Contemporary – Reviews and Commentaries

Audiophiles Should Skip Swingin’ the ’20s on OJC

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Records Available Now

This album is fairly common on the OJC pressing from 1988, but more recently we’ve found the sound of the OJC pressings we’ve played seriously wanting. They have the kind of bad reissue sound that plays right into the prejudices of record collectors and audiophiles alike, the kind for whom nothing but an original will do.

They were dramatically smaller, flatter, more recessed and more lifeless than even the worst of the ’70s LPs we played. (We tend to like those, by the way.)

The lesson? Not all reissues are created equal. Some OJC pressings are great — including even some of the new ones — some are awful, and the only way to judge them fairly is to judge them individually, which requires actually playing a large sample.

Since virtually no record collectors or audiophiles like doing that, they make faulty judgments – OJC’s are cheap reissues sourced from digital tapes, run for the hills! – based on their biases and reliance on inadequate sample sizes.

You can find those who subscribe to this approach on every audiophile forum there is. The methods they have adopted do not produce good results, but as long as they stick to them, they will never have to worry about discovering that inconvenient truth.

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Andre Previn – These Two OJC Pressings Didn’t Make the Grade

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Recordings Available Now

The mastering choices of the cutting engineers for these two recordings did them no favors.

Like so many of the early OJC pressings we’ve played over the years, we found that both of these reissues tended to be somewhat thin tonally, with a brittle top end, which can clearly be heard in the tizzy quality of the cymbals.

This is not remotely the right sound for a vintage Contemporary recording.

When doing the shootouts for these albums, warmth turned out to be key to the sound of the best copies.

When the piano sounds warm and smooth, everything else in the recording seems to fall into place.

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Letter of the Week – “The whole house lights when up I turn this up all the way, emitting positive vibes into the universe…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Art Pepper Available Now

Our good customer Michel wrote to us about his experience playing one of our records.

Hi Tom,

At 2 a.m. last night and again today, I simply cannot get over just how darn good the sound is on this 2.5 side 2
of the stereo Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section.

Truly, a magical experience indeed. The whole house lights up when I turn this copy up all the way, emitting positive vibes into the universe,
near and far.

All the other copies I had … no comparison at all.

One simply doesn’t know until one knows. That’s the crux of the biscuit as they say.

I sure do love my BR records!
Cheers,
Michel

Michel,

Thanks again for writing. I wish more audiophiles could have the kind of experience you apparently had with that killer copy of Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section you ordered.

As you say, your other copies could not hold a candle to the properly-cleaned, properly-mastered and properly-pressed copy we sent you.

And the Heavy Vinyl pressing that Chad and Bernie made is an insult to the record buying public.

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Letter of the Week – “The whole house lights up when I turn this copy up all the way, emitting positive vibes into the universe, near and far.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Art Pepper Available Now

Our good customer Michel wrote to us about his experience playing one of our records.

Hi Tom,

At 2 a.m. last night and again today, I simply cannot get over just how darn good the sound is on this 2.5 side 2
of the stereo Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section.

Truly, a magical experience indeed. The whole house lights up when I turn this copy up all the way, emitting positive vibes into the universe,
near and far.

All the other copies I had … no comparison at all.

One simply doesn’t know until one knows. That’s the crux of the biscuit as they say.

I sure do love my BR records!

Cheers,
Michel

Michel,

Thanks again for writing. I wish more audiophiles could have the kind of experience you apparently had with that killer copy of Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section you ordered.

As you say, your other copies could not hold a candle to the properly-cleaned, properly-mastered and properly-pressed copy we sent you.

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Getting the Balance Right on Mean to Me

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocals Available Now

Mean to Me is a favorite test track for side one, with real Demo Disc quality sound. We credit it with helping us dramatically improve our playback.

Roy DuNann at Contemporary was able to get all his brass players together in one room, sounding right as a group as well as individual voices.

The piano, bass, and drums that accompany them are perfectly woven into the fabric of the arrangement.

What makes this song so good is that when the brass really starts to let loose later in the song, with the right equipment and the right room, you can get the kind of sound that’s so powerful you could practically swear it’s live.

Helen was recorded in a booth for this album, and her voice is slightly veiled relative to the other musicians playing in the much larger room that of course would be required for so many players.

When you get the brass correct, the trick is to get her voice to become as transparent and palpable as possible without screwing up the tonality of the brass instruments.

The natural inclination is to brighten up the sound to make her voice more clear.

But you will quickly be made painfully aware that brighter is not better when the brass gets too “hot” and starts to tear your head off.

The balance between voice and brass is key to the proper reproduction of this album.

Once you have achieved that balance, tweak for transparency while guarding against too much upper midrange or top end. Which also means watch out for audiophile wires that may have fooled you into thinking they were more resolving when actually they were just peakier in some portion of the frequency range.

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Analogue Productions Fails Spectacularly Right Out of the Gate with Jazz Giant

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Albums Available Now

You may remember what a disaster the Analogue Productions version of Jazz Giant from the 90s was.

Or maybe you agree with a certain writer that they were god’s gift to the record lovers of the world in need of higher quality pressings. We thought they were crap right from the get-go and were not the least bit shy about saying so,

I haven’t heard the new 45 RPM version and don’t intend to play one, but I seriously doubt that it sounds like our good Hot Stamper pressings. We have yet to hear a single Heavy Vinyl 45 that sounds any good to us, judged by the standards we set in our shootouts.

Actually, to run the risk of sounding even more pedantic than usual, the records themselves set the standards.

We simply grade them on the curve they establish for themselves.

We guarantee that none of their LPs can hold a candle to our vintage records or your money back. If you have one of the new pressings and don’t know what’s wrong with it, or don’t think that anything is wrong with it, try one of ours.

It will show you just how much better a real record can sound, with more space, more transparency, more energy, more presence, more drive, more ambience — more of everything that’s good about the sound of music on vinyl.

It is our contention that no one alive today makes records that sound as good as the vintage LPs we sell. Once you hear one of our Hot Stamper pressings, those Heavy Vinyl records you bought might not ever sound right to you again.

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The Yellow Label Reissues Can Sound Very Good, But Great? Not a Chance

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

The earlier pressing on the site as of this writing is an amazingly well recorded album with many fine qualities:

Boasting seriously good grades from top to bottom, this vintage Contemporary pressing is doing just about everything right.

These sides are bigger and more open, with more bass and energy, than most others we played – the saxes and trumpets are immediate and lively.

Mr. Earl Hines himself showed up, a man who knows this music like nobody’s business – Leroy Vinnegar and Shelly Manne round out the quartet.

“Great musicians produce great results, and most of the LP’s tracks were done in one or two takes. The result is ‘a spontaneous, swinging record of what happened’ when Carter met Hines ‘for the first time. . . .'”

Our notes for the Yellow Label reissues point out that they are always more compressed, with some added upper midrange. The intro benefits from this but the peaks can get congested.

The earlier pressings, especially the originals on the Black Label, are the most likely to sound right, but they are tough to find in audiophile playing condition.

If you see a copy on the site with these grades — less than 2+ on both sides — it will proabably have a Yellow Label and some of the shortcomings we mention above.

Correct, In This Case

Some people like to search for relationships between the sound of the pressing and the label it has, but in our experience that is more often than not a fool’s errand once confirmation biases and other kinds of mistaken audiophile thinking are taken into account.

When the conventional wisdom turns out to be correct — in other words, when it comports with reality, at least for the six copies of this album that we played — we are happy to temporarily put aside our skepticism and learn the lessons playing a stack of copies of this title has taught us.

Why? Because the experimental evidence supports it.

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How Do the Early Pressings of The Poll Winners Sound?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

A recent Shootout Winning copy with the early stereo badge cover was described this way:

Stunning sound throughout this vintage Black Label Stereo Records pressing, with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them

Roy DuNann always seems to get the real sound out of the sessions he recorded – amazingly realistic drums in a big room; Tubey Magical guitar tone; deep, note-like bass, and on and on

4 1/2 stars: “The choice of material, the interplay between the three players, and the lead work all meld together beautifully on The Poll Winners, making it a classic guitar album in a small-group setting.”

Musically, all true. Sonically, not so much. The early D1/D2 stampers on the early Black Label might be passable on side one (1+), but side two was just a mess (NFG).

Side One

Track Two

  • A bit bright and flat

Track One

  • Very clear but lacking richness, weight and depth
  • Thin, and bright up top
  • 1+

Side Two

Track One

  • Narrow stereo field
  • Weird tape hiss
  • Metallic top end
  • Very recessed and weird
  • Nope

A different Stereo Badge Cover copy sporting a Black Label won the shootout by the way. Go figure.

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Most of the Time the Conventional Wisdom Turns Out to Be Right

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

Recently we conducted a shootout for yet another superb Contemporary title. We’d played quite a collection of copies of this particular album over the years, on every label, starting back in the 90s when we first discovered how amazing sounding Contemporary records could be when you get hold of a good one.

We felt we had a solid understanding of both the music and the key aspects of the sound we might expect to hear — Tubey Magic, space, dead-on tonality, top end extension, all the stuff we’ve come to love in these live-in-the-studio, all-tube-chain Contemporary jazz recordings from their heydey throughout the 50s and 60s.

However, it’s not the record you see pictured. For now, the title of this album will have to remain a mystery, along with a great many others for which we’ve been reprinting our shootout stamper sheets so as to discuss their meaning on the blog.

As you can see, the original first pressings earned White Hot Stamper grades and were declared the winner of our shootout. With Nearly White Hot Stamper grades, the early Green second label did very well, followed by an OJC with respectable sound overall.

We recently posted a lengthy post discussing the pros and cons of conventional wisdom. In it we attempted to make the case that, although the most common record collecting tenets are more often right than wrong, there is simply no way to know which standard approach will work for the specific title at hand.

Rather than post one exception after another — easily done, since we have documented literally hundreds of them — we are happy to admit that the standard record collecting rules of thumb work well for most records, with the definition of “most” being “more than half the time.”

That leaves a lot of room for misses, and if those misses happen to be favorite albums of yours, tough luck. Unless…

Unless you know how to test records properly.

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Jazz Giant and Tube Versus Transistor Tradeoffs

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

In a commentary from more than ten years ago we weighed the tradeoffs in the sound of the originals versus the reissues.

This superb sounding original Black Label Contemporary pressing of Benny Carter’s swingin’ jazz quartet is the very definition of a top jazz stereo recording from the late ’50s recorded and mastered through an All Tube Chain.

There’s good extension on the top end for an early pressing, with TONS of what you would most expect: Tubey Magic and Richness. If that’s what you’re looking for, this copy has got it!

We prefer the later pressings in most ways, but this record does something that no later pressing we have ever played can do — get Benny’s trumpet to sound uncannily REAL.

If you want to demonstrate to your skeptical audiophile friends what no CD (or modern remastered record) can begin to do, play side two of this copy for them. They may be in for quite a shock.

The sound of the muted trumpet on side two is out of this world. 

It’s exactly the sonic signature of good tube equipment — making some elements of a recording sound shockingly real.

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