Record Labels We Love

Rimsky-Korsakov / The Tale of Tsar Saltan / Ansermet

More of the music of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

  • This London Whiteback stereo pressing boasts big, bold, dynamic Tubey Magical Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from first note to last
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • No question this is a Demo Disc Quality recording – it’s rich and real, with huge WHOMP factor down low, as well as clear, uncolored brass and robust lower strings
  • Here is the kind of depth and three-dimensional soundstaging that the recordings by Ansermet and the Suisse Romande are famous for
  • The Speakers Corner pressing of Ansermet’s famous recording is mediocre, with many faults, all discussed here
  • We would love to be able to find Ansermet’s Scheherazade on London (not Decca!) vinyl, but as you may have read on the blog, the right stampers of that record are almost impossible to find these days, although that has not stopped us from trying

James Walker was the producer, Roy Wallace the engineer for these sessions from April of 1959 in Geneva’s glorious Victoria Hall. It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording.

The gorgeous hall the Suisse Romande recorded in was possibly the best recording venue of its day, possibly of all time. More amazing sounding recordings were made there than in any other hall we know of. There is a solidity and richness to the sound beyond all others, yet clarity and transparency are not sacrificed in the least.

It’s as wide, deep and three-dimensional as any, which is of course all to the good, but what makes the sound of these recordings so special is the weight and power of the brass, combined with timbral accuracy of the instruments in every section.

This is the kind of record that will make you want to take all your heavy vinyl classical pressings and put them in storage. None of them, I repeat not a single one, can begin to sound the way this record sounds. (Before you put them in storage or on Ebay please play them against this pressing so that you can be confident in you decision to rid yourself of their insufferable mediocrity.)

This London pressing contains a stunningly BEAUTIFUL Tale of the Tsar Saltan Suite. It’s clearly one of the great Demo Disc Quality recordings from the Golden Age (or any age for that matter), with everything that a top Golden Age Orchestral recording should have: all the magic; all the timbral and harmonic subtlety; all the sweetness and warmth; all the Tubey Magical richness.

All that and more. Folks, this is the kind of record that makes you sit up and take notice. Finally, HERE is the kind of sound that can bring an orchestra to life in your very own listening room.

It has the kind of depth and three-dimensional soundstaging that the recordings by Ansermet and the Suisse Romande are famous for. (Unlike some of their recordings — Pictures at an Exhibition comes readily to mind — the tempi here are not too slow. The tempi are in fact just right. We love the sound of Ansermet’s records but when the performance drags it’s hard to enjoy the music. For top quality performances of the work by other conductors — rarely in stock I regret to say — please check the site.)

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America – Self-Titled

More America

More Hippie Folk Rock

  • An early Green Label pressing that is doing pretty much everything right, with superb Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides
  • One of our favorite Hippie Folk Rock albums – the instruments and voices are so well recorded they will seem to be floating right in front of you
  • The Tubey Magical acoustic guitars on this record are a true test of stereo reproduction – thanks Ken Scott!
  • 4 stars: “America’s debut album is a folk-pop classic, a stellar collection of memorable songs that would prove influential on such acts as the Eagles and Dan Fogelberg…”
  • If I had to compile a list of my Favorite Rock and Pop Albums from 1971, this album would definitely be on it

This is clearly America’s best album. You’ll find the kind of immediacy, richness and harmonic texture that not many records (and even fewer CDs) are capable of reproducing. The version we are offering here has the song “A Horse With No Name.” Some copies without that song can sound very good as well, but with grades this good, this copy is going to be very hard to beat.

Interestingly, “A Horse With No Name” never sounds quite as good as the rest of the album. It was recorded in 1971, after the album had already been released, and subsequently added to newer pressings starting in 1972. Unlike the rest of the album, it was not engineered by Ken Scott at Trident, but by a different engineer at Morgan Studios. The engineer of that song took a different approach to that which Scott had taken, and we leave it to you to decide how well it worked out.

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Bill Withers – Menagerie

More Bill Withers

  • With two nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sides, this copy is close to the BEST we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner
  • Big, rich and smooth — this is vintage analog after all ** this is just the right sound for this music
  • Includes Withers’ signature hit, “Lovely Day” as well as “Lovely Night For Dancing”
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Where his Sussex material was slyly eclectic, touching on a number of different styles, this album is more cohesive, a smooth album that points the way toward quiet storm while retaining a warm soulfulness, largely due to Withers’ wonderful voice.”

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Carly Simon – Self-Titled

More Carly Simon

  • This early Elektra pressing was doing pretty much everything right, with both sides earning outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • Can you believe that the producer and engineer of Carly’s debut is none other than Eddie Kramer?!
  • “That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be” is the killer track here and it’s close to the BEST we’ve heard on this Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) side one – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • This copy really brought this Big Production to life and allowed so many elements to work in harmony.
  • It’s a good example of what a truly Hot Stamper is supposed to do – let the music work as music

The richness and the sweetness of the midrange on the better copies are exactly what you’d be looking for on this heavily-produced pop album, and this copy gives you that sound like no other copy you’ve ever heard.

Credit must go to Eddie Kramer, legendary producer and engineer for the likes of Hendrix and Zeppelin. He knows how to get good sound all right, although Female Singer Songwriter albums in his catalog are fairly light on the ground. (Richard Perry became the go-to guy for those productions as the ’70s wore on.) This may, in fact, be the only one Eddie ever did. But he knows Big Production Rock, and that’s what most of this album is about.

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The Band – Are the Originals the Best Sounding Pressings?

More of the Music of The Band

In the case of this album, no. The copies with the later covers always win our shootouts.

This is not the least bit surprising to us. We’re the guys who are all about sound, not originality.

We discussed it in this commentary: Are hot stampers just original pressings?

The links below should be helpful to those looking for the highest quality sound on vinyl.

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Stevie Wonder – Hotter Than July

More Stevie Wonder

More Soul, Blues and R&B

  • Boasting two superb Double Plus (A++) sides, we guarantee you’ve never heard Hotter Than July sound this good
  • Forget whatever dead-as-a-doornail Heavy Vinyl record they’re making these days – if you want to hear the Tubey Magic, size and energy of this wonderful album, a vintage pressing like this one is the way to go
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Wonder naysayed the trends and continues to do what he did best. Solid songwriting, musicianship, and production are evident in the majority of Hotter Than July… It is the portrait of an artist who still had the Midas touch…”

Most copies lack the presence, energy and bottom end weight to let these funky songs work their magic, but a copy like this will let you appreciate the music without the mediocre sonics of the average pressing getting in the way.

This album was recorded right at the beginning of the digital era (1980) and most pressings won’t let you forget that. So many copies we played were just too sterile to get into — clean and clear bit lacking richness and fullness. We’re huge Stevie Wonder fans around here and we’ve fallen in love with Innervisions and Songs In The Key Of Life over and over again because of their lush, analog sound on the best pressings. It took a ton of work (and a whole lot of copies) to find a Hotter Than July that we could get excited about. I don’t think there’s a copy out there that can compete with his earlier recordings sonically but at least the Hot Stamper pressings present the music in a way that audiophiles can enjoy.

Bottom line? Digital recordings are tough, but after playing a ton of copies of this album we’ve managed to find a few that were musical and enjoyable instead of fatiguing. If you haven’t played this album in years I can understand why — the typical pressings are just too clean and too dry to demand any time on your table. At least that was our experience until the top copies such as this one had us nodding our heads and rockin’ out with these great tunes. Check out a Hot Stamper pressing to remember just what a musical magician Stevie is — you’ll be jammin’ too!

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Ellington-Basie / First Time – The Count Meets the Duke

More Duke Ellington

More Count Basie

  • This original 6-Eye Stereo pressing was doing pretty much everything right, with both sides earning superb Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • Reasonably quiet vinyl too, considering its age – how many early ’60s Columbia Stereo pressings survived with audiophile-quality playing surfaces the way this one did?
  • Huge amounts of three-dimensional space and ambience, along with boatloads of Tubey Magic – here’s a 30th Street recording from 1961 that demonstrates just how good Columbia’s engineers were back then
  • If all you’ve heard are the Classic Records reissues of Ellington, you are in for a treat, because there is a world of difference between the real thing and the Classic wannabe
  • It’s yet another Tubey Magical Demo Disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… a very successful and surprisingly uncrowded encounter… Ellington and Basie both play piano (their interaction with each other is wonderful) and the arrangements allowed the stars from both bands to take turns soloing.”
  • If you’re a fan of either or both of these jazz giants, this classic jazz album from 1961 belongs in your collection

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Schubert – The Trout Quintet / Curzon / Vienna Octet

  • Boasting two seriously good Double Plus (A++) sides, this vintage Ace of Diamonds pressing is doing just about everything right
  • It’s simply bigger, more transparent, less distorted, more three-dimensional and more REAL than most of what we played – this is music you cannot help but be drawn into
  • The 1958 master tape has been transferred brilliantly using “modern” cutting equipment (from 1968, not the low-rez junk they’re forced to make do with these days), giving you, the listener, sound and surfaces that are hard to fault
  • When you hear how good this record sounds, you may have a hard time believing that it’s a budget reissue from 1968, but that’s precisely what it is.
  • Some budget reissues are so good, they can actually win shootouts

The cello does not have that “fat” sound some audiophiles seem to like – Decca knew more about recording chamber music in 1958 than practically all the audiophile labels that would come along later, the ones that managed to make a mess of the very idea of audiophile quality sound (you know who I mean)

The piano and the strings have that Golden Age Tubey Magical sound we love. It’s been years since I’ve had the opportunity to play this record; most copies are just too beat up to bother with, so I was glad to find a number in minty condition.

Now what I hear in this recording is sound that is absolutely free from any top end boost, much the way live music is. There’s plenty of tape hiss and air; the highs aren’t rolled off, they’re just not boosted the way they often are in a recording.

A few years back I had a chance to see a piano trio perform locally; they even played a piece by Schubert. The one thing I noticed immediately during their live performance was how smooth and natural the top end was. I was no more than ten feet from the performers in a fairly reverberant room, and yet the sound I heard was the opposite of what passes in some circles for Hi-Fidelity.

This is the opposite of those echo-drenched recordings that some audiophiles seem to like, with microphones placed twenty feet away from the performers so that they are awash in “ambience.” If you know anything about us, you know that this is not our sound.

I have never heard live music sound like that and that should settle the question. It does in my mind anyway. The Chesky label (just to choose one awful audiophile label to pick on) is a joke and always will be. How anyone buys into that phony sound is beyond me, but any audio show will prove to you that there is no shortage of audiophiles who love the Chesky “sound,” and probably never will be.

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Wild Things Run Fast – A Personal Favorite

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

Hot Stamper Pressings of Personal Favorites Available Now

One of our favorite Joni Mitchell albums. A Desert Island disc for me & one of the few good reasons to listen to new music in the ’80s. 

My personal Must Own Joni Mitchell list includes:

  1. 1968 Song to a Seagull
  2. 1971 Blue
  3. 1974 Court and Spark
  4. 1982 Wild Things Run Fast

WTRF is a TAS list Super Disc with many good qualities, but you’d never know it from the typically lean, bass-shy pressing you might find on your turntable.

Also, since this record can be a little cold sounding — it’s a modern recording after all, and 1982 is sadly nothing like 1972  — filling it out and warming it up is just what the doctor ordered.

John Golden (JG) mastered the originals. The best of them prove that he did a great job at least some of the time. (To find “the best of them,” aka Hot Stampers, read on.)

You can count on the fact that our Hot Stamper pressings will be unusually rich and full-bodied, with lovely warmth and presence. (more…)

Ella Fitzgerald – The Duke Ellington Songbook, Volume Two

More Ella Fitzgerald

Ella Fitzgerald Albums We’ve Reviewed

  • An excellent Verve Mono reissue with wonderful sound on all FOUR sides
  • Forget the originals – like so many of the early songbook pressings, they suffer from painfully hard and honky mastering EQ (and gritty sounding vinyl)
  • We know whereof we speak when it comes to early Ella records – we’ve played plenty of them and found that most just don’t sound very good
  • Exceptionally quiet vinyl throughout* — Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus
  • “Duke’s spectacular catalog dazzles, and his sprightly, lush textures are transfigured under Fitzgerald’s warm-timbred voice and elegant, precise delivery… each tune as familiar as it is delightful to hear in this new context.”
  • If you’re a fan of Ella’s, this Top Title from 1957 belongs in your collection
  • The complete list of titles from 1957 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

This mono reissue is the only way to find the MIDRANGE MAGIC that’s missing from modern records. As good as the best of those pressings may be, this record is going to be dramatically more REAL sounding.

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