Reissue=Best

In our experience, the records linked here potentially sound their best on the right reissue.

What the “right” reissue is — from which era, from which country, with which stampers — is something I have spent most of my adult life trying to figure out. Now that I have retired, our staff of ten is carrying on that work and constantly discovering new and better pressings.

Sometimes the new and better pressings turn out not to be the reissues we used to like, and when that happens we learn from our mistake, admit we were wrong and offer our customers something even better sounding than before.

We call them Hot Stampers, and we make them available to the serious audiophile who appreciates — and is willing to pay a premium price for — the best sounding vinyl in the world.

Naturally, they are almost exclusively pressed on vintage vinyl, since modern remasterings, in our experience, consistently fail to provide the higher sound quality they promise.

Martin Denny / Exotica – Our Shootout Winner from 2011

This second label very quiet Liberty Stereo LP has at least Super Hot Stamper EXOTIC SOUND on both sides, with a side two that may be White Hot. It’s hard to know for sure whether side two can get any better than this — it’s pretty darn amazing, some of the most Magically Delicious sound we played in our recent shootout.  

Recorded in 1958, you can imagine there is a healthy amount of Tubey Magical richness and sweetness, although this second label copy seems to be cut a bit more cleanly and correctly than some of the first label Denny records we auditioned. The tonality is dead on the money, a quality that the most tubey recordings rarely exhibit; they can easily get overly lush and appear murky. (more…)

Miles Davis – A Tribute To Jack Johnson

More Miles Davis

More of Our Best Jazz Trumpet Recordings

Two White Hot Stamper sides on quiet vinyl for this 5-Star Jazz/Rock Fusion classic! If you love the crazy music that Miles was making with John McLaughlin in the early ’70s, I’m sure you’re already a fan of this album, but I bet you’ve never heard it sound like this.

Check out the especially insightful Five Star All Music Guide Review linked above to get a better feel of what this album is all about. We’ve been trying to track down a good copy for ages, so it was a treat to hear this crazy, progressive jazz finally sound right. (more…)

Big Brother & The Holding Company Featuring Janis Joplin

More Women Who Rock

  • With two seriously good Double Plus (A++) sides, this was one of the better copies we played in our recent shootout
  • Most copies we played were too compressed or veiled to involve you in the music, but this one has the kind of rich, big, clear sound this Bay Area band needs to work its bluesy magic
  • Turn this one up good and loud (which you can do when the sound is right) and you’ll have a living, breathing Janis Joplin standing right between your speakers
  • A tough record to find with audiophile quality sound and clean vinyl, two reasons you rarely see it on the site

(more…)

Count Basie / Chairman of the Board – The Reissues that Beat the Originals (and of course the Classic Records Remaster)

  • A Shootout Winning copy with Triple Plus (A+++) sound on the first side and Double Plus (A++) sound on the second
  • From first note to last, this copy is big, clear, rich and lively, with huge amounts of space around the band
  • Forget the honky, hard-sounding Roulette originals, and of course the second-rate Classic Records pressing – this reissue is the way to go
  • 4 1/2 stars: “This 1958 date for Roulette was a rare chance for the orchestra to perform on its own, and listeners to hear how powerful the band could be when its concentration was undiverted… The record is admittedly heavy on the blues, but it’s a brassy, powerful vision of the blues… A dynamic date, it shows the ‘new testament’ edition of Basie’s orchestra in top form.”

This reissue is spacious, open, transparent, rich and sweet. It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording Technology, with the added benefit of mastering using the more modern cutting equipment of the ’70s. We are of course here referring to the good modern mastering of 30+ years ago, not the dubious and too often disastrous modern mastering of today. 

The combination of old and new works wonders on this title as you will surely hear for yourself on these superb sides. We were impressed with the fact that these pressings excel in so many areas of reproduction. What was odd about it — odd to most audiophiles but not necessarily to us — was just how rich and Tubey Magical the reissue can be on the right pressing.

This leads me to think that most of the natural, full-bodied, lively, clear, rich sound of the album is on the tape, and that all one has to do to get that vintage sound on to a record is simply to thread up the tape on the right machine and hit play. (more…)

Milt Jackson & John Coltrane on Killer ’70s Reissue Vinyl

  • Stunning sound on this stereo pressing with both sides rating close to our Shootout Winner, just shy of Triple Plus (A++ to A+++)
  • One of Tom Dowd’s many outstanding recordings of John Coltrane at the height of his powers – the sound is to die for
  • Exceptionally quiet on both sides for a vintage jazz album such as this – it actually plays a true Mint Minus
  • 5 stars: “Vibraphonist Milt Jackson and tenor saxophonist John Coltrane make for a surprisingly complementary team on this 1959 studio session, their only joint recording.”

If all you have ever played is an original pressing or a modern reissue, you are in for a treat — this copy is going to murder them.

We found all of this out the hard way, by having some originals and some of the “wrong” reissues in our shootout. Of course, we didn’t know they were not going to be especially good sounding until we played them, but it didn’t take long to recognize there was one stamper and one stamper only that had the sonic goods. It was simply no contest. And it was not an original pressing.

Needless to say, this record has that stamper. (more…)