Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now
We used to like the Classic Records pressing of LSC 2241 a lot more than we do now, a case of live and learn.
Our tube system from the 90s was very different from the one we are using now.
That system was noticeably darker and by all accounts far less revealing when we had auditioned the Classic sometime in the 90s, and those two qualities did most of the heavy lifting needed to disguise its shortcomings. We mistakenly noted:
HP put the Shaded Dog pressing (the only way it comes; there is no RCA reissue to my knowledge) on his TAS List of Super Discs, and with good reason: it’s wonderful!
The rest of our commentary still holds up though:
But for some reason he also put the Classic Records Heavy Vinyl reissue on the list, and that record’s not even passable, let alone wonderful. It’s far too lean and modern sounding, and no original Living Stereo record would ever sound that way, thank goodness.
Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Imports on Decca & London
UPDATE 2022
The last time we played a few copies of this London title, CS 6198, we were quite a bit less impressed than the review below might lead you to believe.
We found the sound to be plenty Tubey Magical, but the louder peaks were sour. Overall we judged the sound to be OK at best.
Having played a number of different pressings over the years, our favorite recording of the Slavonic Dances these days is the one with Kertesz on the Decca World of Great Classics budget reissue label.
It may come as a shock to some record collecting audiophiles, but there are actually budget reissues of some titles that can beat any and all comers. Here are some that we’ve come across, discoveries which we are happy to share with you.
This Sheffield Direct-to-Disc LP is one of the best records ever put out by Sheffield.
Lincoln Mayorga is an accomplished classical pianist: this is arguably his best work. (I had a chance to see him perform at a recital of Chopin’s works early in 2010 and he played superbly — for close to two hours without the aid of sheet music I might add.)
Hot Stamper Pressings of Vintage Columbia Albums Available Now
An undiscovered gem from 1967 on the 360 Columbia label.
Side two of this record blew our minds with its White Hot Stamper sound.
Musically and sonically this record is nothing short of wonderful.
Who knew? You could play fifty vintage piano recordings and not find one as good as this.
Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Beethoven, Debussy, Mozart — these shorter pieces and excerpts were composed by those with the greatest gift for melody, men who’ve produced works that have stood the test of time, enchanting audiences over the centuries with works of such beauty and charm.
Here at Better Records we have never been fans of Columbia classical LPs. Years ago we noted that:
Columbia classical recordings have a tendency to be shrill, upper-midrangy, glary and hard sounding. The upper mids are often nasally and pinched; the strings and brass will screech and blare at you in the worst way. If Columbia’s goal was to drive the audiophile classical music lover screaming from the room (or, more realistically, induce a strong desire to call it a day record-playing wise), most of the time one would have to grant they’ve succeeded brilliantly. Occasionally they fail. When they do we call those pressings Hot Stampers.
To be clear, the fault more often than not has to be in the mastering, not the recording. We’ve raved about so many great copies of titles in the past, only to find that the next three or four LPs we pick up of the very same titles sound just godawful. There are some amazing Bernstein recordings out there, but the the amount of work it takes to find the one that sounds good is overwhelming — how can such great recordings be regularly mastered so poorly?
Side One
A++, with a huge, rich, sweet, natural sounding piano. The more you listen, the more apparent it becomes that, as natural as it may seem at first blush, there are still some old school tubey colorations that make the sound not quite as lifelike and real as one might wish.
And the confirmation of that finding comes as soon as you flip the record over.
Hot Stamper Pressings of of the Music of Brahms Available Now
Our general notes for the recording seen below explain why the typical copy in our shootout fell short.
This is an LP with lots of tube compression, and some added brightness.
Without the added brightness, the piano would probably be mud.
The added brightness and compression results in a piano that always sounds rich and natural in the quieter passages.
The average copy also has some veiling or smearing that make the solo piano parts sound like they are coming fom behind a curtain. On these copies, the big peaks can often get strident and very messy.
It’s difficult to find a copy that has all the top end extension and space required to reproduce both a realistic piano and the massive live sound the orchestra is capable of.
All of which adds up to a difficult shootout in which relatively few copies had the sound we were looking for.
Production and Enginneering
Hot Stamper Pressings of of the Music of Johannes Brahms Available Now
Apparently mastered with no regard to sound quality, this Decca SPA reissue is a mess.
How do we know that? We go out of our way to play every pressing we can get our hands on, even cheap reissues such as this. That’s our job. We play everything to find the best sounding records so you don’t have to.
And some of these cheap reissues win shootouts!
But you can’t guess which ones will. You have to play them to find out.
And that’s how we know that some of them are good, some of them are mediocre, and some, like this one, are just awful.
Want to be assured of getting good sounding pressings of the greatest classical recordings of all time?
Step right up and order anything classical or orchestral you see here, Every one of them is guaranteed to please.
Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now
UPDATE 2024: This is a very old review. We would no longer agree with the assertion that the White Dog pressings are better sounding than the Shaded Dogs. In our recent shootout, the first one I can remember since 2005 — that was 19 years ago! — the White Dogs did not do nearly as well as the Shaded Dogs we have on hand.
This White Dog pressing is the best sounding copy I’ve ever heard, much better than the earlier pressings. The piano doesn’t break up like it does on those, especially in the second movement.
Finally the piano sounds right – solid and with the correct overtones. It goes without saying that this is an exceptionally good performance as well.
One of the best of the Cliburn recordings which, as you may know, are rarely any good, the worst of them being LSC 2252 and the best of them being, probably, LSC 2507.
This is an Older Classical/Orchestral Review
Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we started developing in the early 2000s and have since turned into a veritable science.
We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the Sonic Grades and Vinyl Playgrades are listed separately.)
We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.
Currently, 99% (or more!) of the records we sell are cleaned, then auditioned under rigorously controlled conditions, up against a number of other pressings. We award them sonic grades, and then condition check them for surface noise.
As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which is why we currently have a highly trained staff of about ten. No individual or business without the aid of such a committed group could possibly dig as deep into the sound of records as we have, and it is unlikely that anyone besides us could ever come along to do the kind of work we do.