Stereo=Best

These records are available in mono, but they sound their best in stereo.

Paul Desmond – Desmond Blue

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone

  • Paul Desmond’s phenomenal 1962 release, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides
  • This is vintage Sixties Living Stereo sound at its best – big, rich and Tubey Magical like you will not believe
  • A “highly innovative and meticulously crafted work,” this collection is brimming with delightful jazz classics, including “My Funny Valentine,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” and “Body and Soul”
  • 4 stars: “… lush, reflective, thought-provoking, and soul-stirring. This work is quite a plus for any listener and especially those who consider themselves avid fans of Paul Desmond.”

Need a refresher course in Tubey Magic after playing too many modern recordings or remasterings? These original Living Stereo pressings are overflowing with it. Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead-on correct tonality — everything that we listen for in a great record is here. (more…)

Gilbert and Sullivan – Overtures / Ward

More Recordings in Living Stereo

  • You’ll find INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this vintage Shaded Dog pressing of Gilbert and Sullivan’s music
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • Rich and sweet Living Stereo sound from the first note to the last – who can resist these sublime orchestral arrangements?
  • The Overtures are played to perfection – for music and sound, this one is hard to fault, a Top Title in every way and one that belongs in every right-thinking audiophile’s collection
  • This pressing is clearly a Demo Disc for orchestral size and space

The hall is HUGE: spacious and open as any you will hear, but not at the expense of richness or fullness. The orchestra is solid and full-bodied, yet the woodwinds and flutes soar above the other sections, so breathy and clear.

How did the Decca (recording) and RCA (mastering) engineers succeed so brilliantly where so many others have failed, failed right up to this very day?

Who knows? It’s still a mystery that has yet to be explained, to our satisfaction anyway.

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Arnold – Guitar Concertos / Bream

More Living Stereo Recordings

  • Amazing sound throughout this original Shaded Dog pressing, with both sides earning INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • These sides are wonderfully full-bodied, rich and present, using state-of-the-art All Tube Living Stereo recording technology that was so advanced in 1961 it thought it could transport a living, breathing Julian Bream directly from his studio into your listening room
  • It turns out that with today’s playback systems and cleaning technologies, the dream of being in the “living presence” of the performers has become a reality
  • Bream’s guitar sounds sweetly natural, not overly detailed and the orchestra is exceptionally well recorded, as we would expect from a good RCA of this period

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Peggy Lee – Ole ala Lee!

More Pop and Jazz Vocal Recordings

  • Here is an original Capitol stereo pressing with solid Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This copy is rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical – we’re dealing with an All Tube Analog recording chain from 1961 after all – with present, sweet, breathy vocals, the kind that practically no modern Heavy Vinyl record can offer
  • “Velvety flutes, peppy percussion, well-behaved brass – yes, the stage is set once more for Peggy Lee’s sedately suggestive Latin musings. [T]his sequel to the singer’s Latin ala Lee! album offers another enchanting mix of jazz-vocal staples (“Come Dance with Me,” “You Stepped Out of a Dream”) and Broadway-issue mambo (“Fantastico,” “Non Dimencticar”).

Not to be confused with Latin ala Lee and its two toreadors.

This vintage Capitol pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

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Lee Morgan / The Sidewinder

More of the Music of Lee Morgan

  • Incredible sound throughout this 60s Blue Note pressing, with a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side one
  • It took us about two years to get this shootout going, but the best copies we played were so impressive that they made all the time and money it took to pull it off worth the effort – what a record!
  • These sides are rich and full, from the extended top end all the way down to the deepest bass — thanks RVG!
  • The trumpet on this album is amazing — tonally correct with wonderful leading edge transients
  • Both musically and sonically, this is Blue Note at its best
  • 5 stars: “Carried by its almost impossibly infectious eponymous opening track, The Sidewinder helped foreshadow the sounds of boogaloo and soul-jazz with its healthy R&B influence and Latin tinge. While the rest of the album retreats to a more conventional hard bop sound, Morgan’s compositions are forward-thinking and universally solid…”

When we dropped the needle on this one, we immediately stopped listening critically and just began enjoying the album. That’s the sign of an exceptional copy — the sound gets out of the way and the music becomes the point.

There’s life and presence on these sides the likes of which you almost never hear on any jazz record.

The lineup here is fantastic, with Joe Henderson on tenor sax, Billy Higgins on drums, Barry Harris on piano and Bob Cranshaw on bass. (more…)

Benny Carter – Additions to Further Definitions

More of the Music of Benny Carter

  • Additions to Further Definitions appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout this original Impulse stereo pressing
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this stunning copy in our notes: “jumping out of the speakers”…”tubey and 3D”…”very full sax”…”present and open and relaxed”…”big and rich”
  • Both of these sides are exceptionally transparent, with superb immediacy and remarkably clarity – thanks, RVG!
  • The music comes alive on this copy, with space, size and richness that few other pressings can match

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Mendelssohn / Chopin – Cello Sonatas / Starker / Sebok

Mercury Living Presence Records Available Now

  • Starker and Sebok’s virtuoso performances debut on the site with the rich, dynamic, and tubey sound we were hoping for, earning INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades throughout this original Plum Label Mercury pressing
  • Both of these sides are big, full-bodied, clean and clear, with a wonderfully present and solid piano, and plenty of 3D space around it
  • The cello is present and immediate, with sound that is remarkably textured, full and harmonically natural
  • Not only is this the best sounding copy we have to offer from our recent shootout, but we are happy to report that the vinyl is reasonably quiet for a vintage Plum Label Mercury stereo pressing, with no marks that play or problems with the inner grooves

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The Beatles – Help

More of the Music of The Beatles

  • With two outstanding Double Plus (A++) sides, this copy will be very hard to beat – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Everything that’s great about Help is here on this UK pressing – jangly 12-string guitars, Tubey Magical electric pianos, harmonically rich tambourines and claves, and, the sine qua non of any Beatles album, breathy, present vocals
  • If you’re like us and think the new Beatles Heavy Vinyl reissues are boosted in the bass and way too smooth in the midrange, whether mono or stereo, take comfort in the fact that this pressing is neither of those things, because it sounds right
  • Side one alone boasts 7 classics: “Help!,” “The Night Before,” “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” “I Need You,” “Another Girl,” “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl” and “Ticket to Ride” – whew!

Want to hear The Beatles at their Tubey Magical best? Just play “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” on this very copy.

One of the reasons this song stands out in a crowd of great tracks is that there are only acoustic instruments being played. There’s not an electric guitar to be found anywhere in the mix, one of the few tracks on side one for which that is true.

We flip out over the Tubey Magical acoustic guitars and harmony vocals found on early Beatles albums, and this song can be an exceptionally good example of both when you’re fortunate enough to have the right pressing playing.

Those of you with Hot Stamper pressings of the album can count themselves among the fortunate.

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Debussy – Images for Orchestra / Ansermet (Decca)

More of the Music of Claude Debussy

More of the Music of Maurice Ravel

  • Solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it brings Ansermet and the Suisse Romande’s performance to life on this original Decca Stereo pressing
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, and for recordings of Debussy, that is quiet indeed
  • We often run into condition issues with this title – the two copies with the highest grades had problems in the vinyl that make them unsuitable for audiophiles (especially at these prices)
  • If you want to go digging for your own copy, we tell you how to do that on the blog, and we wish you good luck, you’re going to need it
  • This copy is remarkably lively and dynamic, particularly on side two – the RCA with Munch is also excellent, but you will find very little to fault in the sound of this record if you don’t have precisely the right stampers for that one
  • It’s worth noting that only the London pressings ever win the shootout, which is something that we run into on a regular basis but for some reason surprises audiophile record lovers to this very day
  • Why the disparity, we have no idea – they are all mastered by Decca in England from the same tapes, and by the same engineers!

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The Byrds – Mr. Tambourine Man (Red Label)

More of the Music of The Byrds

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  • With very good Hot Stamper sound from start to finish, this Columbia Red Label pressing will be hard to beat, especially for those looking for quiet vinyl
  • The 360 Label pressings in stereo will always win our shootouts, but there are Red Label pressings like this one that can sound very good, just not as good
  • It’s richer and fuller than the average copy, with notably more presence, and that will be especially true when you compare it to whatever godawful Heavy Vinyl pressing may be currently available
  • This is true of even our lowest-priced, lowest-graded copies – they are guaranteed to sound much better than any pressing you can find on the market today, as well as any pressing you may already own
  • 5 stars: “One of the greatest debuts in the history of rock … nothing less than a significant step in the evolution of rock & roll itself, demonstrating that intelligent lyrical content could be wedded to compelling electric guitar riffs and a solid backbeat.”
  • If you’re a fan of the Byrds, this is a Classic from 1965 that belongs in your collection.

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