ABC/MCA

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Long After Dark

More Tom Petty

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom, this vintage pressing is doing just about everything right
  • Both sides are rich and full-bodied with tight bass, and brimming with Petty’s unique brand of straight ahead rock and roll, best exemplified by the radio smash “You Got Lucky”
  • Rolling Stone raves, “Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers play a finely crafted brand of meat-and-potatoes rock. They shudder to a stop for the occasional ballad or showy guitar figure, but the next surging chorus is never far away. They’ve been honing that sound for five albums now, and Petty has gradually hoisted himself into the company of such masterful travelers of Route 66 as Seger and Springsteen. …overall, Long after Dark is Petty’s most accomplished record.”

Long After Dark boasts the monster rocker You Got Lucky and very good sound considering that the album was recorded in 1982, not an especially good year (or decade) to be recording rock music.

Finding The Best Sound

Energy and rock and roll rhythmic drive are of course paramount.

Many copies were brighter than ideal, which is nothing new for Petty’s body of work but nonetheless far from the sound we find most pleasing.

Some copies in our shootout were dark and small; we took serious points off for both of these shortcomings.

The climaxes of the songs should be as uncompressed and uncongested as possible to earn our higher grades. When the music gets loud it should stay tonally correct and undistorted, and not all copies can do that, not at the serious levels we like to play our records.

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Glenn Frey – Soul Searchin’

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  • With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides, this copy (only the second to hit the site in years) is practically as good as we have ever heard
  • We were shocked to find out that this album actually sounds very analog – rich, smooth, sweet and natural
  • Elliot Scheiner (Royal Scam, Aja, Nightfly) produced and also did some engineering – he is to be commended for his excellent work here
  • “Though I left Detroit and went to California to cut my teeth on country-rock, I’ve remained obsessed with the music of my adolescence, the great soul hits of the 60s and early 70s.”

The best copies are both rich and open, with the sound we tend to associate with the better 70s recordings and rarely hear on records from the 80s. But here’s a record from 1988 that sounds the way we like our records to sound — like analog. We don’t really know if it is or not, or mostly is or mostly isn’t, but we’ve never really cared about those sorts of things as long as the record sounds good.

It’s our one and only criterion. Any other criterion is a sign that you’re not really listening, you’re reading.

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The Crusaders – Chain Reaction

More Jazz Fusion

  • An outstanding copy of Chain Reaction with solid Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • The overall sound here is Tubey Magical, lively and funky, with the kind of rich, solid sound that will fill your listening room from wall to wall
  • If you own the Mobile Fidelity remaster, or some Heavy Vinyl LP, you are in for a real treat – this pressing will show you just how good the recording is
  • 4 1/2 stars: “One of the tastiest concoctions of the mid-’70s jazz-fusion era, Chain Reaction finds the Crusaders at the top of their form. The compositions are both accessible and memorable, and the playing is uniformly excellent.”

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Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – Southern Accents

More of the Music of Tom Petty

  • A Southern Accents like you’ve never heard, with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides of this early MCA pressing
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more space, richness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market
  • “Southern Accents is an ambitious album, attempting to incorporate touches of psychedelia, soul, and country into a loose concept about the modern South… ‘Rebels’ and ‘Spike’ are fine rockers, and ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’ and ‘Make It Better (Forget About Me)’ expand The Heartbreakers’ sound nicely.”
  • If you’re a fan of Tom Petty and his bandmates, this classic from 1985 surely belongs in your collection.

If you’ve tried to find a good sounding copy of this album you could easily be forgiven for throwing in the towel — we almost did ourselves, and more than once. We’ve cleaned and played a pile of copies over the years, and now we are glad to report that this one sounds like a completely different album — it’s rich, smooth, and sweet, a big step up over the typical gritty, grainy copy.

Credit must obviously go to the man behind the console, Shelly Yakus, someone who we freely admit, now with a sense of embarrassment, had never been one of our favorite engineers. After hearing a White Hot Stamper pressing of Damn the Torpedoes and a killer copy of Crack the Sky’s Animal Notes, as well as amazing sounding pressings of Moondance (his first official lead engineering gig) and Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus, we realize that we have seriously underestimated the man.

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Jimmy Witherspoon – Handbags and Gladrags

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More Soul, Blues, and R&B

  • With INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish, this vintage ABC pressing is certainly as good a copy as we have ever heard
  • These sides are doing everything right – they’re super big, rich and lively, with an abundance of extension at both ends
  • Spacious and transparent, this copy has the three-dimensional soundstaging and natural vocal reproduction that makes these kinds of records such a joy to play (and in the process a record this good makes a mockery of the veiled, lifeless, ambience-free sound of the modern Heavy Vinyl reissue)
  • Sorry about the ABC vinyl — it’s the rare copy that plays much quieter, one of the main reasons you never see this title on the site

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Crosby / Nash – Wind on the Water

More of the Music of David Crosby and Graham Nash

  • With a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side one, we guarantee you’ve never heard Wind on the Water sound this good
  • These are just a few of the things we had to say about this incredible copy in our notes: “lots of space”…”huge and present and tubey”…”very detailed vox”…”tons of weight…”present and lively”
  • Here you will find noticeably richer sonics than practically all other pressings (hence the high grades) – many tended to be leaner and drier than we would have liked, and we take a lot of points off when they sound that way
  • It’s possible to get the clear, breathy vocals that bring out the wonderful harmonies these two are so rightly famous for – it’s just not easy
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – those on “Carry Me” are especially bad – but if you can tough those out, this copy is going to blow your mind
  • 4 stars: “Wind on the Water has an instant classic, lived-in sound and is a definite must-have.”

Solo and In Combination

Of course it’s easy to argue that finding good sound on an album with two or more members of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, in any configuration, has never been easy. It’s the rare copy of either of the first two albums that’s even listenable, and the CSN album from 1977 doesn’t sound nearly as good as any of the first three Crosby/Nash albums (of which this is the second). Which simply means that the “good” sound of our Hot Stamper copies is far better than what most audiophiles own of any of these guys in combination.

Their solo albums are a different story altogether. The first solo albums by David Crosby (1971), Stephen Stills (1970) and Graham Nash (1971) are three of my favorite records of all time; each is a brilliant recording, each is powerfully compelling music (the Nash album especially). Two made our Top 100. It’s puzzling to contemplate just how well-recorded each of their first solo albums are considering their less-than-stellar group recording efforts. Too many cooks spoiling the broth might make a good guess, but at this point it’s no more than speculation and mostly a waste of time. With so many records to play, we find we do better when we confine ourselves to the realities of the vinyl in front of us.

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Rob Wasserman – Duets

More Rob Wasserman

  • This rare and wonderful album from 1988 on the original MCA label boasts KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this incredible copy in our notes: “really full and present vox”…”good weight”…”the most space” (side one)…”detailed and textured and spacious”…”deep bass”
  • In-the-room vocal presence (Jennifer Warnes is stunning on Leonard Cohen’s “Ballad Of The Runaway Horse”) and tight, note-like bass are key to the best pressings
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Some amazing duets and a great lineup that includes Aaron Neville (v), Stephane Grappelli (violin), Dan Hicks (v, g), and so on. The jazz community missed this one.” [But the audiophile community loved it.]
  • Our old friend Bernie Grundman handled the mastering for Duets, back when he was still making good sounding records. Everything changed when he started working for Classic Records in the ’90s. Based on the scores we’ve played, the vast majority of his remastered pressings leave a lot to be desired. You can read more about them here.

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Steely Dan / Katy Lied – Our Favorite Dan Album of Them All

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Reviews and Commentaries for Katy Lied

  • A Katy Lied like you’ve never heard, with excellent Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it from start to finish
  • Our pick for the best Dan album of them all, a masterpiece of Jazzy Swing Pop that is sure to reward hundreds of plays in the decades to come
  • Take it from The Dan: “The sound created by musicians and singers is reproduced as faithfully as possible, and special care is taken to preserve the band-width and transient response of each performance.”
  • Special care may have been taken, but the DBX system put an end to any hope that the “transient response” would be preserved
  • For that, you will have to wait for next Steely Dan album to come out, The Royal Scam – it’s got transient response up the ying-yang
  • 5 stars: “Each song is given a glossy sheen, one that accentuates not only the stronger pop hooks, but also the precise technical skill of the professional musicians drafted to play the solos.”
  • This is a Must Own title from 1975, which, incidentally, turned out to be a great year for rock and pop music

The covers for these original Katy Lied pressings on ABC always have at least some edge, seam or ringwear. We will of course do our best to find you a cover with the fewest problems, but none of them will be perfect, or even all that close to it. It is by far the hardest Steely Dan album to find good covers for.

This copy has the all-important rock energy we look for, although rocking is not quite what Steely Dan are up to here. Cameron Crowe calls it “…absolutely impeccable swing-pop”, a four word description that gets to the heart of the music far better than any combination of adjectives and nouns containing the word “rock.” (more…)

Lynyrd Skynyrd – Second Helping

More Lynyrd Skynyrd

More Rock Classics

  • An original Songs Of The South pressing with two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides
  • Side two was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more space, richness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market
  • A tough nut to crack – most copies are in horrible shape, which is why so few have ever hit the site (this is the first to hit the site in twenty-seven months)
  • We lucked out with this one though – reasonably quiet surfaces and top quality sound all rolled up in one fabulous vintage vinyl LP
  • 5 stars: “… the group turned out a record that replicated all the strengths of the original, but was a little tighter and a little more professional… they were a great band, but they were indelible because that was married to great writing. And nowhere was that more evident than on Second Helping.”

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Crosby / Nash – Whistling Down The Wire

More of the Music of David Crosby and Graham Nash

  • You’ll find incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound throughout this vintage pressing – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • These sides were noticeably richer than practically all others we played, which generally tended to be lean and dry
  • We played a big pile of these, but finding the Tubey Magical, spacious, sweet analog sound we were after was not easy
  • Fortunately this copy showed us that it indeed was possible to get the clear, breathy vocals necessary to bring out the wonderful harmonies these two are so rightly famous for
  • If you’re a fan of hippie folk rock, this title from 1976 is surely a Must Own
  • The complete list of titles from 1976 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here

As a budding audiophile, I went out of my way to acquire any piece of equipment that could make these records from the ’70s (the decade of my formative music-buying years) sound better than the gear I was then using. It’s the challenging recordings by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, as well as scores of other pop and rock artists like them, that drove my pursuit of higher quality audio, starting all the way back in high school.

And here I am — here we are — still at it, fifty years later, because the music still sounds fresh and original, and the pressings that we find get better and better with each passing year.

That kind of progress is proof that we’re doing it right. It’s a good test for any audiophile. If you are actively and seriously pursuing this hobby, perhaps as many as nine out of ten non-audiophile pressings in your collection should sound better with each passing year. As your stereo improves, not to mention your critical listening skills, the shortcomings of some will be revealed, but for the most part, vintage pressings should sound better each time you play them with continual refinements and improvements to your system, room and cleaning techniques.

That’s what makes it fun to play old records: They just keep getting better.

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