Genre – Jazz – Piano & Vibes

Dave Brubeck – Time In

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  • Boasting superb Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last, this early 360 Stereo pressing will be very hard to beat
  • Big, full and lively, with bottom end weight and plenty of space around all the members of Dave’s classic quartet, this pressing of Time In (the last of the albums recorded in Brubeck’s “Time” series) proves that the engineering skills of all concerned at Columbia in 1966 were as strong as ever
  • This copy allows you to hear the clean, clear, solid, lively, smear-free piano that makes Brubeck’s records from the era such a delight for the analog devotee
  • 4 stars: “Though it is seldom celebrated as such, this is one of Brubeck’s finest moments on Columbia.”

This vintage Columbia 360 stereo pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records cannot even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the audience at the live show, this is the record for you. It’s what Live Jazz Recordings are known for — this sound. (more…)

Dave Brubeck Quartet – Time Further Out in Mono

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Mono or Stereo? Both Can Be Good

  • With superb Double Plus (A++) sound throughout, this vintage 6-Eye Mono pressing will be very hard to beat – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • It’s extremely unlikely that any mono pressing will win a shootout, but just to keep us on our toes, we like to put some monos of famous albums in our shootouts from time to time to see how they measure up
  • This 2+ early pressing was the best of the bunch, and it’s guaranteed to beat the pants off any modern Heavy Vinyl pressing ever made
  • These sides are Tubey Magical, rich, full-bodied and warm, yet clear, lively and dynamic
  • This copy demonstrates the big-as-life Fred Plaut Columbia Sound at its best – better even than Time Out(!)
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The selections, which range in time signatures from 5/4 to 9/8, are handled with apparent ease (or at least not too much difficulty) by pianist Brubeck, altoist Paul Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright, and drummer Joe Morello on this near-classic.”
  • Mono or Stereo? Both Can Be Good

Time Further Out is consistently more varied and, dare we say, more musically interesting than Time Out.

If you want to hear big drums in a big room, these Brubeck recordings will show you that sound better than practically any record we know of. These vintage recordings are full-bodied, spacious, three-dimensional, rich, sweet and warm in the best tradition of an All Tube Analog recording.

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Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio / Midnight Sugar on Two 45 RPM Discs

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Sonic Grade: B

We haven’t played a copy of this record in years, but back in the day we liked it, so let’s call it a “B” with the caveat that the older the review, the more likely we are to have changed our minds.

The following notes were added in 2023. The original review can be seen just below them.

We should point out that the original Japanese pressings are clearly better sounding than any of the Super-Cut Analogue Disks that were pressed at RTI, regardless of the cutting speed.

I remember auditioning the 33 RPM recut that had been done in 1995. I was a big fan of the album in those days, and I had at least one and maybe more than one authentic Japanese pressings of the album in my collection. I still own the Three Blind Mice CDs of a number of titles as well.

It was no contest, the early pressings were obviously better in every way. I was selling heavy vinyl back then, and that’s what I had to sell, so I raved about the sound of the RTI-pressed reissues and sold plenty of them. I never bothered to point out that they were not as good as the originals. They were good and that was pretty much all I was going to say about them.

The authentic Japanese pressings were expensive to buy and very hard to find. Although they were better sounding, anyone buying the new pressings was likely to be happy with them, and that was good enough for the business model of Better Records at the time.

What accounts for the fall-off in sound quality from the earlier pressings to the reissues, remastered in Japan and then pressed at RTI, is anyone’s guess.

Some of that reduction results from the substandard sound that virtually all RTI pressings tend to have, a subject we discussed in some detail in this commentary from years back.

As you may have read, we stopped selling new Heavy Vinyl titles in 2007, eliminating the temptation to say nice things about records that are in print and reasonably priced, but not really as good as they should be.

Our commentary for Blue gets at all these issues. The Rhino pressing is a good record, but not nearly as good as it should be, and hopelessly outclassed by the good original pressings, the ones cut by the formerly excellent engineer, Bernie Grundman.

We made the decision then and there to simply raise our standards, and that meant the end of us offering Heavy Vinyl pressings to our customers.

We like to sell records that are amazing sounding, not records that can easily be beaten by other pressings you may happen to have already, or probably could manage to acquire on your own.

Our White Hot Stamper section is the place to go if you are looking for records that are dramatically better sounding than any pressings you could hope to find on your own. They are guaranteed to blow your mind, or your money back.

Our Original Review from Circa 2004

This 45 RPM Three Blind Mice 180g Double LP has DEMO DISC SOUND! The 33 RPM versions were pretty darn amazing but these 45s take the sound of this recording to an entirely new level. 

There are a couple of quite obvious benefits to mastering this music at 45 RPM. One is that Yamamoto tends to use his right hand in a percussive manner, which creates tracking problems on most any set up. At 45 RPM the mastering engineer is able to cut those transients, full of difficult to deal with harmonics, much more cleanly and accurately. The result is a sense of “ease” that you don’t hear on the 33.

It’s a bit like having a slightly underpowered system which makes loud passages or transients seem to be right at the edge of distortion, and then switching to a more powerful amplifier and hearing those passages reproduced with the relaxed quality that more headroom gives you.

Also the sound opens up quite a bit on these 45s so that more of the room ambience is heard. The Japanese are famous for their close-miking, and sometimes the sense of real musicians in a real space is lacking. Here much of that quality is restored.

Yamamoto is one of the few Japanese jazz players who has any feel for the medium. If you like bluesy jazz piano with amazingly dynamic sound, you can’t go wrong here. 

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What I Couldn’t Hear on My ’90s Tube System

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Available Now

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I have a very long history with this album, dating back to the ’90s. My friend Robert Pincus first turned me on to the CD, which, happily for all concerned, was mastered beautifully and is highly recommended if you want to work on your digital playback. We used it to test and tweak some of the stereos in my friends’ systems.

Playing the original stereo record, all I could hear on my ’90s all tube system was blurred mids, lack of transient attack, sloppy bass, lack of space and transparency, and other shortcomings too numerous to mention, all of which I simply attributed at the time to the limitations of the vintage jazz pressing I owned.

A classic case of me rather foolishly Blaming the Recording.

I know better now. The record was fine. I just couldn’t play it right.

Well, things have certainly changed. I have virtually none of the equipment I had back then, and I hear none of the problems with this copy that I heard back then on the pressing I owned. This is clearly a different LP, I sold the old one off years ago, but I have to think that much of the change in the sound was a change in cleaning, equipment, setup, tweaks and room treatments, all the stuff we prattle on about endlessly on this blog.

By the mid-’90s I had been seriously into audio for more than twenty years.

I had the Legacy Whisper Speaker System with 8 15″ woofers and added subs.

I had a Triplanar tonearm and a VPI Aries turntable sitting on Aurios with the Synchronous Drive System for the outboard motor.

I had custom tube amps and a custom tube preamp and phono stage. They were the best of their kind that I’d heard, at any price.

In short, I had a lot of expensive, high-quality equipment that sounded great to me.

Now, looking back on those days, I can see I was not at the level I needed to be in order to play Bells Are Ringing with any real fidelity to what was actually recorded on to the master tape.

My stereo was simply not resolving enough.

This system can play the record and make it sound like live music. I thought my old one could too, because I didn’t have a clue as to just how good audio in the home could get.

Clearly I had a lot to learn.

This is, once again, what progress in audio in all about. As your stereo improves, your good records should sound better, and your mediocre-to-bad records should show you how mediocre to bad they really are. You need high quality sound before you can tell which are which.

This title of this letter gets right to the heart of it: “My stereo upgrades have widened the sonic chasm between good, old-fashioned records and their nouveau imposters.”

And We’re Still at It

We constantly strive to improve the quality of our cleaning and playback.

And we’re still at it. With this much money on the line, we had better be able to deliver the goods every time out.

Our customers seem to like the records they’ve been getting. They’ve written us hundreds of letters telling us so.

And we especially like the letters they write to us once they’ve compared our Hot Stamper pressings to the copies they owned that were Half-Speed Mastered or pressed on Heavy Vinyl, or both!

The Recording

The piano sounds uncannily lifelike right from the start, a beautiful instrument in a natural space, tonally correct from top to bottom. I can’t think of any record off the top of my head that gets a better piano sound than this one.

Listen to the tambourine on the third track on side one. Shelly Manne messes about with lots of percussion instruments on this album and all of them are recorded to perfection.

Better Than a Dream, the second track on this side, has one of the best sounding jazz pianos I have ever heard. My notes say “you cannot record a piano any better” and I stand behind that statement one hundred percent.

There is not a modern reissue on the face of the earth that can hold a candle to the sound of this record.

For any of you out there who doubt my words, please take this record home and play it against the best piano jazz recordings you own. If it doesn’t beat them all, we are happy to pay the domestic shipping back.

Even our amazing sounding 45 RPM pressing of The Three does not present the listener with a piano that sounds as real as the one on this record.

Further Reading

Hampton Hawes – All Night Session, Vol. 2

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More Jazz Recordings on Contemporary

  • These sides are doing everything right – they’re rich, clear, undistorted, open, spacious, and have jazz quartet energy to rival the best recordings you may have heard
  • Tubey Magic, richness, sweetness, dead-on timbres from top to bottom – this is a textbook example of Contemporary sound at its best, thanks to the engineering brilliance of Roy DuNann and producer Lester Koenig
  • The second of three albums of material recorded by Hawes, guitarist Jim Hall, bassist Red Mitchell, and drummer Eldridge “Bruz” Freeman on the night of November 12 and into the morning of November 13, 1956
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Although Hampton Hawes spontaneously created five original tunes at this extraordinarily inspired date, everything on Vol. 2 comes directly out of the standard bop musician’s working repertoire.”
  • “It’s hard to put into words how good it feels to play jazz when it’s really swinging…I’ve reached a point where the music fills you up so much emotionally that you feel like shouting hallelujah — like people do in church when they’re converted to God. That’s the way I was feeling the night we recorded All Night Session!” – Hampton Hawes
  • If you’re a fan of jazz piano trios playing live-in-the-studio, this Contemporary from 1958 surely deserves a place in your collection.

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Shelly Manne & His Friends – Bells Are Ringing

Contemporary Jazz Records Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for Contemporary Jazz

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout this outstanding Black Label original on vinyl that’s about as quiet as they ever play
  • The piano sounds lifelike right from the start, a beautiful instrument in a natural space, tonally correct from top to bottom
  • This copy makes it clear that this is a Demo Disc Quality Recording for Contemporary, and that’s saying a lot
  • It’s also our favorite jazz piano performance by Andre Previn on record
  • Only a handful of copies of this title have made it on the site in the last few years – finding them in audiophile condition is getting harder (and more expensive) than ever these days
  • “Previn’s piano is the lead voice and his virtuosity, good taste, melodic improvising, and solid sense of swing are chiefly responsible for the music’s success.”

I have a very long history with this album, going back decades. My friend Robert Pincus first turned me on to the CD, which, happily for all concerned, was mastered beautifully. We used it to test and tweak all the stereos in my friends’ systems.

Playing the original stereo record, which I assumed must never have been reissued due to its rarity (I have since learned otherwise), all I could hear on my ’90s all tube system was blurred mids, lack of transient attack, sloppy bass, lack of space and transparency, and other shortcomings too numerous to mention that I simply attributed at the time to vintage jazz vinyl.

Well, things have certainly changed. I have virtually none of the equipment I had back then, and I hear none of the problems with this copy that I heard back then on pressing I owned. This is clearly a different LP (I sold off the old one years ago) but I have to think that much of the change in the sound was a change in cleaning, equipment, tweaks and room treatments, all the stuff we prattle on about endlessly on the site.

In other words, if you have a highly-resolving modern system and a good room, you should be knocked out by the sound of this record. I sure was.

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Thelonious Monk / Monk’s Blues – Our Shootout Winner from 2013

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WONDERFUL BIG BAND MUSIC, DEMO QUALITY SOUND, and QUIET VINYL! I wish more Blue Note records had this kind of sound — natural, full-bodied, and sweet up top. The bass here is well-defined with real weight and lots of punch. Monk’s piano sounds correct from the highest notes all the way down to the lower register, and the sax sounds JUST RIGHT — totally free of the “RVG squawk” we often hear on old Blue Notes. The clarity and transparency are superb throughout.

This is not your typical Monk album — here he joins a big band, conducted by the great Oliver Nelson. It’s an interesting collaboration that may not succeed in every way, but it’s certainly a fun listen and even more so when you have a killer copy like this one.

The sound is rich and full throughout, very open with excellent transparency.

Importantly, the piano is dynamic with real weight.

Many copies were a bit thin on the piano, on those you could hardly recognize Monk’s signature style.

Another key element to the 3+ sound here is the wonderful separation between the instruments — on a big band record like this, you can’t live without it.

TRACK LISTING

Side One

Let’s Cool One
Reflections
Rootie Tootie
Just a Glance at Love
Brilliant Corners

Side Two

Consecutive Seconds
Monk’s Point
Trinkle Tinkle
Straight, No Chaser

Count Basie / Kansas City 3 – For The Second Time

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  • A KILLER piano trio recording with superb sound on both sides of this original Pablo LP
  • It’s bigger, richer, more Tubey Magical, and has more extension on both ends of the spectrum than most other copies we played
  • A different, more compact sound for Basie, joined here as he is by two of the most sympathetic sidemen in jazz: Ray Brown on bass and Louis Bellson on drums
  • “[T]he main joy of this set is hearing Basie stretch out on such numbers as ‘If I Could Be with You,’ ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’ and ‘The One I Love,’ tunes he did not play much with his orchestra in this later period.”
  • Steer clear of the OJC of this title – it’s thin and opaque, the opposite of the sound you want

It’s a joy to hear Basie perform as a frontman, stretching out on tunes that were no doubt dear to him. Veterans of hundreds of sessions, Ray Brown and Louis Bellson are just as interesting as Basie, high praise.

Recorded by the legendary engineer Ed Greene (Stan Getz/Charlie Byrd – Jazz Samba) — that accounts for the exceptional sound.

Naturally we pick up all the Pablo Basie titles we can get our hands on these days, having had very good luck with a great many of them. When we dropped the needle on a copy of this one a few years back we were amazed at the sound. My post-it, still on the record, reads “SUPERB DEMO DISC.” It certainly is.

This album was part of a series of smaller ensemble recordings under the heading of Kansas City that Pablo undertook with Basie later in his career. Basie had recorded a piano trio record with the same gents the year before For the First Time and must have enjoyed himself enough to give it another go.

The best copies are big and rich, and present you with a solid, weight, clear piano like few piano trio recordings you have ever heard.

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Hampton Hawes – Vol 2: The Trio

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This Triple Plus (+++) pressing from ’55/’56 mono tapes is EVERYTHING that’s good about mono. The size, the weight, the solidity, the clarity, the energy, the rhythmic drive – it’s all here and more.

This killer pressing has the best sound and the best music we have ever heard on any Hampton Hawes album.

There is nothing to fault in the sound of side one of this pressing, and side two was nearly as good – what a record!

Both sides are Tubey Magical, rich, open, spacious and tonally correct. We’ve never heard the record sound better, and that’s coming from someone who’s been playing the album since the ’80s.

These guys are playing live in the studio and you can really feel their presence on every track — assuming you have a copy that sounds like this one.

Based on what I’m hearing my feeling is that most of the natural, full-bodied, smooth, sweet sound of the album is on the master tape, and that all that was needed to transfer that vintage sound correctly onto vinyl disc was simply to thread up the tape on a high quality machine and hit play.

The fact that nobody seems to be able to make an especially good sounding record these days — certainly not as good sounding as this one — tells me that in fact I’m wrong to think that such an approach would work. Somebody should have been able to figure out how to do it by now. In our experience that is simply not the case today, and has not been for many years, if not decades.

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Robert Brook Digs Deep and “Gets” Down to Earth

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One of our good customers, Robert Brook, writes a blog which he calls A GUIDE FOR THE BUDDING ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Below is a link to the review he has written for a record we had very much enjoyed while doing the shootout for it a few years back, Down to Earth.

DIGGING DEEP Into The Ramsey Lewis Trio’s DOWN TO EARTH

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.

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

New to the Blog? Start Here

Revolutions in Audio, Anyone?

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