More of the music of Johann Strauss (1804-1849)
Hot Stamper Mercury Pressings Available Now
I used to like this record back in the old days. Picked them up whenever I saw them, usually for ten bucks or less. It’s not exactly HiFi a la Espanola.
Now when we play this Mercury, it doesn’t sound so good. We traded what we had in stock back in to stores or gave them away as freebies to our good customers.
A lot of records that I used to like because they were cleaner and brighter — later Red Seal Living Stereos, some OJC jazz, some reissues of rock — sounded much better when my system was darker and less revealing.
Side one of this copy has steely strings, the kiss of death on this kind of music.
Side two is passable, a low grade Hot Stamper. If you see this album for five bucks, pick it up and give it a listen. More than that and you should probably pass.
Many Mercury records simply do not sound good, and this appears to be one of them. The sound is shrill, and that is just not acceptable on today’s highly-tweaked stereos.
Some of the early Mercs seem better suited to the old school audio systems of the 60s and 70s than the modern systems of today.
Some of these records used to sound good on those older systems, and I should know. I had an Old School stereo and some of the records I used to think sounded good back in the day don’t sound too good to me anymore.
For a more complete list of those records, click here.
How Did We Figure All of This Out?
There are more than 2000 Hot Stamper reviews on this blog. Do you know how we learned so much about so many records?
Simple. We ran thousands and thousands of record experiments under carefully controlled conditions, and we continue to run scores of them week in and week out to this very day.