Columbia/Epic – Selections

Select commentaries and reviews for Columbia/Epic

Letter of the Week – “I will spare you the time to comment on my 1992 Analogue Productions Reissue…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Sonny Rollins’s Albums Available Now

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

Dear Tom and Fred

After having had the opportunity to listen to the next batch of 7 more records, here are my observations on the 40 records I have now bought from you.

First to my listening experience. After receiving the CSNY 4 Way Street and looking for my own record, I thought was a German press easy to beat I realized it was a white label promo first press and thought, oh, did I make a mistake to buy this for this kind of money from you guys, this may be a tough one to crack?

Not so, your SH Stamper clearly beat the WL promo, check!

Next up was the Miles Davis Sketches of Spain White Hot Stamper, one of my very top Miles favorites.

I did not recall that I had the six eye first press, and on side 2, with identical stampers (when your 3/3 WH show up, you do not have the time to check this but hurry :-since your WH 3/3s sell like hot cakes!).

So even more difficult to beat?? Promising start: your WH was clearly better on side 1, now to the identical stampers side 2: not as clearly but still just more transparent, better drums, less shrill on track 2, check!

But it certainly cannot get better than this 3/3 WH stamper, can it?

Next up is Sonny Rollins 3/3 WH Stamper [of Way Out West]. Hard to believe, but yes, even better than the great Miles 3/3 WHS, and I will spare you the time to comment on my 1992 Analogue Productions reissue which I always thought was quite decent.

And so it goes on…

Christian

Christian,

In less than a year you have acquired a large number of simply amazing sounding records. Congratulations.

As you point out about the stampers, you may have a pressing with the right stampers, but our copy will still beat it. How it was pressed and how it was cleaned are critical to the sound, and that is not something the stamper numbers can tell you. It’s a subject we discuss often. Here is a good place to start.

Here on the blog there are a great many examples of records with the same stampers that do not have the same sound.

As for your 1992 Analogue Productions Heavy Vinyl remaster, I honestly don’t know how anyone can listen to a record with sound like that and consider it acceptable, or, in your words, “quite decent.” I went into the long story of the album in this commentary.

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Side One Had Tubey Colorations Missing from Side Two

Hot Stamper Pressings of Vintage Columbia Albums Available Now

An undiscovered gem from 1967 on the 360 Columbia label.

Side two of this record blew our minds with its White Hot Stamper sound.

Musically and sonically this record is nothing short of wonderful.

Who knew? You could play fifty vintage piano recordings and not find one as good as this.

Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Beethoven, Debussy, Mozart — these shorter pieces and excerpts were composed by those with the greatest gift for melody, men who’ve produced works that have stood the test of time, enchanting audiences over the centuries with works of such beauty and charm.

Here at Better Records we have never been fans of Columbia classical LPs. To be clear, the fault more often than not has to be in the mastering, not the recording. We’ve raved about so many great copies of titles in the past, only to find that the next three or four LPs we pick up of the very same titles sound godawful.

There are some amazing Bernstein recordings out there, but the amount of work it takes to find the one that sounds good is overwhelming — how can such great recordings be mastered so poorly so often?

Side One

A++, with a huge, rich, sweet, natural sounding piano. The more you listen, the more apparent it becomes that, as natural as it may seem at first blush, there are still some old school tubey colorations that make the sound not quite as lifelike as one might wish.

And the confirmation of that finding comes as soon as you flip the record over.

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So Many Columbia Classical LPs Are Bad Sounding – Why Is That?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Vintage Columbia Albums Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This commentary was written in 2005 or thereabouts. Still holds up though.

Columbia classical recordings have a tendency to be shrill, upper-midrangy, glary and hard sounding.

The upper mids are usually nasally and pinched; the strings and brass will screech and blare at you in the worst possible way.

If Columbia’s goal was to drive the classical music lover with high-fidelity equipment screaming from the room, more often than not they succeeded brilliantly. Occasionally they failed.

Some of those pressings we call Hot Stampers, but not many.

Columbia Rock and Jazz

When I play Columbia recordings from the 50s and 60s of Brubeck, Ellington, Miles and other jazz giants, what strikes me is how natural, warm and sweet the sound is. I was playing an old mono Ellington record recently and when the clarinet solo came in, it almost took my breath away. The sound of the instrument was that real. This from a mid-’50s run-of-the-mill Columbia pressing. Those guys (the engineers and the musicians) knew what they were doing.

Sometimes when I read about the extraordinary lengths modern engineers go to in order to use the highest quality audiophile equipment: custom microphones, tape recorders, wire, and the like, it makes me wonder how so many of the best sounding recordings in the world managed to be made without any of that stuff.

RCA didn’t need it for their Living Stereos.

Decca didn’t need it.

Contemporary Records managed to record the best sounding jazz records without it.

How did all those great sounding records get made with such bad equipment?

I guess we’ll never know.

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The Glorious Sound of Tubes in 1963

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Thelonious Monk Available Now

UPDATE 2026

In 2018 we put up a killer Hot Stamper pressing of Big Band and Quartet and had a few thoughts about the sound of the best copies we played.

On this record, more than most, the tubes potentially make all the difference. 

Keep in mind that we are referring specifically to 1963 tubes, not the stuff that engineers are using today to make so-called “tube-mastered” records.

Today’s modern records barely hint at the Tubey Magical sound of a record like this, if our experience with hundreds of them is any guide. We, unlike so many of the audiophile reviewers of today, have a very hard time taking any of the new pressings seriously. We think our position is pretty clear, and we have yet to hear more than a stray record or two that would make us want to change our minds.

If you’ve ever heard a pressing that sounds as good as this one, you know there hasn’t been a record manufactured in the last forty years that has this kind of sound.

Right, wrong or otherwise, this sound is simply not part of the modern world we live in.

[Well, not quite, but close.]

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Rhapsody in Blue – We Finally Broke Through in 2015

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of George Gershwin Available Now

This original Six Eye LP has the rich brass and smooth strings that allow this wonderful music to astound. This is by far our favorite performance of Rhapsody in Blue, and it is unlikely that another recording will come along to take away its crown.

Smooth and solid, not brash or blary, what really impressed about the sound here was how full-bodied it was, yet it was never thick or murky the way so many of the Heavy Vinyl pressings being made today sound.

(Audiophiles often associate these two “qualities” with analog itself, which is why the purveyors of these so-called AAA remastered records insist that they know the sound their customers want and by god they are going to give it to them.)

Instead the best copy we played was transparent in the lower mids and below, and that sound was just glorious after listening to too many thin and brash pressings. The piano is solid, rich, high-rez and very percussive — there is no tubey old school smear to be heard, and that too was a surprise.

I’ve always loved these performances, but the shrill Columbia strings and brass have been hard to get past. Most copies suffer from upper-midrangy, glary, hard sound and blary brass. I’ve come to accept that this is nothing more than the “Columbia Sound,” and as a consequence we rarely put much effort into surveying their recordings, even their more famous ones.

I won’t say all that’s changed; it really hasn’t. The vast majority of Columbia classical pressings are still going to sound as awful as they have in the past.

What has changed is that finally, with this copy (and the stereo/room we have in 2015) we’ve found the sound that we’d been looking for on the legendary MS 6091. (more…)

Symphonie Fantastique – Three Mastering Options

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Berlioz Available Now

UPDATE 2026

Years ago we played a reissue of the title you see pictured which prompted us to make some observations and ask some questions about the approach the mastering engineer might have taken.

And this one comes complete with the bonus 7″ entitled “Berlioz Takes a Trip,” in which Bernstein explores the work “with musical illustrations by the New York Philharmonic.”

Clocking in at around 45 minutes, Symphonie Fantastique is a difficult work to fit onto a single LP,  which means that the mastering engineer has three options when cutting the record:

  1. Compress the dynamics,
  2. Lower the level, or
  3. Filter the deep bass.

On this side two it seems that none of those approaches were taken by the engineer who cut this record in the early 80s — there’s plenty of bass, as well as powerful dynamics, and the levels seem fine.

How he do it? Who knows? Like so much in the world of records, it’s a mystery.

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What to Listen For on Midnight Love

Hot Stamper Pressings of Soul, Blues, R&B, etc. Available Now

UPDATE 2026

In 2002 we put up a 3/3 copy of Midnight Love that really knocked our socks off. We wrote:

With two STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides, this Midnight Love is certainly as good a copy as we have ever heard – exceptionally quiet vinyl too.

Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “round and punchy”…”jumping out of the speakers”…”good size and weight”…”spacious and relaxed percussion and vox”…”top detail” (side two).

Drop the needle on Sexual Healing then sit back and relax as the rich, warm sound of analog sets the mood.

There’s good frequency extension up top and down low, with plenty of meaty bass and silky highs (just check out those bells).

What made it so good? Glad you asked!

This copy has two qualities which are essential if this music is to  work its soulful magic: silky vocals and a big meaty bottom end.

Check out all the texture to the synths on Turn On Some Music – this is a highly resolving pressing which takes Marvin Gaye’s music — the last he would make before his death — to another level.

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Miles Davis In Person and the Sound of Tubes in 1961

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Miles Davis Available Now

UPDATE 2025

We have two new lists for those who would like to know which Columbia label pressings win shootouts — one for 6-Eye winners and one for 360 Label winners.

The pressing we review below was one of the 6-Eye winners. Most of what we have to say about it revolves around the idea that in 1961 the tube mastering was key to the sound of the best copies.

Below you will find some of the notes I made while playing a killer copy we auditioned a while back.

Normally our notes for the sound of the records we are shooting out against each other fall into two categories: what the record is doing right and what the record is doing wrong.

You’ll see that in the case of this pressing there was nothing wrong with the sound to write about.

I could have found fault somewhere, but when a specific pressing is so clearly superior to its competition, what’s the point?

  • The right sound — big, rich, tubey and real.
  • Transparent.
  • Rich, smooth, balanced.
  • Horn gets huge and loud the right way.
  • Piano is full.
  • Solid bass.
  • No need to pick nits.

The bottom line: both sides are killing it.

Reissues

There are some very good sounding reissues from the 70s that will eventually make it to the site. Again and again my notes made it clear that on those reissue pressings, the sound could have used some tubes in the chain.

On this record, more than any other, the tubes potentially make all the difference.

Now keep in mind that we are only talking about 1961 tubes, not the stuff that engineers are using today to make “tube-mastered” records. Those modern records barely hint at the Tubey Magical sound of a record like this, if our experience with hundreds of them is any guide.

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Do The Original Domestic KC Pressings Always Beat the Later PC LPs?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Psychedelic Rock Recordings Available Now

Here is our description for the Super Hot (2+) copy that is currently on the site:

One of the most important records in my growth as an audiophile from 1971 to the present – my stereo was forced to evolve in order to play this kind of big production rock at the loud levels that the album needs in order to work its magic.

No matter how many times you play it, you will most likely hear – or at least gain more of an appreciation for – something new in the exceptionally dense, sophisticated soundfield Chris Kimsey creates for these songs.

And each time you make an improvement in the quality of your playback, this is the album that will show you exactly what you have just accomplished.

Overall, the best performers in our most recent shootout were UK pressings. They ranged in sound from the 3/3 Shootout Winning pressing (not shown) to the lowest graded British copy which earned grades of 1.5+/2+ (at the bottom of the top box).

On the left is a portion of the breakdown, minus the actual stamper numbers that earned the highest grades (for obvious reasons.)

We had six UK pressings, all with the same stampers — the five you see graded and the one hidden to the left that actually won the shootout. (Three sides earned White Hot Stamper grades, an unusual outcome and a good one for the bottom line.)

Note that with the “right stampers” you could have ended up with an incredible Demo Disc (copy #1) or just a very good sounding copy on side two mated to a passable side one (copy #6).

Finding six clean UK pressings is, as you can well imagine, neither cheap nor easy. We probably bought close to twice that many to end up with six that we’re in something close to audiophile playing condition.

As you can see from the grades, two of them were clearly inferior to the other four. In the case of this title, a small sample size could have been very misleading. Fortunately for us, we spent the money and the time it takes to track down a good-sized batch of UK pressings in order to avoid that possibility.

Next come the better domestic pressings. There was a 2+/2+ that outscored all the other domestic pressings, and four others that came in behind it, all with the same stampers.

Of the five copies that had those stampers, two had side two’s that scored sub-Hot Stamper grades, which marked them as unsaleable. (Perhaps we will offer them as one-sided records since their side one’s are so good.)

KC VS PC

We rarely have good luck with PC reissue copies when the originals come with the KC prefix, rarely meaning we find a PC winner maybe once out of every ten titles we play.

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Never Buy Any LP with this Columbia Label If You’re Looking for Good Sound

Columbia Pressings with Hot Stampers Available Now

If you are looking for good sound that is. I cannot remember ever playing a record with this later label that sounded any better than passable, and most of them are just plain awful.

We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a public service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.

You can find this one in our hall of shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound. Some of these records may have passable sonics, but we found the music less than compelling.  These are also records you can safely avoid.

UPDATE 2025

We have two new lists for those who would like to know which Columbia label pressings win shootouts — one for 6-Eye winners and one for 360 Label winners.

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