Albums in Focus

Our Pines of Rome Shootout Was Twenty Years in the Making

Hot Stamper Pressings of Classical and Orchestral Music Available Now

We did a monster shootout for this music in 2021, one we had been planning for more than twenty years. On hand were quite a few copies of the Reiner on RCA; the Ansermet on London; the Maazel on Decca and London (the Decca being on the TAS List), the Kempe on Readers Digest, and quite a few others we felt had at least the potential to sound good.

Allow me to back up a bit.

When I first started paying attention to the TAS Super Disc list in the late-70s,  I read about the famous Pines of Rome RCA pressing with 1S stampers that was so dynamic that it had to be recut so that it would play on all turntables. I could never find one, and the Shaded Dogs and Red Seals that I did find never sounded all that good to me.

I know now that I did not have the stereo system back then (equipment, room, etc.) that could reproduce a recording of such difficulty.

In the 80s, the Mobile Fidelity pressing of the Pines of Rome came out, and it never sounded right to me either. This was true of all their classical releases, without exception. To me they epitomized the kind of bright, phony, “audiophile” sound commonly found in audio showrooms but rarely if ever heard in concert halls.

The Classic Records release from 1995 of the Reiner Pines was no better. That record was just too harsh sounding, with the shrill strings that Bernie Grundman was cutting on practically every title put out by that awful label.

I fell for some of them — I actually raved about Witches’ Brew on Classic back then, an endorsement that mortifies me to this day — but most of their classical records were junk that I was selling for cheap to the audiophiles who bought into the reviews written about them in the audio mags.

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Yes, It Certainly Is a Question of Balance

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Moody Blues Available Now

Recently we played an early UK pressing that boasted two seriously good sounding sides.

It was huge and spacious, as well as wonderfully Tubey Magical. To our way of thinking, if that isn’t exactly the way the band wanted to sound in 1970, we can’t imagine what would be.

A Question of Balance has some of the best Moody Blues sound we’ve ever heard – it’s a truly exceptional recording in their canon. And it includes the big hit “Question,” one of the all time greats by the band.

Achieving just the right balance of “Moody Blues Sound” and transparency is no mean feat.

  • You have to be using the real master tape for starters.
  • Then you need top end extension, a very rare quality on these imports.
  • Finally, you need good bass definition to keep the bottom end from blurring and bleeding into the midrange.

No domestic copy in our experience has ever had these three qualities, and only the best of the British imports (no Dutch, German or Japanese need apply) manages to get all three on the same LP.

Allow me to steal some commentary from a Moody Blues Hot Stamper shootout we did years ago, for the wonderful In Search of the Lost Chord, in which we said that, on the best Hot Stamper pressings, the clarity and resolution come without sacrificing the Tubey Magical richness, warmth and lushness for which Moody Blues recordings are justifiably famous.

Typically

Moody Blues albums are typically murky, congested and dull. Listening to the typical copy you’d be forgiven for blaming the band or the recording engineer for the problem, but copies like this tell a different story.

Of course the album is never going to have the kind of super clean, high-rez sound some audiophiles prize, but that’s clearly not what the Moody Blues were aiming for. It isn’t about picking out individual parts or deciphering the machinery of the music with this band.

It’s all about lush, massive soundscapes, and for that this is the kind of sound that works the best.

Domestic Moody Blues LPs

If you’ve ever done a shootout between domestic pressings of the Moody Blues and good imports, you know that the imports just kill the American LPs. Domestic pressings are cut from sub-generation tapes, which means they tend to sound more smeary, yet they’re also thinner, brighter and more transistory.

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The Grateful Dead – “…what a wonderful thing – acoustic guitars…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Grateful Dead Available Now

Jerry Garcia, discussing where the band’s thinking was at at the time, explained, “We were into a much more relaxed thing…and we were also out of our pretentious thing. We weren’t feeling so much like an experimental music group, but were feeling more like a good old band.”

Mickey Hart added, “I thought, what a wonderful thing – acoustic guitars. It was cold out there in the feedback, electric GD world. It was a great cold, a wonderful freeze, full of exploratory moments and great vision, but here we were exploring the soft side… I remember how warm and fuzzy it made me feel.”

AMG Review

A lovely exploration of American roots music illuminating the group’s country, blues, and folk influences. The lilting Uncle John’s Band, their first radio hit, opens the record and perfectly summarizes its subtle, spare beauty; complete with a new focus on more concise songs and tighter arrangements, the approach works brilliantly. Despite its sharp contrast to the epic live space jams on which the group’s legend primarily rests, Workingman’s Dead nonetheless spotlights the Dead at their most engaging, stripped of all excess to reveal the true essence of their craft.

Rolling Stone Review

It’s so nice to receive a present from good friends.

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On Tons Of Sobs, the Domestic Pressings Just Don’t Make the Cut These Days

Hot Stamper Pressings of British Blues Rock Albums Available Now

Years ago — in 2011 to be exact — we wrote the following in a listing for a very good sounding domestic pressing:

Solid bass, present vocals, plenty of energy — the only thing missing here is the Tubey Magical richness and sweetness that only the British originals (in our experience) have, and in spades by the way.

But try to find one. Over the last two or three years I think we’ve managed to get hold of exactly one clean copy.

Fast forward a number of years and we’ve only had a few since then. I have seen the original Pink Label British pressing of this album sell on the web for more than 1000 dollars, which might explain why we rarely have them.

But if you want to hear this record in all of its glory, the UK Island pressings are the only game in town.

Both Pink and Sunray labels sound good, just make sure they are from the UK.

And don’t buy any later label pressing from any country if you want the best sound.

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Farmers Market Barbecue – First Among Equals, or The Best Pablo Ever?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Count Basie Available Now

Musically FMB is a Top Basie Big Band title in every way. This should not be surprising: many of his recordings for Pablo in the ’70s and early ’80s display the talents of The Count and his band of veterans at their best.

Sonically it’s another story. Based on our recent shootout for this title, in comparison to the other Basie titles we’ve done lately, we would have to say that FMB is the best Basie big band title we’ve ever played. Since so many Basie big band recordings are so good, we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves; after all, we haven’t done shootouts for all of his Pablo large group recordings. To be safe we’ll just call this one First Among Equals.

The following are some general guidelines as to What to Listen For while you critically evaluate any of the Basie Big Band Pablo recordings (or any other big band recordings for that matter).

Simply put, we offer here a short list of qualities that we’ve come to appreciate on the best of the Basie Big Band pressings, qualities that we find are often in short supply on lesser LPs (and, as a rule, those that have been remastered onto Heavy Vinyl). (more…)

Roxy Music’s Debut Is a Masterpiece

Hot Stamper Pressings of Roxy Music’s Albums Available Now

Folks, this is a true Demo Disc in the world of art rock.

It’s rare to find a recording of popular music with dynamics such as these.

In both music and sound, this is arguably the best record the band ever made. Siren, Avalon and Country Life are all musically sublime, but the first album has the kind of dynamic, energetic, POWERFUL sound that their other records simply never show us. And we’ve played them by the dozens, so there’s a pretty good chance we will never find copies with the abundant richness and power we find here.

We hope you will agree with us that it was entirely worth the wait, as this album is a MASTERPIECE of Art Rock, Glam Rock and Bent Rock all rolled into one.

AMG calls Roxy Music the “most adventurous rock band of the early ’70s” and I’m inclined to agree with them. Roxy are certainly one of the most influential and important bands in my growth as a listener and audiophile, along with Supertramp, Ambrosia, 10cc, Steely Dan, Yes, Bowie and others, groups of musicians dedicated to exploring and exploding the conventions of popular music.

Want to find your own killer copy?

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Way Back in 2007 We Discovered the Hottest Meddle Stampers of Them All

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

UPDATE 2020

This review from 2007 describes our experience of having stumbled upon the right stampers for Meddle. To this day, only these stampers and no others have won the many shootouts we’ve done for the album in the ensuing years, perhaps as many as a dozen shootouts or more.

These stampers are also very hard to find, which is why you may not have seen a copy of Meddle hit the site in a while. If we could find them, believe me, we would have them up all the time, as this is one amazing sounding album.

To see more albums with one set of stampers that consistently win shootouts, click here.

Want to find your own shootout winner?

Scroll to the bottom to see our advice on doing just that.

This Harvest Green Label British Import pressing has a side one that goes FAR beyond anything we’ve ever heard for this album. We had no choice but to award this side one the very rare A with FOUR pluses. We’ve never given any side of any other Pink Floyd record such a high grade, so you can be sure that you’ve never heard them sound this amazing.

  • Our lengthy commentary entitled outliers and out-of-this-world sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how to go about finding them.
  • We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.
  • Nowadays we often place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that, out of the blue, reveal to us sound that fundamentally changes what we thought we knew about these often familiar recordings.
  • When this pressing (or pressings) landed on our turntable, we found ourselves asking “Who knew?“
  • Perhaps an even better question would have been “how high is up?”

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Obsessed with Bread’s Best

More of The Most Tubey Magical Rock Recordings of All Time

This is one of the rare Greatest Hits compilations (and this band had a LOT of hits) that is sonically competitive with the original albums.

You’ll find most of the best Bread ballads here, including Make It With You, Everything I Own, Baby I’m A Want You, and If.

Listening to these acoustic guitars brings back memories of my first encounter with a British original of Tea for the Tillerman. Rich, sweet, full-bodied, effortlessly dynamic — that sound knocked me out thirty plus years ago, and here it is again.

I guess I’ve just always been a sucker for this kind of well-crafted pop. I was buying Bread album in the early Seventies while still in high school.

If you’re a sucker too, then this killer copy of The Best of Bread will no doubt become a treasured disc in your home as well.

When you hear sound this good, it makes you appreciate the music even more than the sound. Over the years I’ve even come to enjoy the rockers on side two. I used to consider side two the weak part of the album. To hear the vocal harmonies that these guys produced is to be reminded of singers of the caliber of the Everly Brothers or The Beatles. It’s Pure Pop for Now People, to borrow a good line from Nick Lowe.

Of course, by Now People, I’m referring to people who appreciate the music that came out more than thirty years ago. Whenever I hear a pop record with sound like this, I have to ask myself, “What went wrong with popular recordings over the last two or three decades? Why do none of them ever sound like this?”

Not to worry.

Audiophiles with good turntables have literally an endless supply of good recordings to discover and enjoy. No matter how many records you have, you can’t have even scratched the surface of the recorded legacy of the last 60+ years. That’s the positive thought for the day. It’s not the end of the world. It’s just another step on your journey through the world of music.

One further note.

Records like this only get better over time. There are no shortcomings in this recording to be revealed by better equipment, in painfully stark contrast to the vast majority of audiophile pressings and remasterings that reveal their phony, lifeless and often just plain weird sound as your stereo and critical listening skills improve. In other words, if you make a change to your stereo and this record starts to sound better, you did the right thing. (more…)

What to Listen For and More on Ruben and the Jets

More of the Music of Frank Zappa

Is the thought bubble on the cover the real story behind the album?

Is this the Mothers of Invention recording under a different name in a last ditch attempt to get their cruddy music on the radio?

Amazing sound for this record of greasy love songs and cretin simplicity to offer to audiophiles and music lovers alike from all corners of the world. We absolutely LOVE this album here at Better Records, or at least that portion of Better Records that remembers it from high school still loves it (which would narrow it down to a subset of just me I guess, but who’s counting?). Anyway, it’s a classic of twisted Doo-Wop that belongs in your collection. At least we think you should give it a chance anyway; hearing it sound this good might just make a believer out of you.

Tubey Magic Is Key

Many copies are just too thin and edgy to be as fun and enjoyable as we have every right to expect from this kind of purposely un-hip, un-cool, goofy retro-pop. We were gratified to find that the top finishers had a healthy dose of the Tubey Magical richness found on the best analog recordings from the latter half of the 60s (1968 in this case).

This is a very good recording indeed, judged, as is only fair, solely by the best of the pressings we’ve heard. In other words, the bad pressings sound like crap, but that’s no reflection on the quality of the master tape.

As with most Zappa records, an extended top end is devilishly hard to come by. (In that respect, it is good for testing.)

That said, on a primarily vocal album such as this one, the midrange is where the music lives or dies.

The copies that were rich and full-bodied, with natural vocal reproduction, tended to score the highest grades in our shootout.

Copies that failed to convey the energy and exuberance of the singers and musicians — their love of this music that time had forgotten even by 1968 — as you may well imagine scored relatively poorly. This music is supposed to be fun, and really not a whole lot else, so the copies that aren’t fun scored sub-Hot Stamper grades. (Lifelessness is of course our main beef with Heavy Vinyl these days. When we play one of these new thick LPs the sound is often so blase that I feel that the longer it plays, the more the air is being sucked out of the room.)

The Search for Lush Life – We Broke Through in 2016

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

We’ve been searching for years trying to find just what kind of Lush Life pressing — what era, what label, what stampers, whether mono or stereo, import or domestic — had the potential for good sound.

No, scratch that. We should have said excellent sound. Exceptional sound. We’ve played plenty of copies that sounded pretty good, even very good, but exceptional? That pressing had eluded us — until a few months ago.

Yes, it was only a few months ago, early in 2016 in fact, that we chanced upon the right kind of pressing — the right era, the right label, the right stampers, the right sound. Not just the right sound though. Better sound than we ever thought this album could have.

Previously we had written:

“There are great sounding originals, but they are few and far between…”

We no longer believe that to be true. In fact we believe the opposite of that statement to be true. The original we had on hand — noisy but with reasonably good sound, or so we thought — was an absolute joke next to our best Hot Stamper pressings. Half the size, half the clarity and presence, half the life and energy, half the immediacy, half the studio space. It was simply not remotely competitive with the copies we now know (or at least believe, all knowledge being provisional) to have the best sound.

Are there better originals than the ones we’ve played? Maybe there are. If you want to spend your days searching for them, more power to you. And if you do find one that impresses you, we are happy to send you one of our Hot Copies to play against it. We are confident that the outcome would be clearly favorable to our pressing. Ten seconds of side one should be enough to convince you that our record is in an entirely different league, a league we had no idea even existed until just this year.

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