_Performers – Starker

What Can You Learn from a Mercury Shootout Like This One?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Classical Recordings Available Now

The short answer is that you can’t learn much from this shootout, because we’re not telling you which title the stampers you see below belong to.

Be that as it may, in the case of this mystery title the conventional wisdom turns out to be correct — the earlier numbered pressings did better than the later numbered pressings, and the early labels did better than the later labels.

That happens a lot, and we are happy to admit that it does. Why? Because the experimental evidence — the data — say that is what happened.

As usual for posts in which the stamper sheet from a shootout is reproduced in its entirety, the stamper numbers shown below will belong to a different album than the one you see pictured.

These can be found under the heading of Mystery Stampers. Most of these posts will illustrate something to be learned from a Hot Stamper shootout, but because the information reveals the shootout winning stampers, the actual title of the record is rarely revealed.

Much more useful stamper information can be found using this link, which includes plenty of stamper numbers for specific titles that are best avoided by audiophiles looking for top quality sound. In addition, we post the winning and losing stampers for some titles that are an unreliable guide to good sound. Unreliable stampers are also quite common.

The right stampers are only one of the many reasons some copies win our shootouts and others don’t, but in the case of this rare Mercury, a record that we only had four copies of, the RFR-2/2 stampers were clearly the best, with no other set of stampers coming close. The best of the others earned grades no better than 2+/2+.

One lesson that was clear was that the best stampers were, to quote our reviewer, “a step up!”

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Brahms – Sonatas for Cello and Piano / Starker / Sebok

More of the music of Johannes Brahms

  • Starker and Sebok’s virtuoso performances, here with rich, dynamic, and tubey Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this original Plum Label Mercury pressing
  • Both of these sides are big, full-bodied, clean and clear, with a wonderfully present and solid piano, and plenty of 3D space around it
  • The cello is present and immediate, with sound that is remarkably textured, full and harmonically natural

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Did You Get Your $1.87’s Worth on the Reissue of Suites For Solo Cello?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Recordings Available Now

Many of the Oval Label pressings we’ve played recently have fared poorly in our shootouts.

As you can see from the notes below for this particular Starker record, one side was passable, earning our 1.5+ grade. It’s a decent sounding record I suppose, but a long, long, long way from the best.

1.5+ is four grades down from the top copy. That’s a steep dropoff as far as we’re concerned. 1.5+ only hints at how good a recording SR 90370 can be on the best vintage pressings.

To see more records that earned the 1.5+ grade, please click here. (Incidentally, some of them are even on Heavy Vinyl. The better modern pressings have sometimes, if rarely, been known to earn Hot Stamper grades, and one shocked the hell out of us by actually winning a shootout. Wouldn’t you like to know which one!)

For those who might be interested, there’s more on our grading scale here.

We often tell audiophiles that it’s never a good idea to judge records by their labels, so when it came time to do a shootout for this famous Bach recording from Mercury, it was only fitting that we play every pressing we had on the shelf, including the later Ovals, which are by far the easiest to find for any of the Starker Mercury titles.

Well, now we know. This is some weak tea, probably not too different from the Philips-pressed Golden Imports we gave up on long ago.

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Schumann / Lalo – Cello Concertos / Starker

More Mercury Label Classical Recordings

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

  • An original Mercury pressing of Starker’s commanding performance of Schumann and Lalo’s cello concertos (one of only a handful of copies to ever hit the site) with superb Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it throughout
  • The cello is present and immediate on this side one, with sound that is wonderfully full and harmonically natural, and side two is not far behind in all those areas
  • You’d be hard-pressed to find a copy that’s this well balanced, yet big and lively, with such wonderful clarity in the mids and highs (particularly on side one)
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings, but once you hear just how good sounding this copy is, you might be inclined to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • We had a devil of a time finding audiophile quality surfaces on this title — it’s hard to imagine there will be many quieter copies coming to the site, and the ones that do will be unlikely to sound as good as this one

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Dvorak – Cello Concerto / Starker

More Recordings with Janos Starker

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Classical Recordings Available Now

  • Starker and the LSO’s sublime performance debuts on the site with the big, lively and rich sound we had been waiting for
  • The cello is present and immediate, with sound that is wonderfully full and harmonically natural
  • Some old record collectors (like me) say classical recording quality ain’t what it used to be – here’s all the proof anyone with two working ears and top quality audiophile equipment needs to make the case
  • As you may well imagine, shootouts for this album are exceedingly rare. For a sought-after TAS List title such as this, we’re lucky to be able to do one every five years or so. Until the next one comes around, please consider trying some of our other classical and orchestral Hot Stamper pressings

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Robert Fine Does It Again

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Classical Recordings Available Now

The notes you see below are for our Shootout Winner, which earned our top grade of at least 3+ on side one with its Hard to Fault (HTF) sound.

If you are interested in a record with the kind of sound described below, please contact us and we will be happy to put you on the waiting list for the next killer copy that comes along and blows our minds.

As you may well imagine, shootouts for this album are exceedingly rare. For a sought-after TAS List title such as this, we’re lucky to be able to do one every five years or so. Until the next one comes around, please consider trying some of our other classical and orchestral Hot Stamper pressings.

Robert Fine’s recordings for Mercury are some of the most amazing sounding we have ever played. To see what might be available, please click here.

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Bach / Suites For Solo Cello No. 2 & No. 5 / Starker

More of the music of J.S. Bach

  • An early Mercury label pressing of Starker’s legendary 1963 recording of Bach’s sublime music for solo cello with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them from top to bottom
  • Suite No. 5 takes up all of this superb Double Plus side two, and we guarantee you’ve never heard it sound this good
  • True, side one earned a minimal Hot Stamper grade of 1.5+, but we are very confidant that it will beat the pants off any Heavy Vinyl reissue because every one of those that we played was opaque, muddy and thick enough to have us crying “uncle” after five minutes
  • Some Mercury pressings from the 50s have absolutely amazing sound – we should know, we’ve played them

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Bach / Suites for Solo Cello on the Later Label – Live and Learn

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Recordings Available Now

The discussion here is for a later label copy we reviewed in 2010. These days the later Oval labels for records like this do not sound good to us and we no longer put them in shootouts. This record would likely not qualify as a Hot Stamper pressing these days.

Excellent cello reproduction on side one, where you get Bach’s entire Suite No. 2 for Unaccompanied Cello.  Hear how wonderful a cello can sound when recorded and mastered for maximum effect, live in your listening room.

The cutting is super low distortion on this later label copy as well. This copy will show you why these Starker Mercury records are so highly prized.

The sound of Starker’s cello here is humongous — it’ll fill up your room, wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling. 

It’s also tonally correct from top to bottom, a quality we heard on none of the Mercury Heavy Vinyl reissues we played. They have some of the worst sound we had heard from Speakers Corner up to that time.

This is very much in keeping with the overly rich, overly smooth sound of the Heavy Vinyl records being made today. We despise that sound and want nothing to do with it.

Speakers Corner and the TAS List

Three Mercury recordings of Starker’s on Speakers Corner vinyl are currently on the TAS List, SR 90303, SR 90392 and SR 3-9016. I suppose we could order the first two up, audition them and list their many sonic shortcomings, since we do have nice copies of both albums in the backroom, just not enough to do a shootout. [We have since done shootouts for both.]

NOTE: The 3 LP Box Set is probably never going to go through a shootout. At $1000 and up for an original set, the price we would have to charge for the best of them would be outrageously high.

But there are so many other good pressings to play, why go out of way to play another second- or third-rate Heavy Vinyl pressing?

Another Link

By the way, we have a new link for audiophile pressings that are tonally correct but are wrong in other ways, as they usually are. You can assume that our Hot Stamper pressings are tonally correct for the most part, as correct tonality is fairly key to high quality sound. Not essential, but important nevertheless.

Starker’s records are legendary for their sound, not to mention Starker’s way with this music. If anybody can make Bach’s solo cello pieces capture your interest, Starker can.