Top Artists – Ten Years After

Letter of the Week – “…it was like there was a blanket taken off the speakers.”

More of the Music of Creedence Clearwater Revival

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Creedence Clearwater Revival

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

Hey Tom,   

Just some comments on the records purchased in July. Some of these records were a night and day experience for me. [For more tales of night and day experiences, we refer to them as “revelations,” please click here.]

I bought ten years after a space in time and nilsson son of shmilsson from the columbia record club back in the early seventies. I’ve taken good care of them and thought they sounded very good so I didn’t need to upgrade. You mentioned that we’ve never heard these records sound like this, so I thought I’d take a chance.

WOW! Space in time, son of schmillson, eat a peach, it was like there was a blanket taken off the speakers. Everything sounded sooo much better, more involving, the sound jumped out at me. And not that in-your-face shrill “run for the volume control” sound which was so prevalent in the late 80’s and into the 90’s. 

CCR cosmo’s factory, I’ve got an original mofi copy which sounded really good (I must have lucked out, 90% of the mofi’s I bought didn’t have a problem with sibilance. The ones that did have that problem and the dead as a doorknob presentation — anadisc 200 — are all gone.)

The super hot stamper of Cosmos factory on side 1 completely smoked the mofi, side 2 they were comparable. The super hot stamper had more depth to it. You could hear into the recording, making the experience more lifelike.

Thanks, Shane

Shane,

Thanks for writing. We love to hear from our satisfied customers!

Comparing the sound of the pressings you owned — including audiophile LPs in this case — versus the Hot Stamper pressings we sent you will allow you to recognize some fairly consistent differences. We’ve listed them below for handy reference and further study.

We hope these links will help you avoid other records with these same problems. As a general rule, the average pressing — of any kind — will fall short in some or all of the following areas when played head to head against the Hot Stamper pressings we offer:

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Various Artists / Woodstock

More Live Albums

  • These original pressings boast seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on all SIX sides
  • With Mint Minus Minus vinyl and no marks that can be heard, you will have a very hard time finding a copy that plays this well
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more richness, fullness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market
  • “As potent a musical time capsule as ever existed, it captures the three-day, 1969 concert event that united close to half a million members of what came to be known as the ‘Woodstock Generation.’ It topped the Billboard Charts for four weeks and sold two million copies.”

You will have a very hard time finding a quieter copy!

Folks, it was a struggle, let me tell you! Not as much of a struggle as putting on the concert itself to be sure, but a struggle for those of us charged with finding good sound on this famously badly recorded album.

First off there are six sides to play for every copy.

Secondly the sound is problematical at best; figuring out what the best copies do well that the run-of-the-mill copies don’t takes quite a bit of concentration, and one has to stay focused for a long time (most of the day in fact). After a while it can really start to wear on your nerves. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “Owning three other pressings of each LP, all I can say is WOW !!!”

Reviews and Commentaries for A Space in Time

More of the Music of The Who

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased. As you can judge from the prices quoted below, this was many, many years ago.

  Hey Tom, 

After two or so years, I finally tried my first hot stampers. A Space In Time, a top ten stranded-on-a-desert-island album, and Quadrophenia (my favorite Who album).

Owning three other pressings of each LP, all I can say is WOW !!! The copies I purchased from Better Records live up to your company’s name, especially side two of a Space In Time. At $60.00 and $75.00 respectively, I got quite a bargain. I can only imagine what some of the very best copies must sound like.

The joy and pleasure great music that sounds great can bring is priceless. After bill paying this weekend I can only hope that the Blood On The Tracks hot stamper is still there. With the Talisman I just ordered, I have to believe my listening experiences are only going to keep getting better !

Bob N.

Bob, thanks for your letter.

We love it when our customers take the time and make the effort to do their own shootouts, especially when we win, which is what happens about 99% of the time.

We especially love to hear that even our lower priced copies still beat the pants off whatever copies you have, even when you have three!

Let’s face it: the average copy is pretty average. We would never even bother to try and sell the average copy. Who needs it? Audiophiles want something that sounds good and record collectors can find records like these on ebay for under $10 or thereabouts, so no one in either group has any need to come to our site to get some run-of-the-mill pressing of titles as common as these.

Audiophiles come to us for the best, the copies that beat the Remastered Heavy Vinyl Con Jobs, the imports, the Half-Speeds, the whatever Audiophile BS pressing may be out there. We take them all on and beat them with ease, even with our lowest priced copies.

You don’t need to spend a fortune to get a great record from us. It helps — don’t get me wrong, our Top Dollar copies are OUT OF THIS WORLD. But for the price of a good dinner (maybe an especially good dinner), you can have a record that will give you joy and pleasure far out of proportion to its cost.

And it will last forever if you take good care of it.

We look forward to finding you more Better Records of your favorite music. (more…)

Ten Years After / A Space in Time

More Ten Years After

Reviews and Commentaries for A Space in Time

  • An excellent Columbia pressing with solid Double Plus (A++) sound throughout
  • These sides are tonally correct, big and bold, with the kind of rich, full-bodied sound that is the hallmark of rock recordings in the early to mid- ’70s
  • One of the most important records in my growth as an audiophile from 1971 to the present – my stereo was forced to evolve in order to play this kind of Big Production rock, at the loud levels that the album requires to work its magic
  • No matter how many times you play the album you will hear (and hopefully appreciate) something new in the mix
  • 4 stars: “The leadoff track, ‘One of These Days,’ is a particularly scorching workout, featuring extended harmonica and guitar solos. The production on A Space in Time is crisp and clean, a sound quite different from the denseness of its predecessors [that] has its share of sparkling moments.”

I always knew this great album could sound good, but it’s not often I heard it sound like this!

A Space in Time is just one of the recordings that made me pursue Big Stereo Systems driving Big Speakers, right from my earliest days in audio. You need large dynamic drivers with plenty of piston area – the kind that can move a lot of air – in order to bring the power of the music to life.

If you have big speakers and a penchant for giving the old volume knob an extra click or two, it just doesn’t get any better than A Space In Time.

No matter how many times you play the album you will hear (and hopefully appreciate) something new in the mix. I’ve been playing ASIT for thirty years and I heard lots of things this time around I never knew were there. This is why we keep improving our systems, right? There is never going to be a time when these nearly forty year old recordings have nothing new to offer.

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Turntable Tweaking Works Its Magic Once Again – “I’m sitting in shock!”

More Hot Stamper Testimonial Letters

What Exactly Are Hot Stamper Pressings?

Hi Tom,

Just wanted to give you a big thank you for the commentary on turntable tweaking. I constantly learn important advice on the audiophile subject from your website. I check it everyday.

Lately I have been thinking my audio sound was lacking. It didn’t sound as good as I remember it. After reading the turntable tweaking advice, I reset up the tonearm. VTF, VTA, and azimuth.

I have “magic” in my sound now.

Listened to some Neil Young, [Ten Years After] A Space in Time. Very Tubey.

Listened to my Miles Davis Kind of Blue. It sounded better than I ever heard it. I’m sitting in shock!

The killer was Chicago 2. I love 25-6-to 4 so I was blown away and normally I’m not interested in the rest of that side of the album but I sat through the rest of it and was enthralled by the vocals. Memories of Love is one track I was never interested in but it sounded so good I loved it.

When you want to listen to every record in your collection, you know you’ve done something right.

Anyway I want you to know we audiophiles appreciate the time you take to put up your advice and commentaries. I just got a huge upgrade and it didn’t cost me a cent. Only some time and I learned a little more.

Thanks a bunch, 
Steve E.

Steve,

You are more than welcome!

Further Reading

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A Space in Time – One of The Most Tubey Magical Rock Recordings of All Time

Reviews and Commentaries for A Space in Time

Hot Stamper Pressings of Psychedelic Rock Recordings Available Now

This is some of the best High-Production-Value rock music of the ’70s. The amount of effort that went into the recording of this album is comparable to that expended by the engineers and producers of bands like Supertramp, Yes, Jethro Tull, Ambrosia, Pink Floyd and too many others to list. It seems that no effort or cost was spared in making the home listening experience as compelling as the recording technology of the day permitted. (Of course, as it turns out, recording technology only got worse as the decade wore on, and during the ’80s the sound of most records went off a cliff.) Big Production British Rock & Roll just doesn’t get much better than A Space in Time.

The Tubey Magic Top Ten

You don’t need tube equipment to hear the prodigious amounts of Tubey Magic that exist on this recording. For those of you who’ve experienced top quality analog pressings of Meddle or Dark Side of the Moon, or practically any jazz album on Contemporary, whether played through tubes or transistors, that’s the luscious sound of Tubey Magic, and it is all over A Space in Time.

Ranked strictly in terms of Tubey Magic I would have to put this album on our list of Most Tubey Magical Rock Recordings of All Time, right up there with, in no particular order:

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Ten Years After – A Killer Audio Fidelity Gold CD

More of the Music of Ten Years After

Reviews and Commentaries for A Space in Time

Our old commentary:

The BGO Import CD of this album is excellent. No match for a Hot Stamper of course, but dramatically better than the average classic rock CD, and quite a bit better than the domestic CDs we’ve auditioned, which are flat and badly lacking in Tubey Magic.

Newsflash (3/2014)

The Audio Fidelity Gold CD mastered by Steve Hoffman is even better. If you don’t want to buy a Hot Stamper LP, that CD is your best bet (assuming it sounds as good as mine, something one cannot assume, but that’s a story for another day).

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Bad Digital Remastering Jobs

CD Advice 

Ten Years After – Cricklewood Green – Reviewed in 2010

xxxxx

This very nice looking original Deram British Import LP has that good old Heavy British Rock sound. It’s lively if a bit crude, but that’s pretty much the way these bands were recorded. The sound varies quite a bit from track to track, with some sounding noticeably better than others. Not much new there.

’Me and My Baby’ is a particularly good sounding song here. It sounds like it was recorded live in the studio, and it probably was!   (more…)

Ten Years After / Self-Titled – Reviewed in 2008

I had no idea the band’s first album was recorded this well. I expected it to sound something like an old Rolling Stones Decca — tubey magical but plagued by a fair amount of compression, distortion and limited at both ends of the frequency spectrum. 

Instead, when the needle hit the groove, out of the speakers poured truly MASTER TAPE SOUND! Who knew? Clear as a bell, super-transparent, zero-distortion, spacious, and tubey magical in the best sense of that phrase — not fat and sloppy, but rich and sweet. To my ear there is practically no processing to the sound.

For a recording from 1967 to sound this good is a bit of a shock. Sgt. Pepper came out in 1967, but it’s full of studio trickery. The kind of purity and freedom from distortion that characterizes this Ten Years After record puts it at the opposite end of the artificial recording spectrum. I can’t think of another record from this far back that has this kind of sound. More than anything it proves it could be done; they had the technology.

Oh how far we have fallen. And you can be sure of one thing: the domestic pressings are not going to sound like this one. The Moody Blues on domestic Deram pressings are a joke next to the imports. Those tapes are in England, baby, and I doubt they ever crossed the pond.

Ten Years After / A Space In Time – A Thrill on Big Speakers at Loud Levels

More of the Music of Ten Years After

Reviews and Commentaries for A Space in Time

A Space in Time is just one of the recordings that made me pursue Big Stereo Systems driving Big Speakers, right from my earliest days in audio. You need large dynamic drivers with plenty of piston area – the kind that can move a lot of air – in order to bring the power of the music to life.  

If you have big speakers and a penchant for giving the old volume knob an extra click or two, it just doesn’t get any better than A Space in Time.

The Seventies – What a Decade!

Acoustic guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this record. The harmonic coherency, the richness, the body and the phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum.

This is some of the best High-Production-Value rock music of the ’60s and ’70s. The amount of effort that went into the recording of this album is comparable to that expended by the engineers and producers of bands like Supertramp, The Who, Jethro Tull, Ambrosia, Pink Floyd and far too many others to list. It seems that no effort or cost was spared in making the home listening experience as compelling as the recording technology of the day permitted.

Big Production Tubey Magical British Psych Rock just doesn’t get much better than A Space in Time.