Labels We Love

Hampton Hawes – All Night Session, Vol. 1

More Hampton Hawes

More Contemporary Label Jazz Recordings

  • A KILLER vintage Contemporary Stereo LP boasting top quality sound from the first note to the last
  • Tubey Magic, richness, sweetness, dead-on timbres from top to bottom – this is a textbook example of Contemporary sound at its best, thanks to the engineering brilliance of Roy DuNann and producer Lester Keonig
  • This copy is simply bigger, more transparent, less distorted, more three-dimensional and more REAL than all of what we played – it puts you front and center in the studio with the players
  • The first of three albums of material recorded by Hawes, guitarist Jim Hall, bassist Red Mitchell, and drummer Eldridge “Bruz” Freeman on the night of November 12 and into the morning of November 13, 1956
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The interplay between these four men is marvelous, particularly when heard [on] a sound system allowing for a full appreciation of the stereophonic balance achieved by the recording engineers.”
  • “It’s hard to put into words how good it feels to play jazz when it’s really swinging…I’ve reached a point where the music fills you up so much emotionally that you feel like shouting hallelujah — like people do in church when they’re converted to God. That’s the way I was feeling the night we recorded All Night Session!” – Hampton Hawes

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Observations on RCA’s Chamber Recordings

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Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now

What do the best copies of this album sound like?

The sound is RICH and TRANSPARENT, and unlike a lot of RCA’s chamber recordings, not dry.

The tonality is also Right On The Money.

The performers are present and the transients of their instruments are not in the least bit smeared.

A case of good tube mastering?

On the best pressings, absolutely.

(More on the subject of tubes in audio here.)

Classical Shootouts

RCA is justly famous for its chamber recordings, which tend to be somewhat rare for some reason. Let’s be honest: we did not conduct this shootout with a dozen copies of the album. (It would take us at least twenty-five years to find that many clean pressings.)

What we had were quite a few other Heifetz RCA chamber recordings, as well as some favorites by the Quartetto Italiano and I Musici that we are very fond of and know well.

After thirty two years in business selling vintage vinyl, by now we’ve played scores if not hundreds of good violin recordings. We have no problem recognizing good violin sound (as well as correct violin tone, not exactly the same thing) when we hear it. In the past our top Hot Stamper classical pressings would go directly to our best customers, customers who want classical recordings that actually sound good. not just the kind of Golden Age Recordings that are supposed to. Now that we are able to do classical shootouts on a regular basis, we hope to have enough superb sounding classical recordings for all of our audiophile customers.

I’ve commented often over the years of the benefits to be gained from listening to classical music regularly. Once a week is a good rule of thumb I would say. I love rock and roll, jazz and all the rest of it, but there is something about classical music that restores a certain balance in your musical life that can’t be accomplished by other means. It grounds your listening experience to something perhaps less immediately gratifying but deeper and more enriching over time. Once habituated, the effect on one’s mood is not hard to recognize.

Orchestral Music Is Hard to Record, Master and Press, Apparently

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Genesis – Abacab

More Genesis

More Phil Collins

  • Abacab is back with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them throughout this vintage UK pressing – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • Forget the thin sounding domestic pressings – these British sides are rich, full-bodied and spacious with real bottom end weight
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Abacab was where this new incarnation of the band came into its own. Working with producer Hugh Padgham, the group escalated the innovations of Duke, increasing the pop hooks, working them seamlessly into the artiest rock here… as bright, bold, and jagged as the modernist artwork on the cover.”

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Love / Self-Titled – Killer Sound from Bruce Botnick

More Love

More Psych Rock

  • An original Gold Label stereo pressing of Love’s debut album with excellent Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout
  • Exceptionally quiet vinyl doesn’t begin to do this one justice – I simply cannot remember a time that a copy with sound this good played this quietly, and we have been doing shootouts for Love for 15 years or more
  • A classic from 1966, a combination of proto-punk and psychedelia featuring “My Little Red Book,” “Hey Joe” and more
  • The first Love album is without a doubt the punchiest, liveliest, most POWERFUL recording in the Love catalog
  • Engineered by none other than Bruce Botnick, here is the kind of massive bottom end weight and energy that we like to call WHOMP
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Love’s debut is both their hardest-rocking early album and their most Byrds-influenced…”

Some of you may not know this music, but it’s a true Must Own Psychedelic Gem from the ’60s, a record no rock collection should be without, along with other groundbreaking albums from the ’60s such as Surrealistic Pillow, The Doors’ debut, the first Spirit album and too many others to list.

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The Vintage Vinyl Sound You Won’t Find on Modern LPs and CDs

Classical Living Stereo Titles Available Now

Here is the kind of record that will make you want to take all your heavy vinyl classical pressings and put them in storage. 

It’s also proof positive that Decca’s choice of Kingsway Hall as a recording venue was a good one. The full range of colors of the orchestra are here presented with remarkable clarity, dynamic contrast, spaciousness, sweetness, and timbral accuracy.

If you want to demonstrate to a novice listener why modern recordings are so consistently unsatisfactory, all you have to do is play this record for them. In our experience, no CD and no Heavy Vinyl pressing ever sounded like this.

The richness of the strings, a signature sound for Decca in the Fifties and Sixties, is on display here for fans of the classical Golden Age. It’s practically impossible to hear that kind of string sound on any recording made in the last thirty years (and this of course includes practically everything pressed on Heavy Vinyl).

It may be a lost art, but as long as we have these wonderful vintage pressings to play, it’s an art that is not lost on us. I don’t think the Decca engineers could have recorded this music much better than they dhave here — it has all the orchestral magic one could ask for, as well as the clarity and presence that are missing from so many other vintage Golden Age records.

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Borodin / Symphony No. 2 / Tchaikovsky / Francesca Da Rimini / Varviso

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Imports on Decca & London

More Classical ‘Sleeper” Recordings We’ve Discovered with Demo Disc Sound

This London Whiteback pressing (CS 6578) has SHOCKINGLY GOOD sound; in many ways it deserves to be called a Demo Disc. It has at least one quality that one virtually never hears on an audiophile reissue: a smooth, natural top end. This record only sounds correct and “real” at louder volumes, in the same way that a live orchestra often sounds a bit lifeless in the quiet passages, only to get exciting, big and powerful when the score calls for it. For this to happen on record you need real dynamics and tonal neutrality.

We have not heard many audiophile reissues pull these things off either, just two of the reasons we no longer carry them.

And you can find all the other reasons on the site easily enough. We can’t stop talking about how disappointing Heavy Vinyl sounds to us now.

We graded both sides AT LEAST A++, a bit vague we admit; we just don’t have enough copies to know if the sound could get much better.

We played a good many vintage classical LPs that day and this was clearly one of the best sounding, so we feel this grade should be accurate, perhaps even conservative.

Credit for the sound must go to the Decca engineers, of course, but also to the hall that the L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande played in, where so many of the great Ansermet recordings were made. This recording is from 1968. Ansermet died in 1969. One imagines that he was perhaps not able to conduct at this stage of his life and turned his wonderful orchestra and hall over to Varviso, a man better known for conducting operas at the time.

Side One – Borodin

At Least A++, with the kind of Golden Age sound that has rarely if ever been realized in the modern era. Big, wide and deep, with smooth, rich orchestral sound, these are the kind of records that let you forget the sound and just enjoy the music. The performance is taken a brisk pace, rarely a bad thing.

More reviews and commentaries for recordings of the Second Symphony.

Side Two – Tchaicovsky

At Least A++, and a lovely work that has never made it to the site in Hot Stamper form before, hint hint.

Rich, with deep bass, big stage, huge space and so 3-D, this is what we love about vintage recordings. And a great performance as well.

Letter of the Week – “I was dumbfounded when the horn blast opening the title track practically leapt out of my speakers.”

More of the Music of The Beatles

More Customer Letters that Extoll the Virtues of Our Beatles LPs

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

Hey Tom,   

Just wanted to say I was blown away by this copy. Having lived with the MoFi pressing since the box set first came out in the 80’s I was dumbfounded when the horn blast opening the title track practically leapt out of my speakers. I am so impressed that I just placed an order for 3 more Hot Stamper Beatles vinyl. It’s time to replace the MoFi.

Honrado L.

Thanks for writing, Honrado.

You’re not the only person who wants to get rid of their half-speed mastered records after playing a Beatles pressing that is mastered in real time and pressed properly.

And, if you are still buying modern pressings that are not half-speed mastered, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl too.

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Tom Petty – Full Moon Fever

More Tom Petty

  • Full Moon Fever returns to the site on this original UK pressing that boasts a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple (A+++) side two mated to an excellent Double Plus (A++) side one
  • Big, full-bodied, clean, clear and spacious with a huge bottom end and tons of rock energy
  • Forget the dry, flat domestic LPs – these UK pressings are the only ones with the Tubey Magical richness the music needs
  • 4 1/2 stars: “.…the real reason Full Moon Fever became Petty’s biggest hit is that it boasted a selection of songs that rivaled Damn the Torpedoes. Full Moon Fever didn’t have a weak track… [it] might have been meant as an off-the-cuff detour, but it turned into a minor masterpiece.”

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Passion Flower Is Better Music with Better Sound than For Duke

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pablo Recordings Available Now

This is one of the all time great Pablo sleepers.

Why is no one else writing about records like these? The music is wonderful and the sound is top drawer on the best copies. If you’ve tried and failed with other Pablo Zoot Sims records, fear not: this title is one of the best we have ever played, musically and sonically.

The ensemble is huge, probably at least a dozen pieces at any given time, and all that energy is captured on the best copies with tremendous engineering skill. The lively arrangements are by none other than Benny Carter, a man who knows his jazz. His career started in the ’20s(!) and lasted into this century if you can believe it. I consider myself fortunate to have seen him play locally when he was more than 90 years old. He stlll had it, kind of.

What to Listen For

Clarity and transients.

Thickness and fatness were common problems with Passion Flower — many copies were overly rich and somewhat opaque. It’s not necessarily a bad sound, but it becomes more and more irritating as you find yourself struggling to hear into the musical space of the studio. Smear is a problem too; many copies were lacking the transient information of the best.

In a nutshell, our Hot Stamper pressings are the most transparent copies that are tonally correct, with the least amount of smear.

Better Sound than a Direct Disc?

Musically Passion Flower is everything that For Duke isn’t, and although it may not be a Direct to Disc recording, it sure sounds better to these ears than that pricey TAS List Super Disc. The insufferably dead room For Duke was recorded in has forever ruined the album for me. I can’t stand that sound (which helps explain our aversion to Heavy Vinyl around these parts — the sound of the new remasters is consistently lacking in space, ambience and three-dimensionality).

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Steppenwolf – Self-Titled

More Steppenwolf

More Debut Albums of Interest

  • An outstanding copy of Steppenwolf’s debut with Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout – we guarantee you have never heard these songs sound remotely as good as they do here (or your money back)
  • Rich, clear and dynamic, this copy has the bass these rockers need – this is undeniably the right sound for this bluesy, hard-chargin’ music
  • Includes killer hits “Born To Be Wild” and “The Pusher,” both featured in the 1969 movie Easy Rider
  • 4 stars: “…a surprisingly strong debut album from a tight hard rock outfit… The playing is about as loud and powerful as anything being put out by a major record label in 1968…”
  • If you’re a fan of the band, this vintage pressing of their 1968 classic belongs in your collection
  • The complete list of titles from 1968 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.
  • And it appears to be the case that we will never tire of linking to this guy who liked one of the worst sounding audiophile records we have ever played, made by probably the worst audiophile label of all time, Analogue Productions

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