Albums in Focus

This Is Why We Love Hippie Folk Rock from the 60s and 70s

Hot Stamper Pressings of Hippie Folk Rock Albums Available Now

This has long been one of our favorite Hippie Folk Rock albums here at Better Records.

If you like Crosby, Stills and Nash’s first album or Rubber Soul — and who doesn’t love those two albums? — you should much to like on Down in L.A.

Here is how we described our most recent shootout winner:

These are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “fully extended from top to bottom”…”vox and guitar jumping out of the speakers”…”big and tubey and weighty”…”HTF [hard to fault]” (side one)…”serious bass and energy”…:”rich and 3D and lively.”

Both of these sides have the smooth sweet analog sound we were listening for – they’re rich and tubey, with clarity and freedom from smear that make it the best of both worlds.

The notes for the top copy from our most recent shootout can be seen below. It us six years to get this shootout going, but the best copies we played were so impressive that they made all the time and money it took to pull it off worth the effort.

Side one was HTF – Hard To Fault.

Brewer and Shipley’s first and only release for A&M has long been a Desert Island Disc in my world. I consider it one of the top debuts of all time, although it’s doubtful many will agree with me about that since I have yet to meet anyone who has ever even heard of this album, let alone felt as passionate as I do about it.

To me this is a classic of Folk Rock, along the lines of The Grateful Dead circa American Beauty, surely a touchstone for the genre.

It’s overflowing with carefully-crafted (B and S apparently were obsessive perfectionists in the studio) inspired material and beautifully harmonized voices backed by (mostly) acoustic guitars.

The Beatles pulled it off masterfully on Help and Rubber Soul.

All three are built on the same folk pop sensibilities. Tarkio, album number three, is clearly the duo’s Masterpiece, but this record comes next in my book, followed by Weeds, their second album and first for Kama Sutra. After Tarkio it’s all downhill.

“Of all the many folkys to make a transition to electric folk-rock in the 1960s, Brewer & Shipley retained more of the wholesome, strident qualities of early-60s folk revival harmonizing than almost anyone.”

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Oscar Peterson’s Best Recording? Sure Sounds Like It to Us

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Oscar Peterson Available Now

I’ve known this was a well recorded album since I first heard the DCC Gold CD back in the 90s.

It sounded great to me at the time, although I had nothing to compare it to. I was not an Oscar Peterson fan in those days. The CD may be very good, but it is unlikely to hold a candle to any of our Hot Stamper vinyl pressings.

I now realize that this album is clearly one of the best jazz piano recordings ever made. In its own way it’s every bit as good as  another landmark recording we talk about, The Three, recorded in 1975.

This album checks off a number of important boxes for us here at Better Records:

The description for the amazing copy we found in our shootout more than a decade ago has been reproduced below.

The Right Sound from the Get Go

Side one starts out with a solid, full-bodied piano and snare drum, a sure sign of great sound to come. This side was richer and fuller than all the other copies we played. That rich tonality is key to getting the music to work. It keeps all the instrumental elements in balance. The natural top on this side is just more evidence that the mastering and pressing are top drawer. Great space and immediacy, powerful driving energy — this side could not be beat.

And side two was every bit as good! The sound was jumpin’ out of the speakers. There was not a trace of smear on the piano, which is unusual in our experience, although no one ever seems to talk about smeary pianos in the audiophile world (except for us of course).

Ray Brown’s bass is huge, probably bigger than it would be in real life, but I can live with that. Once again, with this kind of extended top end, the space of the studio and harmonics of the instruments are reproduced brilliantly.

Testing with Oscar

Lately we have been writing quite a bit about how good pianos are for testing your system, room, tweaks, electricity and all the rest, not to mention turntable setup and adjustment.

  • We like our pianos to sound natural (however one chooses to define the term)
  • We like them to be solidly weighted
  • We like them to be free of smear, a quality that for some reason is rarely mentioned in the audiophile reviews we read [more on smear at the end of this commentary]

Here are some of our favorite jazz records with top quality piano sound

Other records that we have found to be good for testing and improving your playback can be found here.

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Gorilla – A Soft Rock Favorite from 1975

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of James Taylor Available Now

This is soft rock at its best, primarily made up of love songs, and helped immensely by the harmonically-gifted backing vocals of Graham Nash and David Crosby.

Rolling Stone notes that “With Gorilla, Taylor is well on his way to staking out new ground. What he’s hit upon is the unlikely mating of his familiar low-keyed, acoustic guitar-dominated style with L.A. harmony rock and the sweet, sexy school of rhythm and blues.”

If you are not a fan of the mellow James Taylor, this is not the album for you.

I happen to be just such a fan. Taylor’s sixth album contains consistently engaging, well-produced, well-written, memorable, singable (or hummable) songs that hold up to this day.

After enjoying it for more than 45 years I can honestly say now it actually sounds good. The recording finally makes sense, now that I have the stereo that can play it and the cleaning system that could get the record truly clean. And it only took 35 years — nice!

At Better Records that’s what we’re talking about when we talk about progress. Make no mistake, it is very REAL. When we take a recording that, on copy after copy, never sounded much better than passable, and actually get it to sound musical and involving, that’s not an illusion. It’s the result of the countless revolutions in audio that we’ve participated in. Without the hundreds of changes we’ve made to our stereo, room and cleaning systems, old records would just sound like old records.

The average copy is so flat, lifeless and hard sounding that you might just wonder if there isn’t something wrong with your stereo when the needle hits the Gorilla groove. Most copies are awful, and the same goes for the albums that came before it and after it, Walking Man and In the Pocket, respectively.

This record does not sound like just any old record, not the best copies anyway.

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Prelude Is a Phenomenally Good Van Gelder Recording from 1973

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Rudy Van Gelder

On Deodato’s magnificent Prelude, listen to the trumpet on the second track on side one — it’s so immediate, it’s practically JUMPING out of the soundfield, just bursting with energy. Rudy can really pull off these big productions on occasion, and this session was clearly one of them.

If you have the kind of stereo that’s right for this music (the bigger the better) you could easily find yourself using this record as a demonstration disc. It’s very unlikely that many of your audiophile friends have ever heard anything like it.

The congas are present in the mix and very full-bodied — this allows them to really drive the rhythmic energy of the music. We know this because the copies with congas that were veiled or thin never seemed to want to get up and go. 

The top is most often the problem with these CTI pressings. The best sides seem to give you all the top end that was on the tape.

There is wonderful transparency and openness to the soundstage, as well as less congestion in the loudest parts. Also Sprach (2001) is on side one of the album and it is KILLER on the best pressings.

The best sides are also surprisingly sweet and Tubey Magical, nice qualities for a CTI record to have since so many of them are aggressive and edgy.

Full, lively horns; rich, punchy, smear-free congas; fuzzy fuzzed-out guitars; as well as correct tonality and Tubey Magic in every area of the spectrum, what’s not to love?

The best are so much bigger than most copies too. There is no doubt that you will hear the difference immediately. If you do a shootout with your best copy and ours plan on it being over practically before it starts.

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Find a Copy with Drums that Punch Through the Mix on Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now

Many pressings are compressed, murky, veiled and recessed. To find one that is transparent, clear, present and punchy is no mean feat.

Proper cleaning is essential. The early Orange label CBS pressings (the only ones that have the potential to win shootouts) too often just sound like old records until they have been properly cleaned.

There are two tracks to play to hear how well the drums punch through the mix.

Mick Fleetwood is banging the hell out of his toms on Black Magic Woman. If it doesn’t sound like he’s really pounding away, you need a better copy.

Or a better stereo; one must always be open to the possibility that the system may not be up to reproducing the punchiness of the drums.

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The Beatles – Looking Back on Our First Abbey Road Shootout

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

This review is a window into our limited understanding of Abbey Road on vinyl in 2007.

Let’s just say we have learned a lot about the album since then, mostly through better playback and cleaning, but also because we’ve played roughly one hundred more pressings since then, having done shootouts for the album by the dozens.

These regularly-held shootouts are the only thing that has taught us what we think we know.

Looking back, 2007 seems to have been a milestone year for us here at Better Records, although we certainly did not know that at the time.

Later that same year we swore off Heavy Vinyl (prompted by the mediocre sound of the Rhino pressing of Blue) and committed ourselves to doing record shootouts of vintage pressings full time.

Much of the review you see below indicates we had a much more limited understanding of Abbey Road than we do now, but we obviously have no problem admitting to it, a subject we discussed in some detail here.

Live and learn is our motto, and progress in audio is a feature, not a bug, of record collecting at the most advanced levels. (“Advanced” is a code word for having little to no interest in any remastered pressing marketed to the audiophile community. If you want to avoid the worst of them, we are happy to help you do that.)

Our Review from 2007

This Minty Apple British Import pressing has MASTER TAPE SOUND ON SIDE ONE! We just finished a big Abbey Road shootout (1/16/07) and this side one was IN A LEAGUE OF ITS OWN!

This is the first Hot Stamper Abbey Road we’ve ever listed … and there’s a good reason for that. It’s practically impossible to find a properly mastered copy. For whatever reasons — probably because this recording is so complicated and required so many tracks — Abbey Road is the toughest nut to crack in the Beatles’ catalog.

This copy is actually my personal Ref Copy, which I have had in my collection for many years. Surprisingly, while doing this shootout we discovered that it doesn’t have the ultimate side two, which is the side I really liked on this copy. It still merits an A+ for side two, but it’s interesting that one of the things that we often discover in these shootouts is copies that exceed our expectations and set entirely new standards for albums we’ve been listening to critically for decades.

This copy turned out to have the Ultimate Side One — A+++. No other copy came close; it’s two full grades above the next best pressing.

Frankly, up to now we’ve been afraid to take on Abbey Road. With recent improvements to the stereo, and knowing that I had at least one superb sounding copy, now was the time. Out of all the imports I’ve been collecting over the last dozen years or so, only three or four copies really qualified as having Hot Stampers.

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Listening in Depth to Famous Blue Raincoat

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Leonard Cohen Available Now

I’m a huge fan of this FBR. It’s the only album Jennifer Warnes ever made that I would consider a Must Own recording or a Desert Island Disc. Without question this is her Masterpiece.

Key Test for Side One

Listen to the snare drum on Bird on a Wire. On most copies it sound thin and bright, not very much like a real snare. Let’s face it: most copies of this record are thin and bright, and that’s just not our sound here at Better Records. If the snare on Bird sounds solid and meaty, at the very least you have a copy that is probably not too bright, and on this album that puts it well ahead of the pack.

While you’re listening for the sound of that snare, notice the amazing drum work of Vinnie Colaiuta, session drummer extraordinaire. The guy’s work on this track — especially with the high hat — is genius.

Key Test for Side Two

Listen to the sound of the piano on Song of Bernadette. If it’s rich and full-bodied with the weight of a real piano, you might just have yourself a winner. At the very least you won’t have to suffer through the anemically thin sound of the average copy.

Side One

First We Take Manhattan

Don’t expect this song to be tonally correct. It runs the gamut from bright to too bright to excrutiatingly bright. Steve Hoffman told me that he took out something like 6 DB at 6K when he mastered it for a compilation he made, and I’m guessing that that’s the minimum that would need to come out. It’s made to be a hit single, and like so many hit single wannabes, it’s mixed brighter than we audiophiles might like.

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Key Sonic Elements for My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Talking Heads Available Now

If you like Remain in Light as much as we do here at Better Records, you will surely have a blast with this record.

I’ve been a big fan of the album since the day it came out.

As a bonus, it’s a much better recording than Remain in Light — sweet and spacious, not hard and brittle the way that can album can be, especially on the first track.

Rick Wright of Pink Floyd noted that the album “knocked me sideways when I first heard it – full of drum loops, samples and soundscapes. The way the sounds were mixed in was so fresh, it was amazing.”

Four, Maybe Five Key Elements

Here is a comprehensive breakdown of what we were listening for when evaluating My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

Clarity and Presence

Many copies are veiled in the midrange, partly because they may have shortcomings up top, but also because they suffer from blurry, smeary mids and upper mids. Dull, dead sounding pressings can’t begin to communicate the musical values in this excellent recording.

With a real Hot Stamper the sound is totally involving. There is breath in the voices, the picking of the strings on the guitars — these things allow us to suspend our disbelief, to forget it’s a recording we’re listening to and not living, breathing musicians.

Top End Extension

Most copies of this album have no extreme highs, which causes instrumental harmonics to sound blunted and dull. Without extreme highs the percussion can’t extend up and away from the other elements. Consequently these elements end up fighting for space in the midrange and getting lost in the mix.

Transparency

Although this quality is related to the above two, it’s not as important overall as the one below, but it sure is nice to have. When you can really “see” into the mix, it’s much easier to pick out each and every instrument in order to gain more insight into the way the songs were arranged and recorded.

Seeing into the mix is a way of seeing into the mind of the artist. To hear the hottest copies is to appreciate even more the talents of all the musicians and producers involved, not to mention the engineers.

This is an area where Heavy Vinyl fails completely more often than not. Modern remastered records are just so damn opaque. That sound drives us to distraction, when it doesn’t bore us to tears.

Bass

No rock or pop record without good bass can qualify as a top quality Hot Stamper. How could it? It’s the rhythmic foundation of the music, and who wants a pop record that lacks rhythm?

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 this album should be carried out:

Nothing else will do for a big, dynamic, powerful recording such as this.

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Warm, Wild and Wonderful Sounds – Another Better Records’ Discovery

More Exotica Albums with Hot Stampers

Another Record We’ve Discovered with (Potentially) Excellent Sound

This is clearly one of the best sounding guitar records we’ve ever had the pleasure to play here at Better Records. Project 3 was an audiophile label in the truest and best sense of the word: a label that not only cared about the sound of their recordings, but actually proved they could produce title after title of the highest quality, equal or superior to anything on the market.

This of course places them in stark contrast with the audiophile labels of the modern era, the last forty years say, which only on rare occasion produce records of any real quality, instead endlessly grinding out one mediocrity after another to the consternation of those of us who know the difference. But I digress.

We had a mind-blowing percussion record on the Somerset label a month or so back that raised the bar for us regarding that genre, and this jazz guitar record on Project 3 has achieved the same effect. Some of the following is borrowed from the listing for that Somerset record.

Soundfield, Timbre and Dynamics

The spaciousness of the studio is reproduced with uncanny fidelity, with both huge depth and width, but there is another dimension that this record operates in that few others can — the instruments here are capable of jumping out of your speakers seemingly right into your listening room.

The effect is astonishing. I have never heard the electric guitar sound more real than it does here. The timbre is perfection. The dynamics are startling.

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Lincoln Mayorga and Distinguished Colleagues Implore You to Turn Up Your Volume

Hot Stamper Pressings of Direct-to-Disc Recordings Available Now

S9 is hands down one of the best examples of a recording that only really comes to life when you have your volume up good and loud.

One obvious reason that our turn up your volume test makes a good test is that the louder the problem, the harder it is to ignore.

There’s not much ambience to be found in their somewhat dead sounding studio, and very little high frequency boost to any instrument in the mix, which means at moderate levels this record sounds flat and lifeless.

(You could say it has that in common with most Heavy Vinyl pressings these days, assuming you wanted to take a cheap shot at those records, which, to be honest, I don’t mind doing. They suck; why pretend otherwise?)

But turn it up and man, the sound really starts jumpin’ out of the speakers, without becoming phony or hyped-up. In fact, it actually sounds more NATURAL and REAL at louder levels.  

A Quick and Easy Test

Play the record at normal levels and pick out any instrument — snare, toms, sax, bass — anything you like.

Now turn it up a notch and see if the timbre of that instrument isn’t more correct.

Add another click of volume and listen again.

I think you will see that with each increase in volume, the tonality of each instrument you hear becomes more accurate. The insturments are sounding more real than they did at lower levels.

This record would sound right at something very close to, if not actual, LIVE levels, assuming you have the system and the room that can manage it. (more…)