Top Artists – Creeedence Clearwater Revival

Creedence Clearwater Revival – Pendulum

Pendulum

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This Fantasy stereo pressing boasts Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on side one and an outstanding Double Plus ( A++) side two
Both sides here are quite a bit richer and fuller than most with a big bottom end and solid midrange presence and energy
4 stars: “John Fogerty spent time polishing the production, bringing in keyboards, horns, even a vocal choir. His songs became self-consciously serious and tighter, working with the aesthetic of the rock underground — Pendulum was constructed as a proper album, contrasting dramatically with CCR’s previous records, all throwbacks to joyous early rock records where covers sat nicely next to hits and overlooked gems tucked away at the end of the second side.”

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Creedence Clearwater Revival – Pendulum

Pendulum

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A distinguished member of the Better Records Rock and Pop Hall of Fame.

This copy will THRASH any copy you put it up against. This will be especially true if you put it up against the Analogue Productions Heavy Vinyl from years back, which will undoubtedly sound thick, opaque, airless and congealed next to a properly mastered Fantasy original such as this.

Now if you are looking for quiet vinyl, we might not be able to help you there. We didn’t hear any truly quiet copies. Mint Minus Minus is about it, folks. Fortunately, CCR’s music is usually loud enough to obscure the shortcomings of Fantasy’s vinyl. Once the songs get going the vinyl is not really a problem, for us anyway.

Overall the most common problem we run into with Creedence’s records are edgy vocals, a problem that we noticed varied quite a bit from track to track on any given side. Lack of frequency extension on the top and bottom is another big one; few copies have any real highs (and if we weren’t so good at cleaning these old records with the Walker fluid none would have. If you want your records to sound transparent and open the right cleaning fluids and the right cleaning machine are essential). (more…)

Cosmo’s Factory – More Evidence of Analogue Productions’ Penchant for Insufferably Weird EQ

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Sonic Grade: D-

[This is a somewhat out of date commentary from about ten years ago. The last time I played the MoFi pressing mentioned below I found the sound so weirdly colored as to defy understanding. Ten years ago I apparently found it tolerable. More recently I did not. Bottom line: A pox on all their houses.]

Years ago a customer sent me his copy of the Analogue Productions LP (mastered by Hoffman and Gray) in order to carry out a little shootout I had planned among the five copies I could pull together: two MoFi’s, the Fantasy ORC reissue, a blue label original, the AP, and another reissue.

Let’s just say there were no real winners, but there sure were some losers.

My take on the Hoffman version is simply this: it has virtually no trace of TUBEY ANALOG MAGIC. None to speak of anyway. It sounds like a clean, tonally correct but fairly bass-shy CD. No pressing I played managed to be so tonally correct and so boring at the same time. The MoFi has plenty of weird EQ colorations, the kind that bug the hell out of me on 98% of their crappy catalog, but at least it sounds like analog. It’s warm, rich and sweet. The AP copy has none of those qualities.

More pointless 180g sound, to my ear anyway. I couldn’t sit through it with a gun to my head.

It’s shocking how bad most of the original blue label pressings are. No top, no bass and hard mids, not a recipe for audiophile happiness.

You would need a LOT of vintage tubes in your system to get the AP record to sound right, and then everything else in your collection would sound wrong.

Creedence Clearwater Revival – Green River

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This insanely good pressing boasts superb Triple Plus (A+++) sound on side one and a Double Plus (A++) side two
Both sides are rich and full-bodied yet clean, clear and spacious, with note-like bass and relatively smooth vocals
An essential, Must Own album for every CCR collection, this LP includes some of the band’s biggest hits: Green River and Bad Moon Rising, Lodi and plenty more
5 stars ” CCR’s third album Green River represents the full flower of their classic sound initially essayed on its predecessor, Bayou Country.”

This copy is bigger, livelier, harder rockin’, more spacious and more relaxed than most all of the other pressings we have played over the years.

Clean copies with great sound are incredibly hard to find from CCR (but worth the search), and it took us a good-sized stack to find a few with bottom end weight, midrange presence, real energy, and freedom from grain. This pressing will show you just how good this album can sound.

What to Listen For (WTLF)

Here are some of the things we specifically listen for in a vintage Creedence Swamp Rock record.

Our hottest Hot Stamper copies are simply doing more of these things better than the other copies we played in our shootout. (more…)