Pressings with Excellent Sound Quality

Jim Croce – You Don’t Mess Around With Jim

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  • This early pressing boasts outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish – the ’70s ABC vinyl is also about as reasonably quiet as we can find it
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more space, richness, presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard or you get your money back – it’s as simple as that
  • “Croce’s debut ABC album was also his commercial breakthrough, topping the charts for five weeks, largely due to the comic, up-tempo title tune, a story song about competing pool hustlers, although Croce also reached the Top 20 with the change-of-pace ballad ‘Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)’.”

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Charlie Byrd – Brazilian Byrd

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More Bossa Nova

  • This vintage Red Label pressing was doing pretty much everything right, with both sides earning superb Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them
  • Big, balanced, lively and musical, this copy had some of the better sound we heard in our most recent shootout (particularly on side one)
  • The right 360 Label pressings are going to win the shootouts, but the best of the Red Label pressings can still beat the pants off anything pressed after 1970, which is roughly when this copy was mastered
  • Other titles in which the early pressings have the potential to be the best sounding can be found here
  • 4 stars: “Acoustic guitarist Charlie Byrd always had a strong affinity for Brazilian jazz, and he sticks exclusively to Antonio Carlos Jobim songs (including ‘Só Danço Samba,’ ‘Corcovado,’ ‘Dindi,’ and ‘The Girl from Ipanema’) during this tasteful and melodic effort. Truly beautiful music.”

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Grand Funk – We’re An American Band

More Grand Funk

More Rock Classics

  • A stunning pressing with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from first note to the last – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • One of the best copies to hit the site in years, with sides that are full-bodied, lively and present, with a solid bottom end
  • More important, here is all the rock and roll energy that would simply be missing in action on any reissue made these days
  • It’s tough to find good Grand Funk sound on audiophile quality playing surfaces, but these sides did the trick
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Sonically, the record was sharp and detailed and the band’s playing was far tighter and more accomplished… The album’s title song, an autobiographical account of life on the road written and sung by Brewer, was released in advance of the album and became a gold-selling number one hit, Grand Funk’s first really successful single.”
  • If you’re a fan of the band, this title from 1973 is clearly one of their best, and unquestionably one of their best sounding

If you don’t already know, take our word for it: not many copies of this record will have much in the way of good sound. Grand Funk was not a band marketed to audiophiles. Their recordings tend to be crude and compressed, more radio-friendly than home-stereo-friendly.

This copy is a BIG step up from every other that we played. You’ll have a very hard time finding another one with two sides as good as this.

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Tchaikovsky / Violin Concerto / Heifetz / Reiner

More of the music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893)

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin

  • An outstanding pressing of Heifetz’s amazing 1958 recording for RCA in glorious Living Stereo sound
  • A superb pressing, with lovely richness, warmth, and real immediacy throughout – the overall sound is rich, sweet and Tubey Magical
  • Heifetz is a fiery player – this pressing will allow you to hear the subtleties of his bowing in a coherent, natural and realistic way
  • The texture and harmonic overtones of the strings are near perfection – as we listened we became completely immersed in the music, transfixed by the remarkable virtuosity Heifetz brings to this difficult and demanding work
  • There are about 100 orchestral recordings that offer the discriminating audiophile pressings with the Best Performances and Top Quality Sound. This record has earned a place on that list.

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Bryan Ferry – Let’s Stick Together

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More Roxy Music

  • For material and sound I consider this to be the best of Bryan Ferry’s solo albums – it’s a blast from start to finish
  • The energy, presence, bass, and dynamic power (love that horn section!) place it well above his other side projects
  • 4 Stars: “The title track itself scored Ferry a deserved British hit single, with great sax work from Chris Mercer and Mel Collins and a driving, full band performance. Ferry’s delivery is one of his best, right down to the yelps, and the whole thing chugs with post-glam power.”
  • If you’re a Roxy fan, this title from 1976 is surely a Must Own
  • The complete list of titles from 1976 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here
  • 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,” but with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Bryan Ferry’s third solo album is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but should get to know better.

As for material, he covers some early Roxy songs (brilliantly I might add); Beatles and Everly Bros. tunes; and even old R&B tracks like ‘Shame, Shame, Shame.’ Every song on this album is good, and I don’t think that can be said for any of his other solo projects. Five stars in my book.

Let’s Stick Together checks off some important boxes for us here at Better Records:

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Electric Light Orchestra – Out Of The Blue

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More of our favorite Art Rock Records

  • This outstanding copy of ELO’s seventh studio album boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last- exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Lots of hits on this one, Turn to Stone and Mr. Blue Sky among them
  • “The last ELO album to make a major impact on popular music, Out of the Blue was of a piece with its lavishly produced predecessor, A New World Record… Out of the Blue was massively popular and did become the centerpiece of a huge worldwide tour that earned the group status as a major live attraction for a time.”  
  • If you’re an ELO fan, this classic double album from 1977 is surely a Must Own
  • The complete list of titles from 1977 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here
  • If you are new to the music of ELO and want to learn more about our pick for their best album, click here

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Berlioz / Symphonie Fantastique / Bernstein

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Berlioz

More Vintage Hot Stamper Pressings on Columbia

And this one comes complete with the bonus 7″ entitled “Berlioz Takes a Trip,” in which Bernstein explores the work “with musical illustrations by the New York Philharmonic.”

This work is difficult to fit onto a single LP, clocking in at around 45 minutes, which means that the mastering engineer has three options when cutting the record:

  1. Compress the dynamics,
  2. Lower the level, or
  3. Filter the deep bass.

On this side two it seems that none of those approaches were taken by the engineer who cut this record in the early ’80s — there’s plenty of bass, as well as powerful dynamics, and the levels seem fine.

How he do it? Beats me. Glad he did though.

Side one is bass shy, however. Did the engineer filter out the lower frequencies, or is it just a case of pressing variation being the culprit. Who can say?

If we had many more copies with these same stampers for side one, all with less bass, we might be able to draw a conclusion about that, one that is highly probable but of course not provable.

The very next copy we might find with those stampers could have plenty of bass.

Then we would be forced to say that our highly probable theory had been falsified conclusively.

So much for theories.

Which is one of the main reasons we avoid them. We play the records to find out how they sound. We don’t feel the inclination to theorize about them much.

We think the audiophile community would be better served by more critical listening and less theorizing, speculating and opining.

Skeptical thinking has been key to our success from the very start, and it can be key to your success too. To understand records, you need to think about them critically in order to get very far in this devilishly difficult hobby we have chosen for ourselves.

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Country Joe & The Fish – Electric Music For The Mind and Body

More Country Joe and the Fish

More Psych Rock

  • This outstanding pressing on the early Stereolab label boasts Double Plus (A++) sound or very close to it on both sides
  • The overall sound here is rich, full-bodied and lively, with solid and present vocals, as well as excellent clarity all around
  • A very difficult record to find with good sound and clean surfaces, which is why we rarely have them on the site
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Their full-length debut is their most joyous and cohesive statement and one of the most important and enduring documents of the psychedelic era …”
  • If you’re a fan of Country Joe, a Hot Stamper pressing of their classic release from 1967 might just belong in your collection.

Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in clean shape. Most of them will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG, and it will probably be VG+. If you are picky about your covers please let us know in advance so that we can be sure we have a nice cover for you.

First, a little background on the general sound of Electric Music For The Mind and Body, the band’s debut and an album that is widely considered a true psych masterpiece. Most copies of the album have an unfortunate tendency to be boosted in the midrange, and on top of that they are often veiled and lack space.

Both sides here do a much better job in these areas than most of what we played, which, frankly, was not too good. These sides may not be perfect but they communicate the music well and that counts for a lot in our world.

And to be fair some of the album is actually quite well-recorded, “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine” being probably the best sounding (and best arranged) track on the record.

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Electric Light Orchestra – On the Third Day

More Electric Light Orchestra

More Art Rock

  • With seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish, this copy is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other On The Third Day you’ve heard
  • This domestic LP is proof that the master tape used to cut the album in 1973 was right here in the good old U.S. of A.
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • “Electric Light Orchestra’s third album showed a marked advancement, with a fuller, more cohesive sound from the band as a whole and major improvements in Jeff Lynne’s singing and songwriting.”
  • “The ELO’s blending of rock drums, pop violins, a semiclassical feel in the sweep of these same violins, the midrange colors of the cello, and a vocal blend that reminds one of the Beatles in their sophisticated studio days, makes up all the key elements in their music.”

Once you’ve played a good domestic pressing, it’s obvious that the Brit vinyl is made from sub-generation copy tapes. The imports make it sound like someone threw a blanket over your speakers.

We know this because we had a bunch of them cleaned up for our first big shootout in 2010 and they all sucked. We always buy Electric Light Orchestra records on import vinyl; those are the ones that sound the best, the domestic pressings time and again sounding as though they were mastered from dub tapes.

But On The Third Day is proof that this is not always the case, just as Siren proves that the best Roxy Music albums are not always British. Live and learn I guess. (more…)

George Benson – Good King Bad

More George Benson

More Jazz Recordings with Hot Stampers

  • Excellent sound on both sides of this original CTI pressing
  • Open and transparent throughout, with wonderfully full-bodied guitars, solid bass and huge amounts of funky jazz energy
  • This is the kind of spacious, low-distortion, dynamic and energetic sound Rudy Van Gelder was getting in the mid-’70s – if you think he was better in the sixties, you need to play some of these recordings from the ’70s that show off just how good his work could be
  • We are exceptionally tough graders these days – you may have no problem with the surfaces of this pressing at all (and if you do, we are happy to refund your money, just say the word)
  • 4 1/2 Stars: “The R&B elements [are] stronger, the sound and mix are more attuned to the dancefloor… and as a result, the record cooks and dances… Buy this one for “Cast Your Fate,” but there is plenty more to savor here.”
  • If you’re a George Benson fan, or perhaps a fan of mid-’70s Jazz Guitar, this title from 1976 is surely a Must Own
  • The complete list of titles from 1976 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here

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