Genres

Frank Sinatra – September of My Years

More Frank Sinatra

  • This superb pressing boasts Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides
  • An especially Tubey Magical Male Vocal recording, but that sound can only found on the best properly cleaned pressings, like this one
  • Exceptionally spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied – Frank is right in the room with you on this one
  • 5 stars: (“One of Frank Sinatra’s triumphs of the ’60s”) and Grammy Album of the Year for 1966
  • If you’re a fan of the man, widely considered the greatest vocalist of the second half of the 20th century, this title from 1965 is clearly one of his best, and one of his best sounding
  • The complete list of titles from 1965 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” but with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. This album is on that list.

This vintage Reprise pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern pressings cannot BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back.

Having done this for so long, we understand and appreciate that rich, full, solid, Tubey Magical sound is key to the presentation of this primarily vocal music. We rate these qualities higher than others we might be listening for (e.g., bass definition, soundstage, depth, etc.). The music is not so much about the details in the recording, but rather in trying to recreate a solid, palpable, real Frank Sinatra singing live in your listening room. The best copies have an uncanny way of doing just that.

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James Taylor / Mud Slide Slim

More of the Music of James Taylor

  • A wonderful copy of JT’s classic followup to Sweet Baby James with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides
  • This early Green Label pressing demonstrates the Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records almost never reproduce
  • Some of old JT’s strongest material: “You’ve Got a Friend,” “You Can Close Your Eyes,” “Hey Mister, That’s Me up on the Jukebox” and more
  • The sound of most of the tracks on the better pressings is raw, real and exceptionally unprocessed
  • 4 stars on Allmusic – it destroys the recent reissue, which lacks the texture and warmth you get in abundance on these killer originals
  • If you’re a James Taylor fan — and what audiophile wouldn’t be? — this title is clearly one of the best releases of 1971 and a true Must Own for the audiophile

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Return to Forever – Romantic Warrior

More Jazz Rock Fusion

  • Boasting two excellent Double Plus (A++) sides, this vintage pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Romantic Warrior you’ve heard
  • Our favorite Jazz Rock Fusion Album of All Time – on the right stereo this is a Demo Disc like no other
  • None rocks harder – of course that wouldn’t mean much without the music being so exciting and brilliant, and we’re happy to report it is!
  • These are four instrumental pyrotechnicians – the band is absolutely on fire like no other album they recorded together
  • 4 stars: “Romantic Warrior is the sound of a mature band at the top of its game, which may help explain why it was Return to Forever’s most popular album, eventually certified as a gold record, and the last by this assemblage. Having expressed themselves this well, they decided it was time for them to move on.”
  • If you’re a Jazz Fusion guy, this title from 1976 is surely a Must Own
  • If you’re looking for the best sounding jazz from the 70s and 80s, you might want to check out these titles

If you’re a fan of ’70s jazz fusion there aren’t many albums better than this. (It’s the only RTF record we bother to carry as a matter of fact.) It’s an absolutely phenomenal recording, and if you have any doubts about that fact, these two pressings are more than capable of disabusing you of such like. (more…)

Thin Lizzy – Jailbreak

More British Blues Rock

  • Both sides of this vintage copy (one of only a handful to hit the site in close to four years) were giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades
  • This copy has real depth to the soundfield, full-bodied, present vocals, plenty of bottom end weight, and lovely analog warmth
  • 5 stars: “. . . this myth-making is married to an exceptional eye for details; when the boys are back in town, they don’t just come back to a local bar, they’re down at Dino’s, picking up girls and driving the old men crazy. This gives his lovingly florid songs, crammed with specifics and overflowing with life, a universality that’s hammered home by the vicious, primal, and precise attack of the band.”

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Universals’s Reissue of 10cc’s Masterpiece – Is Anyone in Charge Here?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of 10cc Available Now

This review was written circa 2005.

This Universal Super De Luxe import LP appears to be the regular vinyl version that, for all we know, might actually still be in print in Europe. It appears to have been specially pressed on heavy vinyl for our domestic market as part of the new Universal Heavy Vinyl series.

Either that or it’s being made from the old metalwork for the LP that would have been available most recently in Europe (and out of print by now I should think).

Which is a very long-winded way of saying that it is not in any real sense remastered, if such a claim is actually being made for it, or the series.

Rather it has simply been repressed on Heavy Vinyl in Europe and imported to the states.

None of which is either here nor there because the record is an absolute DISASTER.

The top end is so boosted, after the cutter-head-emphasis gets done with it all that’s left is pure DISTORTION. No one with two working ears and even a halfway-decent stereo can fail to notice how awful this pressing sounds. How a record this poorly mastered (or pressed, perhaps it’s a manufacturing defect) could get through the Quality Control department at Universal is beyond me.

Wait a minute. Who say they even have a quality control department? 

They, like every other company that produces records these days, could apparently not care less whether the records they make are any good or not. There is not an iota of evidence to support the contention that anyone at any of these companies knows what the hell he or she is doing.

This is a classic example of a phrase that is widely misused, that phrase being “begging the question,” which typically refers to assuming something that one should be required to prove.

If you assume that any modern record label had a quality control department, you should be required to provide evidence of its existence. I am not aware of any.

Oh, but it’s ANALOG.

Folks, take it from me: because it’s on vinyl, heavy or otherwise, doesn’t have a whole lot to do with whether it sounds any good or not. The Hoffman-mastered DCC Gold CD is a million times more analog sounding than this piece of crap. Unlike this LP, the tonality of his CD is right on the money. It’s still a CD, and the Hot Stamper pressings we sell will trounce it sonically, but it’s worlds better than this Analog Vinyl.

If any record ever deserved a failing grade, it’s this one. After a few minutes you simply will not be able to be in the same room with it.

This link will take you to some other exceptionally bad records that, like this one, were marketed to audiophiles for their putatively superior sound. On today’s modern systems, it should be obvious that they have nothing of the kind and that, in fact, the opposite is true.

King Crimson – In The Court Of The Crimson King

More King Crimson

  • Superb Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER brings the band’s Prog Rock Masterpiece to life on this vintage import copy
  • Side two was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • We had a wide variety of Islands (Pink and Sunray) and UK Polydor pressings, and only two of those labels can have Hot Stampers based on the many shootouts we’ve done over the years
  • On a pressing as good as this one, turned up to seriously loud levels, the horns blasting away on “21st Century Schizoid Man” are guaranteed to blow your mind
  • As is sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, there are marks that play – those on “I Talk To The Wind” and “Moonchild” are especially bad – but if you can tough those out, this copy is going to blow your mind
  • 5 stars: “The group’s definitive album, and one of the most daring debut albums ever …. it blew all of the progressive/psychedelic competition out of the running, although it was almost too good for the band’s own good — it took King Crimson nearly four years to come up with a record as strong or concise.”
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” but with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. In the Court of the Crimson King is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but should get to know better

In the Court of the Crimson King is an album we think we know well, one that checks off a number of important boxes for us here at Better Records:

Over the many years of doing shootouts for this album, we’ve listened to a lot of different pressings. Right from the start we could hear that no domestic pressing was, or was ever likely to be, remotely competitive with the best Brits.

Most later reissues — domestic or import — were as flat and lifeless as a cassette, although we admit that some were clearly better than others.

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Duke Ellington / Newport Jazz Festival 1958

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Duke Ellington Available Now

If you are a fan, this record on the original 6-Eye label will be a thrill. If you’re unfamiliar with the Duke’s music, I can’t imagine a better introduction than this.

This LP also includes Gerry Mulligan’s only performance with the Ellington band.

Paul Gonsalves’s saxophone performance is superb and worth the price of the album alone.

The clarinet parts on Princess Blue are out of this world — Ellington at his best!

This is an older jazz 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 developed in the early 2000s and have since turned into a full-time practice for our staff of ten.

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 Hot Stamper listings, the sonic grades and vinyl playgrades are listed separately.)

We were often wrong back in those days, something we freely admit.

There is no reason to hide the fact that we know a great deal more now than we used to. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.

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Roxy Music / Siren

More Roxy Music

  • Roxy’s Art Rock classic from 1975, here with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them from top to bottom
  • These are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “huge and rich and open”…”tight bass”…”big, open chorus”…”tubey and 3D”…”great size and energy”…”lots of weight”…”jumping out of the speakers”
  • If you know the quality of Atlantic/Atco vinyl in the mid-70s, you know this is about as quiet as we can ever hope to find to them
  • The sound here is richer, with much less transistory grain, and more of the all important Tubey Magic than practically all other copies we played
  • Some of Bryan Ferry‘s strongest and most consistent songwriting – “Love Is The Drug,” “End of the Line,” “Sentimental Fool” and more
  • 5 stars: “Abandoning the intoxicating blend of art rock and glam-pop that distinguished Stranded and Country Life, Roxy Music concentrates on Bryan Ferry’s suave, charming crooner persona for the elegantly modern Siren.”

Siren is one of our favorite Roxy albums, right up there with the first album and well ahead of the commercially appealing Avalon. After reading a rave review in Rolling Stone of the album back in 1975 I took the plunge, bought a copy at my local Tower Records and instantly fell in love with it.

As is my wont, I then proceeded to work my way through their earlier catalog, which was quite an adventure. It takes scores of plays to understand where the band is coming from on the early albums and what it is they’re trying to do.

Now I listen to each of the first five releases on a regular basis. Even after more than forty years, the band’s music never seems to get old.

That seems to be true of a lot of the records from the era that we offer on our site. Otherwise, how on earth could we possibly charge so much money for them?

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Letter of the Week – “I needed a day to fully pick up my jaw from the floor after hearing Revolver and Dark Side…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

I needed a day to fully pick up my jaw from the floor after hearing Revolver and Dark Side of the Moon.

Now that I‘ve given them both a few listens to fully absorb how revealing these recordings I thought I knew so well really are, I just have so many questions. 

How much better sounding can the respective White Hots really be?????

As far as Dark Side, I’m finding out for myself. Just ordered the white hot stamper. Most likely will be returning one of them, but I hope that after this, I will finally be able to stop looking for “the better sound” on this one….

Regarding Revolver, will the A++ side of my Revolver Super hot sound the same as the A++ side of the WHS? Or is the A++ grade on the WHS relative to its A+++ side, and still better than the SHS? What I am getting at is, will both sides blow me away in comparison to my SHS, or is it better to be patient and hold out for a two-sided A+++? Btw, regardless of your answer, you cannot have this copy back, it is simply fantastic!

I know these kinds of questions are quite relative to a number of variables, but any enlightenment you can provide is welcome…. I appreciate what you do, you have gained a very happy customer. (more…)

Kris Kristofferson – The Silver Tongued Devil and I

More Kris Kristofferson

  • Seriously good sound for Kristofferson’s sophomore release, with Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • It’s richer, fuller, more musical and more natural that a lot of what we played – Kristofferson’s breathy voice is reproduced with a solidity and immediacy that’s not easy to find
  • Both of these sides are wonderfully full-bodied and warm, exactly the way you want your vintage analog to sound
  • 5 stars: “On its way to becoming a gold record, The Silver Tongued Devil and I reached the pop Top 20, Kristofferson’s career high on that chart, and the country Top Five; thus, Kristofferson made the transition from being a successful songwriter to a successful recording artist.”

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