per se, but to use as a handy test disc for those who are interested in setting up and dialing in their front ends better.
After all, these are only practice pieces. If you want real music written for the violin, we have plenty of albums to choose from that would be much more enjoyable.
If you like the sound of solo violin — and who doesn’t? — you will have a hard time finding a better sounding recording of it than this. That’s assuming you can set your Vertical Tracking Angle (VTA) correctly, not something every audiophile can manage. If you can, look out — you are in for a sonic treat.
Solo violins in live performance are clear, clean and present. You have no trouble at all “seeing” them clearly.
Our vintage Hot Stamper pressings will always have that kind of clear and present sound for the violin. If they didn’t, they would not qualify as Hot Stamper pressings.
Setup Advice
This is truly the perfect turntable setup disc; when your VTA, azimuth, tracking weight and anti-skate are correct, this is the record that will make it clear to you that all your efforts have paid off.
What to listen for you ask?
With the proper adjustment the harmonics of the strings will sound extended and correct, neither hyped up nor dull; the wood body of the instrument will be more audibly “woody”; the fingering at the neck will be noticeable but will not call attention to itself in an unnatural way. In other words, as you adjust your setup, the violin will sound more and more right.
And you can’t really know how right it can sound until you go through hours of experimentation with all the forces that affect the way the needle rides the groove. Without precise VTA adjustment there is almost no way this record will do everything it’s capable of doing. There will be hardness, smear, sourness, thinness — something will be off somewhere. With total control over arm and cartridge setup, these problems will all but vanish. (Depending on the quality of your equipment, of course.)
We harp on all aspects of reproduction for a reason. When you have done the work, records like this sound glorious.
Experimenting with the VTA for this record, we found a precise point where it came together far beyond any expectations we may have had, revealing the sound of a violin floating between the speakers that was truly magical.
The sound of the wood of the instrument became so clear, the harmonic textures so natural, it was quite a shock to hear a good record somehow become an amazing one. All it took was a little work.
Further Reading
- Get the Phono Finish!
- How to get the most out of your records – a step by step guide
- The violin is a wonderful instrument for tweaking and tuning your front end as well as your system in general
