Original pressing. EXCELLENT SOUND — big and lively! With Mitchell Froom producing and Tchad Blake engineering this is to be expected.
The best songs here are Turning Of The Tide and Waltzing For Dreamers, but the others are lovely too. (more…)
Paul Mauriat — you may remember him for his big hit “Love Is Blue” which hit Number One in 1968 — must have been a very busy man in 1967 when this album came out — he released six that year! I would bet that most of them do not sound very good — hell, side two of this album doesn’t even sound good — but side one sure does.
We gave it a sonic grade of A++ for the better sounding tracks on that side. It’s Super Hot all right, 3-D and Tubey Magical like you will not believe. If you have a big, rich, even lush-sounding system, this record is going to blow your mind!
Try tracks 2,3 and 5; talk about fun ’60s pop with great sound!
Side one A++
Side two No Grade, way too shrill and smeary (more…)
We played several copies of this album, and while it’s no demo disc by any means, this copy was far and away the best sounding of the group. We can’t quite bring ourselves to call it a Hot Stamper.
Technically of course it is — it’s a pressing that’s superior to all the others we’ve played — but as the recording itself has some serious shortcomings we’ll just call it a Pretty Good Stamper. (more…)
Some brilliant songs on this one: I Want You comes to mind, one of the best tracks Elvis ever laid down. This is not a pretty record — it’s lean, mean, rock and roll, if you’re into that sort of thing (which I am of course). (more…)
This is a Minty looking EMI Import Double LP. It’s a compilation with a single LP dedicated to each era of the band’s early history. As with any compilation some tracks sound better than others here but don’t let the German sourced tapes scare you. These sound like really high quality tapes, close to, if not the actual, master tapes.
The second LP features the most recognizable and probably best lineup (Mark II) the band ever had, with songs such as Black Knight, Speed King, Smoke on the Water and Highway star, to name but a few.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Elton John Available Now
This is an EXCELLENT sounding British DJM pressing of Elton’s Greatest Hits, with all the tubey magic that that implies. These are the real tapes, folks, pressed on that see-thru purple DJM vinyl.
The sound of course varies from track to track. ‘Your Song’ and ‘Saturday Night’ are GREAT here. The other tracks on side one are good but not like those two.
Side two has better sound overall than side one, with an OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD ‘Border Song.’
I love what Steve Hoffman did with this album, [unlikely we would find the sound of his reissue impressive now] but I haven’t played it in a long time and can’t say how it compares to this one.
Your Song
Daniel
Honky Cat
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting
Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going to Be a…)
Bennie and the Jets
Candle in the Wind
Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me
Border Song
Crocodile Rock
This is an Older Review.
Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we developed in the early 2000s and have since turned into a fine art.
We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the Sonic Grades and Vinyl Playgrades are listed separately.)
We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.
Currently, 99% (or more!) of the records we sell are cleaned, then auditioned under rigorously controlled conditions, up against a number of other pressings. We award them sonic grades, and then condition check them for surface noise.
As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which is why we currently have a highly trained staff of about ten. No individual or business without the aid of such a committed group could possibly dig as deep into the sound of records as we have, and it is unlikely that anyone besides us could ever come along to do the kind of work we do.
The term “Hot Stampers” gets thrown around a lot these days, but to us it means only one thing: a record that has been through the shootout process and found to be of exceptionally high quality.
The result of our labor is the hundreds of titles seen here, every one of which is unique and guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard or you get your money back.
Further Reading
This Super Hot Stamper (or better!) Living Stereo Shaded Dog pressing has SUPERB TUBEY MAGICAL Golden Age sound the likes of which you will not believe. (If you’ve bought some of our best Hot Stamper Living Stereo recordings then you will have no trouble believing it I’m sure.)
Side two displays some of the richest, most three-dimensional orchestral sound we have heard in quite some time. The fifth track is especially notable for a pizzicato arrangement that makes it a DEMO DISC track to beat them all. Plucked strings simply do not sound any better!
The legendary RCA engineer Lewis Layton deserves all the kudos here. The string tone is perfection on side two, Living Stereo Magic at its best! (more…)
This Mercury pressing is EXCELLENT ON BOTH SIDES, way better than the copies we played it against. It has a GIGANTIC soundfield — spacious and three-dimensional, deep and wide. The clarity is excellent and there’s a ton of energy. Those of you with tubes in your system are likely to get the most out of this music.
Many of you are likely to recognize The Liberty Bell on side two — it’s the Monty Python theme song! (more…)
The better copies such as this one had a healthy dose of the Tubey Magical richness found on the better analog recordings from the late ’60s and ’70s (1970 in this case). One of Frank Zappa’s more interesting releases, with a combination of groundbreaking live and studio material, like Chunga’s and Weasils. (more…)
GREAT SOUND ON BOTH SIDES! We’ve been trying our hardest to find a Jobim record with Hot sound, because we love the music so much. It’s taken some time, but we’ve finally found a few magnificent copies of Tide — and this one’s the champ!
Viva Brazil!
Jobim is the master of samba music, and this is one of his best albums! Normally I don’t like flute jazz. The L.A. Four bores me to tears. Herbie Mann has one good album, Live at the Villiage Vanguard (with two string bass players, the only record of its kind that I know of), but the flute works great for Brazilian music, because the music itself is so light and airy, it just fits. You don’t see us recommending too many CDs around here, but the 3-disc Man From Ipanema set is WONDERFUL. (For those looking for Brazilian music with more of a rock influence, we definitely recommend starting with Sergio Mendes’ early A&M albums. If you want to go a bit further, search for some Gilberto Gil or Caetano Veloso.)
One Tough Ticket
It’s beyond difficult to find great sounding copies of Jobim’s albums, but we keep on picking up his records because we love to play them so much. Many of the pressings we bring back are weak sonically, too noisy, or both. Recently, we threw a copy of Tide on the table just for fun, and were thrilled when we heard some promising sound. We hit the shelves and the stores determined to pull together enough copies with the right stampers to make this shootout happen. (more…)