*Favorite Engineers

Ken Scott Is One of Our Top Five Favorite Engineers

Hot Stamper Pressings of Ken Scott’s Recordings

More of Our Favorite Engineers

Ken Scott (there he is smoking next to Paul) is one of our favorite record engineers and producers. Click on the link to find the albums on our site that Ken worked on, along with plenty of our commentaries about the sound of his recordings. 

Ken Scott (Ziggy Stardust, Magical Mystery Tour, Honky Chateau, Crime of the Century, Truth, Birds of Fire) is the man responsible for the sound of many of our All Time Favorite Albums here at Better Records.

The kind of Tubey Magical richness, smoothness and fullness he achieved at Trident in the early ’70s has never been equaled elsewhere in our opinion.

In 2008 I had the opportunity to hear Ken speak at an AES meeting here in Los Angeles. I won’t bore you by trying to recap his talk, but if it ever comes out on youtube or the like, you should definitely check it out. The Behind-The-Scenes discussion of these artists and their recordings was a thrill for someone like me who has been playing and enjoying the hell out of most of his albums for more than thirty years.

Many can be found in our Rock and Pop Top 100 List of Best Sounding Albums with the Best Music (limited to titles that we can actually find sufficient copies of with which to do our Hot Stamper shootouts).

Roy DuNann Is One of Our Favorite Engineers

ROY DUNANN is one of our favorite recording and mixing engineers.

Roy DuNann recordings we’ve reviewed on the blog can be seen here.

Some of our other favorite engineers can be seen here.

We love the sound of Contemporary Records — it’s our favorite jazz label by a long shot.

Roy DuNann always seems to get The Real Sound out of the sessions he recorded — amazingly realistic drum sound; full-bodied, breathy horns; lots of top-end extension; deep, note-like bass; weighty piano and so on.

RVG and Columbia make great recordings too, but none are as consistently natural as those on Contemporary.

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Eddie Offord Is One of Our Favorite Engineers

Eddie Offord Engineered Albums with Hot Stampers

Eddie Offord Engineered Albums We’ve Reviewed

More of Our Favorite Engineers

Eddie Offord is one of our favorite recording and mixing engineers. Click on the links below to find our in-stock Eddie Offord engineered or produced albums, along with plenty of our famous commentaries.  

Many can be found in our Rock and Pop Top 100 List of Best Sounding Albums with the Best Music (limited to titles that we can actually find sufficient copies of with which to do our Hot Stamper shootouts).

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Rhett Davies Is One of Our Favorite Engineers

Hot Stamper Pressings of Rhett Davies’ Recordings Available Now

Rhett Davies is one of our favorite producers and recording / mixing engineers.

Davies recorded some of our favorite albums of all time and we want to pay tribute to this unsung hero, a man who has brought so much joy and pleasure to audiophiles through albums like those listed below.

Many can be found in our rock and pop Top 100 list of Best Sounding Albums with the Best Music (limited to titles that we can actually find enough copies of in order to do a Hot Stamper shootout).

Select Discography

1973 – Genesis – Selling England by the Pound (Engineer/Asst. Engineer)
1974 – Robert Palmer – Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley (Engineer)
1974 – Eno – Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (Engineer)
1975 – Eno – Another Green World (Producer, Engineer)
1975 – Phil Manzanera – Diamond Head (Engineer)
1975 – Fripp/Eno – Evening Star (Engineer)
1975 – Camel – Snow Goose (Engineer)
1976 – 801 – 801 Live (Engineer)
1976 – Camel – Moonmadness (Producer, Engineer)
1976 – Roxy Music – Viva! (Engineer)
1977 – Brian Eno – Before and After Science (Producer, Engineer)
1977 – Phil Manzanera/801 – Listen Now (Keyboards, Hammond Organ, Engineer)
1977 – Camel – Rain Dances (Producer) 
1978 – Brian Eno – Ambient 1: Music for Airports (Engineer)
1978 – Dire Straits – Dire Straits (Engineer)
1978 – Talking Heads – More Songs About Buildings and Food (Engineer)
1979 – Roxy Music – Manifesto (Engineer)
1980 – Roxy Music – Flesh + Blood (Producer, Engineer)
1981 – King Crimson – Discipline (Producer)
1982 – Roxy Music – Avalon (Producer, Engineer, Mixing)
1982 – King Crimson – Beat (Producer)

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Glyn Johns Is One of Our Favorite Engineers

glyn

Glyn Johns is one of our favorite producers and recording / mixing engineers. Click on the link to find our in-stock Glyn Johns engineered or produced albums, along with plenty of our famous commentaries.

It was only about 2000 or so that we discovered what an amazing engineer and producer Glyn Johns is. A Hot Stamper of the first Eagles album on the original Asylum White Label blew my mind, produced and engineered by none other, so I quickly started looking around for other records he might have had a hand in. How about Who’s Next? Let It Bleed? On The Border (my personal favorite Eagles album)? Led Zeppelin’s debut? And of course, Sticky Fingers, a record that I’ve always known had the potential for great sound — you can hear it buried under all that bad vinyl and groove wear. You can hear it; you just can’t enjoy it through the noise.

And just recently I was reading the liner notes for Graham Nash’s solo debut, Songs For Beginners, one of the best sounding rock records ever made, and whose name should I see in the credits as mixing engineer, thirty plus years after I first fell in love with the album? The man himself of course. Here’s what we wrote:

The sound is of course superb throughout, in the best tradition of Crosby Stills and Nash’s classic early recordings: transparent, smooth and sweet vocals, with loads of midrange magic ; deep punchy bass (wait until you hear Better Days!); lovely extension on the top to capture the shimmer of the cymbals and harmonic trails of the acoustic guitars; with the whole balanced superbly by one of our all-time heroes, Glyn Johns.


More of our favorite engineers

More letters, reviews and commentaries for the recordings of Glyn Johns

Roy Halee Is One of Our Favorite Engineers

Roy Halee is one of our favorite producers and recording / mixing engineers.

Check out our supply of Roy Halee engineered or produced albums. Many can be found in our Rock and Pop Top 100 List of Best Sounding Albums with the Best Music (limited to titles that we can actually find sufficient copies of with which to do our Hot Stamper shootouts).

Some of the better Roy Halee recordings we’ve reviewed on the blog can be found here. He made what is, in our opinion, the best sounding rock record of all time, Blood Sweat and Tears Self-Titled second album, which blows our mind to this very day.

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Lee Herschberg Is One of Our Favorite Engineers

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Lee Herschberg

Reviews and Commentaries for the Recordings of Lee Herschberg

More of Our Favorite Engineers

Lee Herschberg is one of our favorite producers and recording / mixing engineers. Click on the links above to find more of the albums he engineered or produced, along with plenty of our famous commentaries. 

One of the top guys at Warners, you’ll find his name in the credits for many of the best releases by the Randy Newman, Gordon Lightfoot, The Doobie Brothers, Ry Cooder and Frank Sinatra, albums we know to have outstanding sound (potentially anyway; you have to have an outstanding pressing to hear outstanding sound).

And of course we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the album most audiophiles know all too well, Rickie Lee Jones’ debut. Herschberg’s pop and rock engineering credits run for pages. He won the Grammy for Strangers in the Night.

The one album that gets my vote for Herschberg’s Pop Engineering Masterpiece would have to be Michael McDonald’s If That’s What It Takes. On the best copies the sound is out of this world.

The most amazing jazz piano trio recording we know of is Herschberg’s as well: The Three (with Shelly Manne, Ray Brown and Joe Sample).

It may not have the most natural sound — Shelly Manne’s arms stretch from one side of the room to the other — but it is explosively dynamic, capturing more of the energy of a live performance than practically any jazz record we’ve ever played.


Shelly Yakus Is One of Our Favorite Engineers

More Recordings Engineered by Shelly Yakus

SHELLY YAKUS is one of our favorite recording and mixing engineers.

Check out the Shelly Yakus engineered or produced albums we have in stock, along with plenty of commentaries about the sound of the records he’s engineered, from Moondance (his first official lead engineering gig) to Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus and more.

One or two can be found in our Rock and Pop Top 100 List of Best Sounding Albums with the Best Music, limited to titles that we can actually find enough copies of in order to carry out our patent pending (not really) Hot Stamper shootouts.

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Bob Simpson Is One of Our Favorite Engineers

Bob Simpson Engineered Albums with Hot Stampers

Bob Simpson Engineered Albums We’ve Reviewed

Bob Simpson is one of our favorite recording and mixing engineers. Click on the links above to find his albums, along with plenty of our famous commentaries. 

He won the Grammy for engineering Belafonte at Carnegie Hall you may recall.

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More of Our Favorite Engineers 

Phil Ramone Is One of Our Favorite Producer-Engineers

Phil Ramone one of our favorite engineers and producers.

Click on the links below to find our in-stock Phil Ramone engineered or produced albums, along with plenty of our famous commentaries. 

Phil Ramone Engineered or Produced Albums with Hot Stampers

Phil Ramone Engineered Albums We’ve Reviewed

Phil Ramone Produced Albums We’ve Reviewed

More of Our Favorite Engineers

 

 

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