Reprise/Bizarre – Reviews and Commentaries

The Grand Wazoo – Smear, Sibilance and Tubey Magical Keyboards to Die For

More of the Music of Frank Zappa

The Tubey Magic found on the title cut is really something to hear.

The Grand Wazoo now gets my vote as the best sounding record Zappa ever made (along with Absolutely Free).

Biggest Problems

Smear on the horn transients are always a problem on this album (and Zappa’s previous big band album, Waka/Jawaka) .

After that we would say a lack of top end is the other most common shortcoming we hear. To find a copy that’s not dull and smeary is no mean feat.

The vocals on For Calvin (And His Next Two Hitch-Hikers) are usually slightly spitty. The best copies keep the spit under control. (more…)

Every Label Made Bad Sounding Records – Reprise Released this Fleetwood Mac Album in 1969

More of the Music of Fleetwood Mac

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Fleetwood Mac

We’ve never heard this album sound good, on domestic or import vinyl. If you know of a good sounding pressing, drop us a line, would love to know what it is.

Some audiophile reviewers prefer to review only the records that sound good to them and ignore the rest. We think this does the audiophile community a disservice.

Like Consumer Reports, we like to test things. They test toasters, we test records. We put them through their paces and let the chips fall where they may.

They want to find out if the things they are testing offer the consumer good quality and value.

We want to find out if the records we are testing offer the audiophile good sound and music.

It takes a lot of people and a healthy budget to carry out large numbers of these kinds of tests.

No other record dealers, record reviewers or record collectors could possibly have auditioned more than a small fraction of the records that we’ve played. We’ve been looking for the best sounding records for a very long time. Now, with a staff of ten or more, we can buy, clean and play records in numbers that are unimaginable for any single person to attempt.

That puts us in a unique position to help audiophiles looking for the highest quality pressings.

Yes, we have the resources, the staff and the budget. More importantly, we came up with a different approach.

We’ve learned through thousands and thousands of hours of experimentation that there is no reliable way to predict which pressings will have the best sound for any given album.

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Our “Hard Work” in 2005 Continues to Pay Dividends

More of the Music of Neil Young

Below you will find our first Hot Stamper listing for Neil’s masterpiece from 1970.

This is an album we admit to being obsessed with. We love the album and we hope you do too. If you have some time on your hands — maybe a bit too much time on your hands — please feel free to check out our commentaries.

Folks, your Hot Stamper collection is just not complete without a knockout copy of After The Gold Rush; that’s why we’ve named it a Better Records All Time Top 100 title. We built our reputation on finding records that sound like this, because who else can find a copy of this album that delivers so much magic? When you drop the needle on any track on side two, you’ll know exactly why we are able to charge these kind of prices for a record like this — because on the right system, it’ll sound like a million bucks! (more…)

Decade – Passable at the Right Price

More of the Music of Neil Young

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Neil Young

This Reprise 3 LP set can basically be broken down into thirds: about a third of the material sounds really dull. The next third sounds surprisingly good and the last third is decent, like a typical Neil Young record.

People looking for an introduction to Mr. Young can’t go wrong with this set. It’s a wide ranging overview of his career, from the CSNY period, through all the solo records up to Zuma.

If you see one for cheap and don’t particularly care if the sound is mediocre, pick it up, otherwise pass.

Lowell Frank Is The Man

Credit engineer Lowell Frank for correctly capturing the sound of every instrument here: the guitars, piano, strings, drums, percussion instruments — everything has the natural timbre of the real thing.

One of the best sounding Frank Sinatra records is his as well: September Of My Years, from 1965, also on Reprise and only good on the original label and only good in stereo, like this title.

There must be plenty of Tubey Magic on the tapes. It’s key to the best pressings. Without it, you might as well be playing a CD.

And let’s not forget the amazing (when you find a good one) Sinatra At The Sands, a record that blew my mind the first time I heard it back in the early 70s.

Side One

Moonlight Becomes You
Moon Song
Moonlight Serenade
Reaching For The Moon
I Wished On The Moon

Side Two

Oh, You Crazy Moon
The Moon Got In My Eyes
Moonlight Mood
Moon Love
The Moon Was Yellow (And The Night Was Young)

AMG  Review

Driven by a set of lush, sparkling Nelson Riddle arrangements, Moonlight Sinatra is a low-key, charming collection. Although the basic concept is somewhat nebulous — all of the songs have the word “moon” in the title — Riddle wrote a series of charts that suggest a warm, lovely evening with a variety of tones and moods, from light Latin rhythms to sweet ballads… An enjoyable, romantic listen.

On Comes a Time, the Female Harmony Vocals Are Key

More of the Music of Neil Young

More Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Neil Young

There’s one very special quality that this recording has that few of Neil’s others do: lovely female vocal harmonies. Nicolette Larson is all over this record, adding an extra layer of mellow magic to the proceedings. Maybe it’s the woman’s touch that makes this album so relaxed and heartfelt. Neil is completely and utterly in the zone here, so whatever put him in that special state of mind is fine by me. (To quote Mr. Young himself, A Man Needs a Maid.)

As for the music, all of side one is wonderful from start to finish; I wouldn’t change a note. Side two is not as strong musically, but in our experience the sound can be every bit as good if you’ve got the right pressing.

But the right pressing is an elusive commodity. So many copies we played just sounded kind of flat, with dull guitars and hard vocals. Some made Neil sound like he was singing from the back of the studio. Still, others noticeably lacked leading edge transients of any kind, blunting the attack of the various stringed instruments. Believe me, a Neil Young record with dull guitars is not worth playing, owning or writing about. You won’t find one on our site.

The All Music Guide is right on the money with their four and a half star assessment. We also wholeheartedly agree that this is the True Successor to Harvest, and would add that it’s the only Neil Young album to merit that distinction. To be blunt about it, Harvest Moon is no Comes a Time.

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Aqualung – Our Four Plus Shootout Winner from 2013

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

We award this copy’s side two our very special Four Plus A++++ grade, which is strictly limited to pressings (really, individual sides of pressings) that take a given recording to a level we’ve never experienced before and had no idea could even exist. We estimate that about one per cent of the Hot Stamper pressings we come across in our shootouts earn this grade.

  • Our lengthy commentary entitled Outliers & Out-of-This-World Sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how to go about finding them.
  • Nowadays we place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that, out of nowhere, reveal to us aspects of sound that completely change our understanding of these familiar recordings.
  • When this pressing (or pressings) landed on our turntable, we found ourselves asking “Who knew?“ Perhaps an even better question would have been “How high is up?”

This original Reprise Aqualung has a STUNNING Beyond WHITE HOT side two that just may have the best sound we’ve ever heard for the album. It will absolutely MURDER the British Originals and make mincemeat out of any reissue! Folks, for hard rockin’, Tubey Magical, psychedelic early ’70s analog, it just does not get any better. Here’s a knockout copy that will bring the power of Aqualung to life right in your very own listening room.

Keep in mind that most copies of Aqualung do almost nothing right. In fact, in one of our recent shootouts we didn’t find a single copy worthy of a three-plus grade. This one was so impressive, we felt that A+++ was not enough. No, Three Pluses won’t do for an Aqualung that sounds this good.

We’re calling it A++++. It’s some of the best Jethro Tull sound to grace our listening room in a very, very long time. We’ve missed our old friend and we’re glad to see he’s back and better than ever. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “What the #$%@ did you guys do to make the record sound so good?”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Frank Zappa Available Now

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

Hey Tom,  

I received your “Hot Stamper” rated version of Frank Zappa’s Waka Jawaka Hot Rats yesterday and was able to listen to it last night. I’m not sure if you know what the initials WTF stand for. So with apologies, I will spell it out. What the #$%@ did you guys do to make the record sound so good? Did you really just listen to record after record until you came across this one? Are there tricks? Did you spray some magic fairy dust on it? Is it gonna wear off?  

I’ve been listening to my personal copy intently for the last few days and I really doubted if your copy could sound very much better than mine. Because my copy sounds damn good. But the copy you sent me rated “Hot Stamper” was off the charts. it wasn’t just in the clarity of the detail of the instruments and the soundstage. It’s so wonderful to listen to. What a treat! Is it worth 10X more than a decent copy of it commonly available? Yes. Absolutely. At least to me. In the same way that my Clear Audio turntable is worth the 10X times more than it cost me for the Rega Planar 2 I bought used 20 years ago. The listening experience is transformed into something much more realistic than ever before. I’m sure this record will be one of my very favorites to listen to for the next 20 years! (more…)

Spencer & Kirwan, Lost Guitar Heroes

More of the Music of Fleetwood Mac

Kiln House is one of the all-time great Fleetwood Mac albums. It’s the first album they recorded after Peter Green left. With Green gone Jeremy Spencer’s influence came to the fore. Apparently he was quite a fan of Buddy Holly. His songs are excellent: straightforward and unerringly melodic.

The co-leader for Kiln House is Danny Kirwan, and he rocks the hell out of this album. Three of the best songs Fleetwood Mac ever did, regardless of incarnation, are here: Tell Me All The Things You Do, Station Man and Jewel Eyed Judy, all written by Kirwan (with the help of others). His guitar work on these three songs is blistering.

Any Fleetwood Mac greatest hits collection would be a joke without these tracks. Of course they are consistently missing from all such compilations, at least the ones with which I am familiar. The sad fact is that few people miss them because few people have ever heard them.

The closest thing I can think of to the kind of music the new Mac plays is moody rock of the middle-period Beatles. Kiln House is similar to Beatles ’65 in its dual concerns with vintage rock ‘n’ roll and muted, romantic pieces. Jeremy Spencer took care of the former area, while Danny Kirwan extended the style best represented by McCartney’s “I’ll Follow the Sun.”

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