Top Artists – Emerson, Lake and Palmer

Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s Debut Is an Audiophile Must Own

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Available Now

Robert Brook has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Below is a link to a review Robert Brook wrote for a pressing of the album I had loaned him so that he could hear just how good ELP’s debut can sound on one of our hottest Hot Stampers. Please to enjoy.

Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Why You NEED a Hot Stamper of THIS Record!

Robert’s Approach

Robert has methodically and carefully — one might even say scientifically — approached the various problems he’s encountered in this hobby by doing the following:

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Listening in Depth to Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Available Now

If you’ve got the system to play this one loud enough, with the low end weight and energy it requires, you are in for a treat with Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s debut.

The organ that opens side two will rattle the foundation of your house if you’re not careful. This music really needs that kind of megawatt reproduction to make sense. This is bombastic prog that wants desperately to rock your world. At moderate levels it just sounds overblown and silly. At loud levels, it actually will rock your world.

To play this record right, you should have, at a minimum:

  • Big dynamic speakers, and they should be pulled out well into the room to create a three-dimensional presentation, in this case of a live rock concert. If the speakers are too big for the room, or stuck in the corners, you haven’t got a chance with a recording as powerful as this one.
  • A large room. (Our new studio has a 12 foot ceiling, a big help with a blockbuster recording such as this one.)
  • Strong walls with no windows, and, if possible, a concrete floor to keep the bass from leaving the room.
  • Seating for a single listener far from any boundary, especially the back wall (a common problem with small-ish rooms).
  • Extensive room treatments to deal with the loud levels this music requires.
  • Enough amplifier power driving speakers with big enough woofers to move all the air in the listening room with authority.
  • And, finally, high quality electricity, a heavily tweaked front end and all the rest of the audio stuff we discuss endlessly on this blog.

Without all of these things, it’s hard for us to imagine anyone could hear this record sound the way the artists and engineers wanted it to. Playing a record like this in a small room at moderate levels practically guarantees that the listener will not be able to hear what makes the best copies of this album so special.

Our system evolved over the decades to play these kinds of records, primarily for two reasons:

  1. We love music and want to hear our favorite recordings sound their best, and
  2. With this much money on the line, we have to be right about the superior sound of the vintage Hot Stamper pressings we offer if we want to stay in business.

Side One

The Barbarian
Take a Pebble

Superb sound! Big, spacious and effortlessly alive. So dynamic too.

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Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Out of This World Sound at Loud Levels

More of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer

  • This UK Island Pink Rim pressing makes the case that ELP’s debut is clearly one of the most powerful rock records ever made, here with incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades from top to bottom – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Spacious, rich and dynamic, with big bass and tremendous energy – these are just some of the things we love about Eddie Offord‘s engineering work on this band’s albums
  • Analog at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • “Lucky Man” and “Take A Pebble” on this copy have Demo Disc quality sound like you won’t believe
  • If you are looking for a shootout winning copy, let us know – with such good music and sound, we hope to get another shootout going again soon
  • Our White Hot pressing had a one half plus better grade on one side and sold for $849, making this copy a “relative bargain,” if there could ever be such a thing on this site – but what an amazing sounding record!
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Lively, ambitious, almost entirely successful debut album… [which] showcased the group at its least pretentious and most musicianly …there isn’t much excess, and there is a lot of impressive musicianship here.”

If you’ve got the system to play this one loud enough, with the low-end weight and energy it requires, you are in for a treat. The organ that opens side two will rattle the foundation of your house if you’re not careful. This music really needs that kind of megawatt reproduction to make sense. This is bombastic prog that wants desperately to rock your world. At moderate levels, it just sounds overblown and silly. At loud levels, it actually will rock your world.

Near The Top Of The List

Without a doubt this record belongs in the Top Rock section. I’d even say it belongs in the Top Ten. It is one of the most dynamic and powerful rock recordings ever made. The organ on this album is wall to wall and floor to ceiling. The quiet interlude during “Take A Pebble” is about as quiet as any popular recording can ever be — the guitar is right at the noise floor. It’s amazing! (Which explains why so many domestic copies have groove damage. The record is just too hard to play for the average turntable. Hell, it’s hard to play with an audiophile turntable.)

Credit engineer Eddie Offord, who would later go on to enormous and entirely justifiable fame with Yes.

The Power Of Analog

Folks, this is analog at its Tubey Magical finest. You ain’t never gonna play a CD that sounds like this as long as you live. I don’t want to rain on your parade but digital media are seemingly incapable of reproducing this kind of sound. There are nice sounding CDs in the world but there aren’t any that sound like this, not in my experience anyway. If you are thinking that someday a better digital system is going to come along to save you the trouble and expense of having to find and acquire these expensive original pressings, think again. Ain’t gonna happen. This is the kind of record that shows you what’s wrong with your best sounding CDs. (Let’s not even talk about the average one in your or my collection. The less said the better.)

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Letter of the Week – “I’m hearing things I’ve never heard before. Orders of magnitude better.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Available Now

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

Hey Tom,   

Once again, you folks have proved that your albums are worth EVERY PENNY that you charge for them.

For years, I’ve had a couple of domestic pressings, and a “200 gram Anadisq” MOFI, of ELP’s Trilogy. Always thought the sound was pretty solid.

But I JUST finished spinning the British A+++ pressing I scored from you folks this past week, and OH MY. It absolutely CRUSHES all prior versions. It leaves the MOFI in the DUST. I mean, it’s not even close. Not subtle. Not “Well, if I listen closely, I think I MIGHT hear a difference….”

NO. It’s utterly ridiculous. I’m hearing things I’ve never heard before. Orders of magnitude better.

THANK YOU, for your dedication to optimizing the quality of listening. SUCH a great album – and sound that finally is commensurate to the quality of the musicianship. 🙂

Steve

Steve,

So glad to hear it!

I was selling MoFi records when that pressing of Trilogy came out. What a murky piece of crap that was. The cutting system they were using was a joke, and the one they have now is not much better.

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Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Islands Vs Cotillions

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Available Now

UPDATE 2020

This commentary was written many years ago, around 2010 I would guess.

It was updated in 2020 when we realized we were wrong about the domestic pressings being superior on side two. At one time we thought they were, and now, with many more shootouts under our belts, we are pretty sure they are not. But you never know!

The findings from the latest shootouts have shown us the error of our ways, yet another example of live and learn.

This is what we used to think:

The Brit copies may take top honors for side one (“sweetness, openness, tubey magic, correct tonality, presence without aggressiveness, well-defined note-like bass, extended airy highs”) but the Hot Stamper Cotillion copies KILL on side two. They really ROCK, with greater dynamic contrasts and seriously prodigious bass, some of the best ever committed to vinyl.

The Brits tend to be a bit too “pretty” sounding. They’re too polite for this bombastic music. This music needs the whomp down below and lots of jump factor to work its magic.

The Brits are super-low distortion, with a more open, sweeter sound, especially up top, but the power of the music is just not as powerful as it can be on these very special Cotillions.

We prefer the British pressings on both sides now. After years of improvement to our playback, they have shown themselves to be a step up over even the best domestic pressings. The Cotillions don’t win shootouts now and would be very unlikely to win one in the future. At best they tend to earn Super Hot Stamper grades.

A top copy might be described this way:

  • This UK Island Pink Rim pressing makes the case that ELP’s debut is clearly one of the most powerful rock records ever made, here with incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades from top to bottom – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Spacious, rich and dynamic, with big bass and tremendous energy – these are just some of the things we love about Eddie Offord‘s engineering work on this band’s albums
  • Analog at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • “Lucky Man” and “Take A Pebble” on this copy have Demo Disc quality sound like you won’t believe
  • Our White Hot pressing had a one half plus better grade on one side and sold for $849, making this copy a “relative bargain,” if there could ever be such a thing on this site – but what an amazing sounding record!

Without a doubt this record belongs in our Top 100 Rock and Pop section.

I’d even say it belongs in the Top Ten (which of course is where you can find it, where it belongs).

The organ on this album is wall to wall and floor to ceiling. The quiet interlude during “Take A Pebble” is about as quiet as any popular recording can ever be — the guitar is right at the noise floor. It’s amazing! (Which explains why so many domestic copies have groove damage. The record is just too hard to play for the average turntable. Hell, it’s hard to play with an audiophile turntable.)

Credit engineer Eddie Offord, who would later go on to enormous and entirely justifiable fame with Yes.

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Emerson, Lake and Palmer – Pictures at an Exhibition

More Emerson, Lake and Palmer

  • An original UK Island pressing of this ELP Classic live album with a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a seriously good Double Plus (A++) side one
  • Both of these sides are amazingly Tubey Magical and exceptionally spacious, with a massive bottom end and plenty of Rock and Roll (and classical) energy
  • Pictures at an Exhibition is yet another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you turn up your volume
  • “…it worked on several levels that allowed widely divergent audiences to embrace it — with the added stimulus of certain controlled substances, it teased the brain with its mix of melody and heavy rock, and for anyone with some musical knowledge, serious or casual, it was a sufficiently bold use of Mussorgsky’s original to stimulate hours of delightful listening.”

This British Island LP has real weight and heft, so when Emerson lays into the organ, it’ll rattle the walls. It has that big, fat, rich, smooth sound that we love here at Better Records. It’s warm and full, not thick and sludgy. It’s on the right end of the “tubey-transistory” spectrum.

Listen to how GIGANTIC the organ is that plays the fanfare opening of the work. Honestly, I have never heard a rock album with an organ sound that stretched from wall to wall like this one does. It sounds like it must be seventy five feet tall, too.

No, I take that back. The first ELP album has an organ that sounds about that big, but that’s a studio album. How did they manage to get that kind of organ sound in a live setting without actually having to build one inside the concert hall?

The domestic copies are a bad joke as you may have guessed.

You might think that you could just pick up any old Brit pressing to get this kind of sound, but that has not been our experience. Many of them are thick, dull, smeary, veiled, congested and/or just plain lifeless.

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This Original British Tarkus Had the Sound Most Audiophiles Can Only Dream Of

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Available Now

To be clear, audiophiles who buy a shootout winning White Hot Stamper pressing from us don’t have to dream, but practically everyone else does, because copies that sound as good as this one are few and far between.

It’s an amazing find, the kind of record we live for here at Better Records.

We described the sound of our most recent shootout winning copy this way:

This original UK Island pressing was doing everything right, earning killer Triple Plus (A+++) grades from top to bottom.

Our recent monster shootout produced this incredible sounding British pressing on Island (the only way we offer the title) and it is stone guaranteed to rock your world.

Eddie Offord‘s trademark Tubey Magic, energy, resolution, whomp factor and dynamics are all over this phenomenal recording, and this pressing captured it all.

Here are the notes that back up everything we said, and more. We can’t put all the qualities we rave about into every listing. Who would believe us?

No other copy offered this kind of sound. It’s what we used to call AGAIG — As Good As It Gets.

3+/3+ records like this one go in our Top Shelf section, which currently holds 32 titles.

Records with at least one 3+ side go in this section, and there are 143 of those as of today, almost five times as many.

Eddie Is The Man

Tarkus is clearly a Demo Disc for big speakers that can play at loud levels.

The organ captured here by Eddie Offord (of Yes engineering fame, we’re his biggest fans) and then transferred so well onto our Hot Stamper pressings will rattle the foundation of your house if you’re not careful. This music really needs that kind of megawatt reproduction to make sense. It’s Big Bombastic Prog that wants desperately to rock your world. At moderate levels it just sounds overblown and silly. At loud levels it actually will rock your world.

All but the best Brit pressings have a tendency to be a bit turgid and many of them lack the bottom end weight that music like this absolutely must have to work its magic. There are some good domestic copies — not in a league with the best Brits at all — but most of them have sub-generation sound that robs the instruments of their immediacy and texture (much the same way that Heavy Vinyl does, truth be told).

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Hot Stampers Helped Some Audiophiles Hear What They’d Been Missing

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he played at a stereo show recently. You can read all about it here.

We carried on the conversation:

Tom,

Thank you and for sure I’d be more than happy to spread the word more and help out! Send me cards for sure. I’m def a Better Records disciple.

You should consider teaming up with a room at the show next time. I think worth your while. Time to break the grip of the MoFi Mafia at these shows.

All the best, Mike

Mike,

We went to some shows years ago and nothing came of it.

It may turn out that none of these people will ever want to pay good money — let’s be honest, a lot of good money — for Hot Stampers. I wrote about it here.

Experience over many years has borne out this view, disappointing as it may be.

The audiophiles who go to shows for some reason don’t seem to be able to wrap their heads around the concept of Hot Stampers.

Hard to imagine that none of them can afford our records. The money someone might pay for three wacky MoFis or three Analogue Productions disasters would probably get you one very good sounding Hot Stamper pressing. In my book, one good record that you might actually listen to and enjoy often is a whole lot better than any number of modern records that you will seldom play and more than likely simply file away on the shelf where their sole purpose will be to collect dust.

I’m guessing. I don’t really know what people do with all these mediocre sounding reissues. I wrote about what I suspect happens to them here.

I Beg the Question

But this is purely an exercise in “begging the question.”

I’m assuming things I do not know to be true, in order to make the very point I have the burden of proving.

To make my case, I would need to provide evidence to back up the claim that these records don’t get played and enjoyed. To be honest, I have no evidence whatsoever that the owners of these records don’t enjoy the hell out of them.

It’s a naked expression of prejudice on my part. I’m assuming that what’s obviously true for me must be true for others. I don’t enjoy playing these Heavy Vinyl records, and I think that other audiophiles must be as disappointed by them as I am.

But Heavy Vinyl records are selling very well these days. Somebody is buying them.

And they buy them even though, as our writer points out, they cannot begin to compete with good vintage pressings.

More question begging? Not really. This happens to be something I can provide plenty of evidence for and can prove with ease.

Practically every record on our site is a rebuttal to audiophile pressings from every era, made by every company in the remastering business.

To find out how wrong these modern records are, all you need do is buy one of our Hot Stampers and play them head to head.

Oh well. All we can do is keep trying to get the word out. And we thank you for your help showing audiophiles what they are missing.

Because explaining doesn’t work. Only hearing works.

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Emerson, Lake and Palmer – Trilogy

More Emerson, Lake and Palmer

More Prog Rock

  • With two seriously good Double Plus (A++) sides, this vintage UK Island pressing is doing just about everything right
  • Analog at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • An excellent recording that really shines on a good pressing like this, courtesy of the engineering brilliance of Eddie Offord
  • Problems 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
  • 4 stars: “Every track on this album has been carefully thought, arranged, and performed to perfection…”

It’s not easy to find great copies of this album. This kind of prog rock demands big, bold sound, and not all copies have the size or low-end weight to pull it off. Keith Emerson’s organ needs to extend all the way down, or it just doesn’t work. Both sides here have a great bottom end, and some real texture and space up top.

“From The Beginning” has the kind of analog magic that made it a staple in practically every stereo store I walked into back in the ’70s.

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Brain Salad Surgery on Shout Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Available Now

If you’re a fan of Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s fifth album, and you know, or at least suspect, that the British original pressings are more than likely to be better sounding than most, you might find yourself in a bit of a quandary, pocketbook-wise.

Early British pressings in audiophile playing condition aren’t easy to find, and they don’t tend to be cheap when you do find them.

Ah, but there is a fairly cheap and exceptionally easy solution: just buy the Shout Heavy Vinyl reissue from 2008.

It says it’s made from the master tape, it has a replica of the original packaging, and even comes with a poster.

What could go wrong?

The sound could be shit — NFG in our shorthand — that’s what could go wrong.

  • The top end could be overly-textured, tizzy and hot, the kind that constantly calls attention to itself.
  • The bass could be smeary and thick.
  • And the overall presentation of the music could be veiled and recessed.

Alas, the money you thought you were saving buying this potentially wonderful flat, quiet pressing made from the master tapes ends up flushed down the tubes. Now what?

Now you have to do what you should have done to begin with: find yourself a real British pressing.

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