The best sounding copy to ever hit the site, with BY FAR the best sounding side one we have ever played — as good as the sound can be on most copies, side one here took it to another level. Sometimes we call that Four Plus but for not let’s just call it At Least Three Plus.
And it’s on quiet vinyl, as quiet a record as Rounder knows how to press, I would venture to say.
This copy blew our minds with the quality of its sound. I don’t know when I’ve heard the bass reproduced with this kind of speed and authority.
Last time around for a 2 1/2 copy we wrote:
We frankly don’t know if this record can sound any better than it does here. We erred on the side of caution and chose to award it something short of the full Three Pluses for sound. If you had a big enough stack of copies who knows what you might hear? As we like to say, everything is relative. The monster pressing has to be out there somewhere, even if it takes a hundred copies to find it. Since we’ve had exactly two copies make it to our site, the amazing sound of this copy will have to do for now.
Well, after hearing how good the record can sound I went on a tear picking them up off the internet in order to find that ‘big enough stack.”
I’m glad this copy somehow ended up in the stack — a random process that cannot be predicted of course — because it kicks the recording up a notch above even the best copies we had played previously. Phenomenal sound. A Demo Disc par excellence.
As for the music, solo bass is surely not everyone’s cup of tea, but you can’t argue with the sonics. Wasserman is as gifted a player as I’ve ever heard (and I’ve heard Ray Brown live — that guy was pretty damn gifted too!). (more…)
