Top Artists – John Coltrane

John Coltrane – Expression on the Green Label

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

The best pressings have huge space, size and clarity, with Tubey Magical richness befitting the 1967 recording dates of these sessions at Van Gelder Studio.

That Tubey Magic is surely long gone by now, so those of you looking for this kind of sound on a modern pressing should face facts — that ship has sailed.

The Green Label ABC/Impulse label pressings did not retain much of the magic that we heard on the  real Impulse pressings, so best to avoid them.

They’re clean but dry and small, not big and bold like the real thing. The CD is probably better.

4 stars: “Recorded at two sessions in early 1967, Expression represents John Coltrane’s final recording sessions just months before his death. It’s remarkable that [the album] is not some world-weary harbinger of death and sickness, but an endlessly jubilant affair. Even in what must have been a time of tremendous pain and darkness, Coltrane’s single-minded quest for understanding and transcendence took him to places of new exploration and light.”

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Letter of the Week – “Who needs an equipment upgrade with records like these?”

Hot Stamper Pressing of Miles’s Albums Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

Listening to Kind Of Blue. Who needs an equipment upgrade with records like these?

Our reply:

So true!

It’s actually one of the common faults of audiophile thinking, present company excluded, that if you can make a record like KOB sound great, you must have a good stereo system.

The opposite is true; the real test is to get difficult to reproduce recordings to sound good, not easy to reproduce recordings.

If you want to test the limits of your system, here are some difficult to reproduce records that will allow you to do it.

And if you want to buy some records that sound great but are difficult to reproduce because you love or challenge, or for any other reason, these Hot Stamper pressings should do the trick.

Either way, KOB is killer, and the MoFi of it is a joke, but don’t tell this guy, who appears to be rather new to this whole “reviewing” thing.  Watch it here. If you can stomach more than two minutes worth, you may be reading the wrong blog.

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John Coltrane – Coltrane Jazz

More of the Music of John Coltrane

  • Both sides of this copy have excellent sound for Coltrane’s brilliant sixth studio album
  • This pressing captures the classic Coltrane sound that Tom Dowd and Phil Iehle achieved in the studio in 1961, with plenty of the Tubey Magic that makes a vintage jazz album like this one such a special listening experience
  • It’s the rare pressing that isn’t mediocre if not outright awful – it took us a long time to find the right stampers for this one
  • It’s trial and error, no more, no less, a process that has worked for plenty of other hard-to-find-good-sound-for Coltrane albums too
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The first album to hit the shelves after Giant Steps… While not the groundbreaker that Giant Steps was, Coltrane Jazz was a good consolidation of his gains as he prepared to launch into his peak years of the 1960s.”
  • This is a Must Own album from 1961 that belongs in any jazz-loving audiophile’s collection

For us audiophiles both the sound and the music here are wonderful. If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good 1961 All Tube Analog sound can be, this killer copy will do the trick.

This pressing is super spacious, sweet and positively dripping with ambience. Talk about Tubey Magic, the liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny. This is vintage analog at its best, so full-bodied and relaxed you’ll wonder how it ever came to be that anyone seriously contemplated trying to improve it.

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Miles Davis – Sketches of Spain on 360

More Miles Davis

  • Seriously good sound throughout this Miles Davis classic, with both sides earning Double Plus (A++) grades – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • This early Stereo 360 LP is full-bodied, high-rez and spacious, with Miles’s horn uncannily present, a sound you just cannot find on Heavy Vinyl no matter who makes it
  • If you have the big system and dedicated room a record of this quality demands, you can put Miles right in the room with you with a Hot Stamper pressing as good as this
  • Vintage pressings that play this reasonably quiet and are free of scratches and groove damage are few and far between, but here’s one, perfect for even the most demanding audiophile
  • Another engineering triumph for Fred Plaut at Columbia’s legendary 30th Street Studios – the man is a genius
  • Musically this is one of our very favorite Miles albums, and the sound is Demo Disc quality on the better copies
  • 5 stars: “Sketches of Spain is the most luxuriant and stridently romantic recording Davis ever made. To listen to it in the 21st century is still a spine-tingling experience…”
  • This pressing is clearly a Demo Disc for orchestral size and space
  • Although the right 6-Eye originals will always win our shootouts, the 360 stereo reissues still sound quite good to us, just not as good

On the better pressings of this masterpiece, the sound is truly magical. (AMG has that dead right in their review.) It is lively but never strained. Davis’s horn has breath and bite, just like the real thing. What more can you ask for?

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Miles Davis – Milestones

More Miles Davis

  • Milestones appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it throughout this vintage MONO 2-Eye pressing – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Huge amounts of three-dimensional space and ambience, along with boatloads of Tubey Magic (particularly on side two) – here’s a 30th Street recording from 1958 that demonstrates just how good Columbia’s engineers were back then
  • Davis partners here with jazz greats, including John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley and others
  • Although the right 6-Eye mono originals will always win our shootouts, the 360 mono reissues still sound quite good to us, just not as good
  • And don’t waste your money on most of the copies in clean enough condition to please an audiophile, meaning the reprocessed stereo pressings — they’re awful
  • 5 stars: “What is immediately noticeable upon listening to Miles Davis’ classic first – and only – album with his original sextet is how deep the blues presence is on it. Though it’s true that the album’s title cut is rightfully credited with introducing modalism into jazz, and defining Davis’ music for years to come, it is the sole selection of its kind on the record. The rest is all blues in any flavor you wish you call your own.”

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The New Miles Davis Quintet – Miles

More Miles Davis

  • An excellent Prestige MONO reissue with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it from the first note to the last – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • If you want to hear a healthy dose of the Tubey Magic, size and energy of this wonderful session from 1956 – recorded by none other than Rudy Van Gelder – this pressing will let you do that
  • “…Coltrane’s restless, turbulent lines show how Davis had finally found his perfect foil, much as the trumpeter’s introspective lyricism complemented Charlie Parker’s harmonic flights.”

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John Coltrane – Expression

More John Coltrane

  • Both sides of this original Stereo Impulse pressing were giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for, earning superb Double Plus (A++) grades – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Huge space, size and clarity, with Tubey Magical richness befitting the 1967 recording dates of these sessions at Van Gelder Studio
  • That Tubey Magic is surely long gone by now, so those of you looking for this kind of sound on a modern pressing should face it: that ship has sailed
  • 4 stars: “Recorded at two sessions in early 1967, Expression represents John Coltrane’s final recording sessions just months before his death. It’s remarkable that [the album] is not some world-weary harbinger of death and sickness, but an endlessly jubilant affair. Even in what must have been a time of tremendous pain and darkness, Coltrane’s single-minded quest for understanding and transcendence took him to places of new exploration and light.”

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Letter of the Week – “Much more vibrance and tonal nuances making for a much more engaging listening experience.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a John Coltrane record he purchased not long ago.

Hi Tom,

Even a 2+ [Super Hot] was enough to eliminate the 2021 Concord/AP [Analogue Productions] 33 RPM KPG [Kevin Gray] LP on 180 gram which was my copy until this Hot Stamper.

I listened to side 1 first. Well shit … it sounds clean, it sounds nice, a bit flat but that’s how I thought it was supposed to be, and sounds quite audiophile.

Simply put, the BR copy truly brings the music to life.

Much more vibrance and tonal nuances making for a much more engaging listening experience.

All I know is the BR LP destroyed the above to smithereens.

As always, many thanks!

Michel

Dear Michel,

You are more than welcome.  When you mention that you thought the album sounded clean, nice, a bit flat, you were in the same boat as all the other audiophiles who own these modern remasterings who have been putting up with their mediocre sound. Why?

Because they thought the recordings were at fault.

After all, Chad must know what he’s doing, he’s the biggest guy in the business.

And Kevin Gray must know what he’s doing, he can’t keep up with all the work these reissue labels are sending his way.

They’re the pro’s pros, right?

No, not right. Not even close to right. The opposite of right.

They are incompetent frauds that have the bulk of the audiophile community utterly bamboozled.

Even the worst of the Hot Stamper pressings we sell are worlds better sounding, and the way you can find this out for yourself, dear reader, is simply to try one.

UPDATE 2025

Our review for the 2021 Bernie Grundman-mastered Craft pressing of Lush Life will be coming to the blog before long, only two years (!) after Geoff Edgers brought one to the studio for me to audition.

Spoiler alert: I didn’t like it then — I told Geoff at the time that I bet it sounded worse than whatever CD might currently be in print — and my main listening guy, Riley, having played it in a recent shootout, didn’t like it any better.

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Six-Eye, Black Print, White Print, Red Label – Which Is the Best Sounding Kind of Blue?

Hot Stampers Pressings of the Music of Miles Davis Available Now

Is the 50s original always better, is the 70s reissue always better, is the 60s 360 pressing always better?

The answer is “no” to all three.

Why? Because no pressing is always better. All pressings are unique and should only be judged on their merits, and you do that by playing them, not by looking at their labels. For us this truth is practically axiomatic. It is in fact the premise of our entire business. Over the course of the 28 years we have been selling records we have never found any compelling evidence to invalidate it.

The day that someone can accurately predict the sound quality of a specific record by looking at the label or cover is a day I do not expect to come, ever.

UPDATE 2024

Our Latest Thinking on KOB

The 6 Eye label domestic stereo pressings win our shootouts, in the case of Kind of Blue without exception.

The 360 label pressings, black print (1962-63) or white print (1963-70), as well as the rare 70s red label (1970-?), can sound very good, but they never win shootouts.

We’ve identified a select group of reissues with the potential to do well in shootouts, typically earning a grade of Super Hot (A++) when up against the best originals which earn our top grade, White Hot (A+++). Kind of Blue is one of those recordings.

A Larger Point

But there is a larger point to be made. Let’s assume that the best original Six Eye Columbia pressings can be the best — the most Tubey Magical, the most involving, the most real. You just happen to have a clean pressing, and you absolutely love it.

But is it the best? How could you possibly know that?

Unless you have done a comparison with many copies under controlled conditions, you simply cannot know where on the sonic curve your copy should be placed.

Perhaps you have a mediocre original. Or a mediocre 360 Label copy. Since you haven’t done a massive shootout you simply have no way of knowing just how good sounding the album can be.

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Could This Be the Sound Audiophiles Complain About with RVG’s Mastering?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

A rare and expensive early mono pressing that we put into our most recent shootout was dreadful sounding.

Our main listening guy owns the record and made the note you see below, saying that his personal copy is every bit as bad.

The sound of the original was painfully midrangy and crude. It was not the worst of all the pressings we played, but it was nevertheless pretty bad, sounding nothing like our shootout winners.

We had a pressing on an early Prestige label in stereo, also mastered by Rudy Van Gelder, that was reasonably good sounding, earning grades of 1.5+ to 2+. It was sweet and relaxed, but relatively small and lacked the weight of the best.

For this music, we’ve found the best sound on the better Two-Fer pressings and the right OJC.

That Two-Fer budget reissue pressing, remastered by David Turner in 1972, can do very well in a shootout, but it can also fall far short of the mark on some sides, as you can see from the grades for these three other copies.

If you have the Two-Fer, how does yours sound compared to the four we auditioned (a shootout we were doing for the third or fourth time I might add), and how could you possibly know such a thing without a great many more copies at hand to clean and play?

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