Four Men with Beards

Blow-Up Soundtrack on Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of Top Quality Jazz Albums Available Now

Years ago, probably sometime in 2002 when this remastered record was released, we wrote the following:

TOP RECOMMENDATION from Better Records. What an amazing discovery! I can’t take credit for it, the credit belongs to Four Men with Beards.

Herbie Hancock manages to get a lot of different jazz artists to play some of the most interesting jazz I’ve ever heard. I have no idea who all is playing but each of the different songs involved different players playing in different groupings: sometimes it’s guitar and organ, sometimes it’s saxophone-led quartet; it pretty much runs the gamut of jazz. And the amazing thing is every track is great. And the sound is great.

If you want a jazz primer that introduces you to the different ways jazz groups are arranged, I can hardly think of a better record.

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Shoot Out The Lights – Loud Versus Live Versus The Heavy Vinyl Reissue

thompshoot_1503_1_1282591967Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Richard Thompson Available Now

Here’s a thought: if 180 gram records are supposed to be an improvement over the original pressings, why is it that they NEVER sound big and bold like our best Hot Stamper pressings?

And I do mean never; I’ve played hundreds of them over the years and have yet to hear this kind of sound on any of them. At this point I would have to conclude that it is simply not possible.

If you have big speakers, a large listening room and like to play your records loud, there is no modern reissue that will ever give you the thrill that a vintage pressing like this can. (Of course, to fully appreciate the effect it obviously helps if you have a White Hot Stamper copy to play.)

Heavy Vinyl

Years ago, about the time that I was becoming disenchanted with Heavy Vinyl in general and Four Men With Beards in particular, that label released a modern reissue of the album. I could never work up the energy to bother to play it. The chances of it sounding like one of our Hot Stamper pressings are slim to none and much closer to none.

UPDATE 2024

I have now played the remastered Shoot Out the Lights and it’s very good!  It might be at best a low level Hot Stamper, maybe 1.5+, but for Heavy Vinyl that is indeed exceptional.

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Young-Holt Unlimited – Oh Girl

This is a very nice looking Atlantic LP with AMAZING SOUND! The sound just JUMPS out of the speakers as soon as the needle hits the groove. If more records sounded like this I’d be out of a job — you wouldn’t need me to find good pressings for you. Records like this in my experience are the exception not the rule. Few of these have survived, so I have no other copies to compare to this one.

I can tell you this: the ‘4 Men With Beards’ 180g pressing is a pretty pale imitation of the sound on this album.