Mercury (Non-Orchestral)

Thin Lizzy – Jailbreak

More British Blues Rock

  • Both sides of this vintage copy (one of only a handful to hit the site in close to four years) were giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades
  • This copy has real depth to the soundfield, full-bodied, present vocals, plenty of bottom end weight, and lovely analog warmth
  • 5 stars: “. . . this myth-making is married to an exceptional eye for details; when the boys are back in town, they don’t just come back to a local bar, they’re down at Dino’s, picking up girls and driving the old men crazy. This gives his lovingly florid songs, crammed with specifics and overflowing with life, a universality that’s hammered home by the vicious, primal, and precise attack of the band.”

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Rush / 2112

More Rush

More Prog Rock

  • A seriously good copy of the band’s 1976 release with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on both sides – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • We’ve collected a bunch of these over the years – it took ages to find a few outstanding pressings that delivered the kind of sound we were looking for, and here is an awfully good one
  • Most Rush records sound godawful, but this one actually has the potential to be amazing – as long as you’ve got the right copy
  • 4 1/2 stars: “[2112] proved to be their much sought-after commercial breakthrough and remains one of their most popular albums.”

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Rush – Signals

More Rush

  • Both sides of this vintage copy were giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for, earning superb Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Huge synths and prodigious bass have this side two rockin’ like you will not believe, and side one is not far behind in both those areas
  • Individual notes aren’t smeared, they have body and attack, and there’s no shortage of energy to the complex playing (particularly on side two)
  • 4 stars: “Rush didn’t forget how to rock out — ‘The Analog Kid’ and ‘Digital Man’ were some of their most up-tempo compositions in years.”

If you’re a fan of the band, you know what these guys are about — big-time technical prowess, dizzying effects, powerful solos and so forth. Many copies we played didn’t let you hear just how hard these guys are shredding… and then what’s the point? If the musicianship gets lost in the mastering, why bother with this band at all? We were looking for copies that didn’t let us forget who we were listening to.

Only the better pressings like this one give you the sound this music demands: rich and full-bodied with serious punch to the bottom end; an open, extended top; size and space, wonderful clarity and transparency; and most importantly of all, ENERGY. The life of the music is the number one quality we look for in rock, prog rock, art rock, folk rock and every other kind of rock we play. That will never change.

The drums and cymbals sound just right, which is essential on a Rush album — as just about everyone knows, Neil Peart’s drumming is a major highlight of anything the band does. (more…)

Are All the Masterdisk Pressings of 2112 Good Sounding?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Rush Available Now

Even though many of the original pressings are mastered at Masterdisk (by HW, BK and GK), some of the reissues from 1979 on the “skyscraper” label are too.

But none of the later pressings we played sounded very good. Audiophiles looking for top quality sound should stick to the domestic originals.

What We’re Listening For On 2112

  • Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
  • Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
  • The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
  • Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
  • Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
  • Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
  • Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

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Def Leppard – Pyromania

More Rock Classics

Hot Stamper Albums with Huge Choruses

  • Pyromania is back on the site after a fifteen month hiatus, here with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish
  • These are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “huge and rich and jumping out of the speakers”…”rich and punchy and relaxed”…”breathy vox”…”heavy, full-bodied bass”…”silky and present”…”full extended from top to bottom”
  • Finding a copy of this album that gets big and loud but stays rich and clear doing it is no small feat, but for all you fans of Glam and Metal, here’s one that pulls it off
  • 5 stars: “While Def Leppard had obviously wanted to write big-sounding anthems on their previous records, Pyromania was where the band’s vision coalesced and gelled into something more. Robert John “Mutt” Lange‘s buffed-to-a-sheen production – polished drum and guitar sounds, multi-tracked layers of vocal harmonies, a general sanding of any and all musical rough edges, and a perfectionistic attention to detail – set the style for much of the melodic hard rock that followed.”

Three distinctive qualities of vintage analog recordings — richness, sweetness and freedom from artificiality — are most clearly heard on a Big Production Rock Record like Pyromania in the loudest, densest, most climactic choruses of the songs.

We set the playback volume so that the loudest parts of the record are as huge and powerful as they can possibly become without crossing the line into distortion or congestion. On some records, Dark Side of the Moon comes instantly to mind, the guitar solos on Money are the loudest thing on the record.

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10cc / Sheet Music – Their Brilliant Second Album

More 10cc

More Art Rock

  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) sides, we guarantee you’ve never 10cc’s pop masterpiece sound remotely as good as it does on this original UK import copy
  • Rich, full-bodied, with sound that just jumps out of the speakers, this is a truly amazing Demo Disc on the order of Crime of the Century or Dark Side of the Moon
  • If you don’t know 10cc’s music well, this is probably the best place to start – you just might find yourself as big a fan as we are here at Better Records
  • Bassist Graham Gouldman calls it “the definitive 10cc album” and he’s probably right about that (although we love The Original Soundtrack that came out a year later)
  • “Three hit singles spun off the record, and most of the other tracks could have followed suit; it says much for Sheet Music’s staying power that, no matter how many times the album is reissued, it has never lost its power to delight, excite, and set alight a lousy day.”
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” with an accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Sheet Music is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but might benefit from getting to know better

Sheet Music is, in our opinion, the most consistently well-written and produced 10cc album, with every track performed with heart and recorded with exquisite attention to detail. Each song flows into the next and there is simply not a dull moment to be found. Sheet Music is arguably the best record they ever made, although I’m such a fan, I think they’re all great. (The first five albums anyway.)

Eric Stewart, Studio Wizard

Those of you who have gotten a kick out of our Deceptive Bends or The Original Soundtrack albums are obviously going to find a lot to like here. If you are not familiar with this recording, you will find few rock records as dynamic, immediate, punchy and as full of ambience and openness as this. Eric Stewart was and is a studio wizard and he worked his magic big time on this album.

This is the kind of recording where the sound really JUMPS out of the speakers. It reminds me of Crime Of The Century that way. It’s also one of the most DYNAMIC popular recordings I know of. If this album doesn’t wake up your system, it’s time to scrap it and get a new one.

One of the many elements that combine to push this album well beyond the bounds of most popular recordings is the thought and care that went into the soundstaging. Listen to the stereo separation on any track — the sound of each instrument has been carefully considered within the context of the arrangement and placed in a specific location within the sound field for a reason, usually for MAXIMUM EFFECT.

That’s why we LOVE 10cc. Their recordings from this era are an audiophile dream come true. Compare that to some of the stereo mixes for the Beatles albums, where an instrument or vocal seems to panned to one channel or another not because it SHOULD be, but because it COULD be. With 10cc those hard-left, hard-right effects make the songs JUMP. They call attention to themselves precisely because the band is having a blast in the studio, showing off all the tricks they have up their sleeves. They want you to get as big a kick out of hearing them as they did conjuring them up.

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Tears For Fears – The Seeds Of Love

More of the Music of Tears For Fears

  • Boasting two incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sides, this vintage import copy of the band’s Pop Masterpiece is close to the BEST we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • We guarantee the sound is dramatically bigger, richer, fuller, and livelier than any pressing you have ever heard, and on this record that is saying a LOT
  • A tough record to find in audiophile playing condition – copies with vinyl this quiet and with no audible marks were neither easy nor cheap to source from overseas
  • The band’s Magnum Opus, a Colossal Production to rival the greatest Prog, Psych and Art Rock recordings of all time (Whew!)
  • 4 stars: “Thanks to the duo’s uncompromising stubbornness, expansive creative vision, and Dave Bascombe’s final production, The Seeds of Love has dated better than either of its predecessors and is inarguably Tears for Fears’ masterpiece.”

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Rush – Moving Pictures

More Rush

More Prog Rock

  • A vintage Mercury pressing with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Guaranteed to be a huge improvement over anything you’ve heard, this copy is big, punchy, and full-bodied with excellent presence
  • It’s the rare copy that’s this lively, solid and rich… drop the needle on any track and you’ll see what we mean
  • 5 stars: “…Moving Pictures is widely regarded as Rush’s best album and lauded as one of the greatest prog/hard rock outings ever. The trio honed the new wave-meets-hard rock approach from 1980’s Permanent Waves to perfection.”

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Bon Jovi – Slippery When Wet

  • A killer copy of the band’s smash-hit album, with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • 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 mediocre pressing is currently on the market
  • “You Give Love A Bad Name,” “Livin’ On A Prayer,” “Wanted Dead Or Alive” – they’re all here with the HUGE Rock Sound missing from the average copy
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Slippery When Wet wasn’t just a breakthrough album for Bon Jovi; it was a breakthrough for hair metal in general, marking the point where the genre officially entered the mainstream… the best-selling album of 1987, beating out contenders like Appetite for Destruction, The Joshua Tree, and Michael Jackson’s Bad.”

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Rod Stewart – Never A Dull Moment

More Rod Stewart

More British Blues Rock

  • You’ll find excellent Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides of this early Mercury pressing of Stewart’s fourth solo album
  • Extremely well-recorded, full of great songs – Rod Stewart was on top of the world when he followed up the brilliant Every Picture Tells A Story with this album in 1972
  • The music comes alive on this vintage domestic pressing (the only ones that have the potential for Hot Stampers in our experience), assuming you have your volume up good and loud
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 5 stars in AMG, and simply “… a masterful record … He never got quite this good ever again.”

Listen to the percussion on Angel — you can really hear all the transients and the sound of the drum skins. The meaty guitar in the left channel sounds mind-blowingly good. The bass is deep and well-defined, and the sound of the drums is awesome in every way. Who has a better drum sound than Rod Stewart on his two best albums?

Along with Every Picture Tells A Story this is one of the two Must Own Rod Stewart albums. Practically every song here is a classic, with not a dog in the bunch. Rod Stewart did what few artists have ever managed to do: release his two best albums back to back.

And this Hot Stamper, not to overstate the obvious, is clearly the way to hear it. (more…)