*Live and Learn

Here we discuss the records we think we got, uh, wrong.

It’s not really a problem for us though. We feel no need to cover up our mistakes. Recognizing and correcting previous errors is how we’ve managed to learn so much about records that no one else seems to know.

Gaining knowledge — in any field, not just record collecting or music reproduction — is always slow, incremental and riddled with errors and bad judgments.

A common misperception among those visiting the site is that we think we know it all. Nothing could be further from the truth. We learn something new about records with practically every shootout.

By playing the records grouped here, under rigorously controlled conditions, on top quality equipment, we found out just how much better or worse they are than are we thought.

Bill Evans – Explorations

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bill Evans Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This is a very old review. The last time we sat down to play some OJC copies of this recording we were underwhelmed. There may be some great sounding pressings out there, but we did not have any on hand and don’t want to commit the resources that would be needed to find them.

Our old commentary follows.

Outstanding sound throughout with both sides rating a solid Double Plus (A++) or close to it

The sound here is, above all, natural – the tonality is correct, and the recording sounds right for Riverside circa 1961

4 1/2 stars: “Explorations proves that the artist was worth waiting for no matter what else was going on out there. Evans, with Paul Motian and Scott LaFaro, was onto something as a trio, exploring the undersides of melodic and rhythmic constructions that had never been considered by most… an extraordinary example of the reach and breadth of this trio at its peak.”

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Don’t Skip the OJC of Carl’s Blues

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Available Now

UPDATE 2025

The OJC pressings we played recently had much better sound than we described back in 2019 when our original highly-critical review was posted.

We told our customers to skip the OJC, but that turned out to bad advice as the right OJC pressings can be awesome sounding.

Seems we were dead wrong about this pressing. Live and learn is our motto, for this very reason.

And we don’t mind admitting to past mistakes, as that is a clear sign of progress.

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Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs – Tubey Magical on the Red Label?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Tubey Magical Rock Records in Stock Now 

UPDATE 2023

In 2023 we did another shootout for this devilishly difficult-to-find album, and none of the Red Label pressings we played scored better than 1.5+ on any side. Many of them were hopeless thin and dry.

We would not recommend Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs at anything but a nominal price.

Our older commentary follows.

Years ago we noted that the red label Columbia reissues of most of their catalog leave much to be desired. Here is an excerpt from a listing for The Byrds’ Greatest Hits.

One might assume that the later label copies would be the ones that would most likely have been cut with lower distortion equipment, the way the later Kind of Blues are cut so much cleaner than the earlier ones.

On The Byrds’ albums this is almost never the right approach. The Tubey Magic of the earlier pressings is absolutely crucial to the sound of these albums. It is the sine qua non of Classic 60’s Rock sound. Without it you might as well be playing a CD.

It turns out that some copies of Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs on the later red label can actually sound amazingly Tubey Magical, especially on side two. In fact we heard a red label side two that was even more rich than the best 360s.

Since the person listening to the record has no idea what the actual label is of the record being evaluated — which is about as close an approximation of the Scientific Method as we can manage around here — it was very surprising to hear such glorious Tubey Magical Richness and Sweetness come from such an unexpected source.

A good reason not to avoid later pressings and reissues absent any evidence of their inferiority.

And a good reason to judge your records by playing them whenever possible. (more…)

Heart Like A Wheel – Cisco Heavy Vinyl Reviewed

More of the Music of Linda Ronstadt

UPDATE 2026

This review was written in 2006. These days I doubt very much that I would consider this record a service to the audiophile community, as I mistakenly wrote at the time. Many of the records that sounded good to me back in the day don’t sound so good to me anymore.

Like most Heavy Vinyl, it is at best a stopgap.

Sonic Grade: C

This pressing beats the average Capitol LP in some ways, which is typically an aggressive, grainy piece of crap.

Take my word for it: I easily have 30-40 copies of this album, and I can tell you from years of experience that it is extremely difficult to find good sounding pressings of this music.

Cisco has done a service to the audiophile community by producing a very enjoyable LP of this, Linda’s masterpiece. It’s music that belongs in your collection. (If you have the bread, check out our Hot Stamper copies, guaranteed to kill any modern pressing — including this one — or your money back.) 

Cisco’s version is completely free from compression of any kind, and sometimes that works in favor of the overall sound and sometimes it doesn’t. I may have additional commentary discussing these issues down the road, but for now let’s just say you will have a hard time finding a better copy of Heart Like A Wheel on vinyl.

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Ravel / Concerto in G – Munch

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Ravel Available Now

UPDATE 2025

We just played a clean, early Shaded Dog pressing of LSC 2271, featuring Ravel’s Concerto in G.

Although it is a good sounding record, we do not believe it is very likely to be a great one.

If you own the record, play it and see if it still holds up. Our latest purchase didn’t.

There may be great sounding pressings of it, but at the price clean copies command these days, $100 and up, we have decided that pursuing this title is no longer in anyone’s interest.

Live and learn is our motto, and progress in audio is a feature, not a bug, of record collecting at the most advanced levels.

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Looking Ahead! – Live and Learn

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Available Now

The Contemporary Yellow Label stereo reissue from the 70s we played way back when, probably fifteen or twenty years ago, was a good record, but not nearly as good as some of the other Contemporary pressings we’d come across since we began collecting them in the early 90s.

(Yes, we admit, we got a late start, but by the time 1995 rolled around we knew just how good this label’s records could sound, something that not everybody else did.)

Live and learn is our motto — and that approach turns out to be a feature, not a bug, of record collecting at the most advanced levels.

Experimenting with records is the only sure way to learn about them.

Our notes for the copy we put up years ago:

Another wonderful Contemporary LP. This Yellow Label Stereo pressing was a nice step up from most of what we heard, earning an A++ on side one and an A+ on side two. Side one was particularly good — the bottom end is superb, the vibra-harp sounds great and the piano has good weight. There’s lots of energy and the overall sound is big and open.

Side two was clean, clear and transparent but not quite as dynamic as side one.

Not an easy record to come by, and they usually don’t sound this good when you manage to track one down.

A top quality pressing of the album is a very different animal, a jazz Demo Disc of the highest order.

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Audiophiles Should Skip Swingin’ the ’20s on OJC

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Records Available Now

This album is fairly common on the OJC pressing from 1988, but more recently we’ve found the sound of the OJC pressings we’ve played seriously wanting. They have the kind of bad reissue sound that plays right into the prejudices of record collectors and audiophiles alike, the kind for whom nothing but an original will do.

They were dramatically smaller, flatter, more recessed and more lifeless than even the worst of the ’70s LPs we played. (We tend to like those, by the way.)

The lesson? Not all reissues are created equal. Some OJC pressings are great — including even some of the new ones — some are awful, and the only way to judge them fairly is to judge them individually, which requires actually playing a large sample.

Since virtually no record collectors or audiophiles like doing that, they make faulty judgments – OJC’s are cheap reissues sourced from digital tapes, run for the hills! – based on their biases and reliance on inadequate sample sizes.

You can find those who subscribe to this approach on every audiophile forum there is. The methods they have adopted do not produce good results, but as long as they stick to them, they will never have to worry about discovering that inconvenient truth.

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Years Ago We Foolishly Thought a Domestic LP Could Beat the Brits on Low

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Bowie Available Now

This shootout listing for Low was written sometime around 2008. 

In 2008 we hadn’t discovered the right imports for this album yet — that would not happen for many more years, hence the error we made in thinking that some especially good sounding domestic copies could win a shootout.

Back then they could, but with the right pressings in the mix there is not a chance in the world that would happen now.

Just another case of live and learn.

By the way, Low has much in common with another Bowie record we struggled with for years.

To be fair, some domestic pressings do end up having low-level (1.5+) Hot Stampers, but they’re rare. Our best Brits just kill ’em. We haven’t bothered with the domestic pressings in more than a decade, and why would we? The reissue imports we sell now are just too good.

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Our Previous Two Shootouts for Straight Up

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Badfinger Available Now

UPDATE 2025

This title, like all the best Badfinger records, is almost always noisy, which is why you will rarely find it on our site. Most of what we buy is just not quiet enough to sell.

We were finally able to do a shootout for Straight Up again in 2025, our first in fifteen years! There is one Hot Stamper pressing active on the site at the time of this writing, but it will most likely be gone soon.

Our Thinking Circa 2010

This relatively quiet WHITE HOT STAMPER Straight Up is KILLER, with a A++ side one and an A+++ side two — you can’t do much better than that! Side two has Master Tape Sound, the kind that we like to call AGAIG — As Good As It Gets. Both sides have the kind of PRESENCE in the midrange that most copies can’t begin to compete with. The sound here just JUMPS out of the speakers, which is exactly what the best copies of the album are supposed to (but rarely) do. For fans of the band — and Power Pop in general — this is the Straight Up you have been waiting for!

Our last shootout was in 2007, not because we don’t like the record or have customers for it; rather it’s the fact that clean copies of the album just aren’t out there in the bins the way they used to be. Two or three a year is all we can find, and that’s with hitting the stores every week.

2007 vs 2010

In 2007 we wrote: “Having played more than half a dozen copies of this record during the shootout I can tell you that the most common problem with Straight Up is grainy, gritty sound. Most copies of this record are painfully aggressive and transistory.”

With improvements to cleaning and playback i would say that’s not actually true in 2010. There is some grit to the sound to be sure, but like most records from the era, veiling and smearing are what really hold most copies back

Good copies of this record, ones that are mastered properly and pressed on “good” vinyl, sound a lot like a stipped down version of Abbey Road, which is what they’re supposed to sound like. That’s clearly the sound Badfinger and their producers George Harrison and Todd Rundgren (with some help from the Beatles’ engineer Geoff Emerick* ) were aiming at.

You will also hear some influences from All Things Must Pass and McCartney’s first . The music owes a lot to both The Beatles as well as Harrison and McCartney as individuals. What’s not to like? Catchy pop songs with grungy guitars — it’s ear candy when the sound is good, and the sound is very good here!

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Bach / Suite No. 2 / Janigro

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin Available Now

Our 2007 listing for this album presented it this way:

A 1S/1S Indianapolis pressing with A1 metal mothers from 1960 with sweet sound.

Perfectly fitting for these Baroque pieces recorded in Italy.

UPDATE 2022

In 2007 we rarely had the number of copies we would have needed to carry out a serious shootout, which meant that records such as this one would be auditioned and, if they sounded good to us, sold on the basis of having good sound.

We judged records like this one on their absolute sound as opposed to the Hot Stamper shootout approach we use today, which gives us the record’s relative sound.

1S doesn’t mean much to us now, and even back then we knew better than to put too much stock in it.

Starting all the way back in the 80s we had been in the business of selling Living Stereo and other vintage Golden Age pressings.

We knew from playing scores of them that often the best sounding pressings had stampers between 10s and 20s. This was true for LSC 1817, 2446 and no doubt many others that I can no longer remember.

UPDATE 2025

The comments about later stampers — 10s to 20s — being the best are definitely not true.

Early stampers most of the time do better than later stampers.

And the right early stampers for LSC 2446 are much better than even the best of the later ones.

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