Top Artists – Paul Simon (with or without) Garfunkel

Letter of the Week – “I have heard this music a zillion times but it never ever once sounded like this.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Five Star Albums Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing he purchased many years ago:

Hey Tom, 

I just listened to Bridge over Troubled Water that arrived while I was on my trip to India. It was really spectacular. I have heard this music a zillion times over the last 40 years but it never ever once sounded like this. Amazing. I have to get Bookends and PSRT also. 

John R.

John,

We love it when customers tell us that our Hot Stamper pressings are a revelation. At these prices they’d better be!

This album has been remastered many times, but as far as we know you just cannot beat the right 360 Label pressings, which is why those are mostly the ones we sell, with an occasional Red Label pressing rarely, and barely, making the grade.

We’ve auditioned many pressings of the album, including the Mobile Fidelity from 1984, the CBS Half-Speed from 1980, and the Classic Records Heavy Vinyl pressing from 1999.

No doubt there have been many more remastered since those three came out, but we don’t see any reason to expect them to be any better than the consistently second- and third-rate records currently being made these days, so we haven’t bothered to audition any of the newer pressings and have no plans to at this time. If one comes our way, naturally we would love to hear it.

Would we pay good money for whatever crap pressing they’re stocking the bins with these days? Not a chance. If any of the labels currently making records start to make some that sound as good as the ones we sell, please drop us a line with the titles that impressed you.

(more…)

How Paul and Judy Finally Turned Me Against DCC

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Paul Simon Available Now

When I finally got around to comparing the two, I remember being taken aback by how much better my original Artisan pressing sounded than the supposedly superior DCC, the one pressed at high quality Heavy Vinyl at RTI to the most exacting standards possible, yada, yada, yada.

What finally turned me completely against DCC were the awful Paul Simon solo albums they remastered.  Two were released, two I had as unreleased test pressings, and all of them were clearly and markedly inferior to the good original pressings I had owned.

So much for believing in DCC.

Since that time we have learned that placing your faith in any record label or cutting operation is a mistake.

You have to play the records to know how they sound.

Nothing else works, and nothing else can work.

(more…)

Graceland, Where Clarity Is King

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Paul Simon Available Now

We regularly do shootouts for Graceland. Having played so many copies over the years we’re become quite familiar with the range of sound on the album, what constitutes good, better and best, and we understand precisely what qualities the premier copy must have in order to win one of our shootouts. 

Above all the thing Graceland has going for it sonically is CLARITY. It has many other good qualities as well: It can be open and spacious, tonally correct, with punchy, tight bass and present, breathy vocals.

The better copies have all these qualities to some degree, but the one thing a good copy must have is clarity, because that’s what’s especially good about the sound of Graceland. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “…jaw-droppingly good, and with quiet vinyl to boot…”

More of the Music of Bob Dylan

This letter comes from one of our best customers, our good friend Owais, who dropped us a line after he received his latest shipment of tasty Hot Stampers including a mono ’The Times They Are A-Changin’ and ’Bridge Over Troubled Water.’ 

Hi Tom,

Just a quick word on the last set of records that I received a couple of days ago, safe and sound. Have to agree with you – that mono of Dylan’s ‘The Times Thay Are A-Changin’ really is jaw-droppingly good, and with quiet vinyl to boot as well!

As for Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, I have bought quite a few copies of this LP and, to my ears, nothing sounded as good as the Classic reissue… that is, until I got your Hot Stamper. Again, you got this one spot-on. The Classic just doesn’t come close in terms of warmth and tonality.

All the best, 
Owais

Owais, thanks for your letter. We love beating Heavy Vinyl pressings, especially the good ones! Both those titles are quite well-mastered, and that’s precisely why we carry them. Classic and Sundazed are each responsible for a world of bad sounding LPs, but every once in a while they get one right, and those they got right, all things considered.

UPDATE 2025

It is doubtful that these days we would agree with our previous estimation of those two titles being “right.” When we revisit the Heavy Vinyl pressings we used to like, even those with the caveat “all things considered,” rarely do we find that they have stood the test of time sonically.

But of course, as we never tire of pointing out, the real thing just can’t be beat, and the real thing is almost always an old record (and almost never a new one; seems like that should be the logical corollary, and by golly it is).

As for Bob, we were knocked out by that mono copy. We dropped the needle on side one and our jaws hit the floor — we’d never heard a Bob Dylan record sound so warm, rich, and sweet.

Columbia 360 Mono Mania

I was actually a big fan of the Sundazed Mono, but this has more of that Tubey Magic, richness, and overall naturalness that you find on old records, qualities that seem to be sorely lacking on even the best 180 gram remasterings. MoFi also did this title and ruined it in the process (shocker!).

I just don’t think you could make this record sound any better than it does here. Everything you could want from this music is here: wonderful clarity, mindblowing transparency, clearly audible transients on the guitar, texture to the vocals, full-bodied acoustic guitar sound, and so on.

Simon and Garfunkel – Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

More of the Music of Simon and Garfunkel

  • A Parsley, Sage… like you’ve never heard, with excellent Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on both sides of this vintage Stereo 360 pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Their best recording, a Top 100 album and a Demo Disc for Tubey Magical voices and guitars (particularly on side one)
  • Especially smooth, present, breathy vocals (also particularly on side one) – this is the sound we love here at Better Records
  • Having played them by the hundreds, we’ve found that midrange presence and resolution are precisely what go missing on the modern Heavy Vinyl reissue, and that if those qualities are important to you, vintage vinyl is the only solution to your problem
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…an achievement akin to the Beatles’ Revolver or the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album, and just as personal and pointed as either of those records at their respective bests.”
  • Fans of this folky duo should definitely find a place for this 1966 release, which is also their best sounding album
  • One specific set of stampers always win our shootouts, and when you hear them you will know why – the sound is big, rich and clear like no other
  • We’ve discovered a number of titles in which one stamper always wins, and here are some others

(more…)

Save the Life of My Child Is One Tough Test

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Simon and Garfunkel Available Now

The big production songs on Bookends have a tendency to get congested on even the best pressings, which is not uncommon for four track recordings from the 60s.

Those of you with properly set up high-dollar front ends should have less of a problem than those of you without them. $3000 cartridges can usually deal with this kind of complex information better than $300 ones.

But not always. Expensive does not always mean better, since painstaking and exacting setup is so essential to proper playback.

Save the Life of My Child — A Tough Test

I used to think this track would never sound good enough to use as an evaluation track. It’s a huge production that I had heretofore found all but impossible to get to sound right on even the best original copies of the album. Even as recently as ten years ago I had basically given up on reproducing it right.

Thankfully things have changed. Nowadays, with carefully cleaned top copies at our disposal and a system that is really cooking, virtually all of the harmonic distortion in the big chorus near the opening has disappeared. It takes a very special pressing and a very special stereo to play this song. That’s precisely what makes it a good test!

America — Another Tough Test

America is another one of the toughest tracks to get right. The big ending with its powerful orchestral elements is positively stunning on the rare copies that have little or no congestion in the loudest passages.

On virtually every copy you will ever hear the voices on this track are a little sibilant. Modern records are made with what is known as a de-essing limiter. This limiter recognizes sibilance and keeps it under control, because once the cutter head sees that kind of high frequency information, which is already boosted for the RIAA curve, it will try to cut it onto the record and the result will be this kind of spitty distortion.

(more…)

Simon & Garfunkel / Bookends

More Simon and Garfunkel

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, this early Stereo 360 pressing will be very hard to beat
  • Side one was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be amazed at how big and rich the sound is
  • This copy has lovely Midrange Magic on the guitars and voices, as well as plenty of studio ambience on most tracks, especially the simpler, more folky ones
  • An album that has become much tougher to come by, especially copies with sides that play as well as these do, although 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
  • A high percentage of pressings had condition problems this time around, including our Shootout Winner, so those of you looking for the best sound might have to wait until late-2025 or even 2026 it seems
  • Top 100, Five Stars – side two alone has four classics: “Fakin’ It,” “Mrs. Robinson,” “A Hazy Shade of Winter” and “At the Zoo”
  • If you’re a fan of this phenomenal folk duo, this early domestic pressing of their 1968 classic belongs in your collection.

The better copies of Bookends and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme are a sonic step up in class from anything else these two guys ever released. If you’re looking for the Ultimate Audiophile Simon & Garfunkel record, you just can’t do better than a killer Hot Stamper pressing of either title.

Do you know how hard it is to find a clean copy of this record? I’ll bet we look at 50 every year and probably buy no more than a few, which, after cleaning and going into a shootout may or may not sound good or have audiophile quality surfaces.

What We’re Listening For On Bookends

The bigger production songs on this album have a tendency to get congested on even the best pressings, which is not uncommon for Four Track recordings from the 60s. Those of you with properly set up high-dollar front ends should have less of a problem than some. $3000 cartridges can usually deal with this kind of complex information better than $300 ones.

But not always. Expensive does not always mean better since painstaking and exacting set up is so essential to proper playback.

The supremely talented Roy Halee handled the engineering duties. Not the most “natural” sounding record he ever made, but that’s clearly not what he or the duo were going for. The three of them would obviously take their sound much farther in that direction with the Grammy-winning Bridge Over Troubled Water from 1970.

The Wrecking Crew provided top quality backup, with Hal Blaine on drums and percussion, Joe Osborn on bass and Larry Knechtel on piano and keyboards.

(more…)

Simon and Garfunkel – The Concert in Central Park

More of the Music of Simon and Garfunkel 

  • S&G’s live reunion concert from 1982, here with superb Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on all FOUR sides – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • This copy is clean, clear, open and spacious with lovely breathy vocals and plenty of Tubey Magic (particularly on side one)
  • Side one is richer, smoother yet still very clear and highly resolving in precisely the way so few pressings are, and sides two, three and four are not far behind in all those areas
  • 4 1/2 stars: “This two-record set presents some of the duo’s biggest hits in a live context, and also allows listeners a chance to hear what many Simon solo numbers could sound like in S&G mode.”

(more…)

1A, or Is 1B Better on Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme? Your Guess Is As Good As Mine

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Simon and Garfunkel Available Now

UPDATE 2024

Speaking of 1A and 1B, the evidence is in. We have now confirmed that one of these sets of stampers (one for each side) can win shootouts. Which of the two it is we will leave to you to discover, as we make it a point never to give out the shootout winning stampers except under the rarest of circumstances. We give out plenty of stamper information, just not the stampers of the winners.

We now return to our commentary from many years ago:

Before we go any further, I have one question:

Why are we guessing?

I received an email recently from a customer who had gone to great pains to do his own shootout for a record; in the end he came up short, with not a lot to show for his time and effort. It had this bit tucked in toward the end:

Some of [Better Records’] Hot Stampers are very dear in price and most often due to the fact that there are so few copies in near mint condition. I hate to think of all the great Hot Stampers that have ended up in piles on the floor night after night with beer, Coke, and seeds being ground into them.

Can you imagine all the 1A 1B or even 2A 2B masters that ended up this way or were just played to death with a stylus that would be better used as a nail than to play a record!

To be clear, it’s extremely unlikely than any Hot Stampers have ever ended up in piles on the floor. Hot Stampers are not just originals or good sounding records.

They are pressings that have been cleaned, gone through the shootout process and found to be superior to their competition. Until they prove themselves, records like the ones whose unfortunate fate this reviewer fantasizes about are just old records that had the potential to sound good but never got the chance to demonstrate they had better sound than other pressings.

As it so happens, shortly thereafter I found myself on Michael Fremer’s old website of all places, where I saw something eerily similar in his review for the (no doubt awful) Sundazed vinyl. I quote below the relevant paragraphs.

(more…)

Paul Simon – Live Rhymin’

  • Simon’s first live album (one of only a handful of copies to hit the site in two years), here with a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side one
  • You get clean, clear, full-bodied, lively and musical analog sound from first note to last
  • Forget whatever dead-as-a-doornail Heavy Vinyl they’re making – the Tubey Magic, size and rock and roll energy of this very special vintage pressing simply cannot be beat
  • Features great versions of Simon classics, including “The Boxer,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “The Sound Of Silence” and many more

(more…)