Rudy Van Gelder, Engineer – Reviews and Commentaries

Letter of the Week – “My brain just wasn’t used to having so much more sound coming out of the speakers.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Rudy Van Gelder Available Now

Our good customer Michel wrote to us about his experience playing one of our Hot Stamper pressings of Midnight Blue.

Hi Tom,
I used the first track to compare this Super Hot Stamper pressing I bought to a ’63 original to the Music Matters pressing. This was kind of interesting.

The Music Matters is total junk, as it is completely lifeless. It just has that lifeless audiophile feel. So I’ll just take the MM right out of the equation.

My brain is used to the original pressing’s sound, which is more raw sounding.

The SHS is, simply put,way more of everything!

So much so that I had to turn the gain down… my brain just wasn’t used to having so much more sound coming out of the speakers. The tubeyness factor is way way higher than the original. I eventually acclimated and turned it back up.

The original just has that sound that makes me think of long ago, and it is quite vibrant. Perhaps after some dozen listenings I will put it in the sell pile, but not quite yet.

Very happy to have this amazingly lush sounding LP.

Take Care, Michel

Michel,

It’s hard to imagine that you will be able to listen to the original “ear” pressing a dozen times. We never cared for it. Compared to the later pressings we sell it’s just too crude. (That may be what you actually mean by “raw”.)

Rudy would go on to recut the record much better down the road, and those are, in our experience, unbeatable.

As for Music Matters, most of their records are pretty bad sounding, but no worse than most of what is being marketed to audiophiles these days. Here are some of our reviews and commentaries for their crappy remasters.

Lifeless? Of course it is.

The records being made by the companies operating today have sound that is more often than not dead as a doornail.

It’s positively shameful, especially considering the quality of the original recordings.

Thanks for writing,

Best, TP

Further Reading

David Turner Was Taking Care Of Business in 1978

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Sonny Rollins Available Now

The complete Tenor Madness album is found here, with big, full-bodied, MONO jazz sound at its best, courtesy of the great one, Rudy Van Gelder.

This is what classic 50s jazz is supposed to sound like – they knew how to do these kinds of records forty years ago. Those mastering skills are in short supply nowadays, if not downright extinct.

The transfers from 1978 by David Turner are in tune with the sound of these recordings – there’s not a trace of phony EQ on this entire record.

This Two-Fer includes all of Tenor Madness and most of Work Time and Tour De Force.

Top jazz players such as Ray Bryant, John Coltrane, Red Garland, Kenny Drew, Max Roach and Paul Chambers can be heard on the album.

If you want all the Tubey Magic of the earlier pressings, a top quality pressing of the real Tenor Madness album on Prestige might give you more of that sound.

David Turner’s mastering setup in the 70s has a healthy dose of Tubey Magic, but it can’t compete in that area with the All Tube cutting chains that were making records in the ’50s and ’60s.  Without one of those early pressings around to compare, we don’t think you’re going to feel you are missing out on anything in the sound with best copies.

And where can you find an early Prestige pressing with audiophile playing surfaces like these?   (more…)

“It’s the best record Chad ever made, because it’s not terrible.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Rudy Van Gelder Available Now

In the award winning video Geoff Edgers produced for the Washington Post, a sequence has me listening to a copy of Quiet Kenny that I had never heard before. The record sounded decent enough, better than the ERC mono pressing we had played against it. When told that it was an Analogue Productions release, I say something along the lines of “Then it’s the best record Chad ever made, because it’s not terrible.”

True, it wasn’t terrible, but I didn’t think it was very good either. It had the kind of sound Kevin Gray, the mastering engineer responsible for it, can be relied on to deliver. I didn’t know who cut it until after I’d looked it up, but knowing The Reliable KPG (his rapper name, mine is The Notorious TTP) was involved fit perfectly with my opinion of his work in general, which can be summed up in one word: workmanlike.

There’s nothing wrong with that, and Kevin is a nice guy. I’m sure he means well.

The off-the-cuff remark quoted above seems to be a sticking point with many of those who watched the video from the WAPO piece, as well as those who watched the interview.

With the above in mind, allow me to make a formal request of those commentators taking me to task for saying that Chad has never made a good record in his life.

Although I certainly cannot name one, apparently many of the commentators think they can.

Funny how not a single title has been offered. At least I have not seen one. I looked really hard too.

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Bad Benson and Bad Audio – It’s a Match

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of George Benson Available Now

UPDATE 2026

Some notes about this shootout from years back may be instructive.

White Hot Stamper sound on side two, which means this copy has the power to show you just how well-recorded the album really is, and how much energy and drive there is to both the sound and the music.

No other side of any copy earned the full Three Plus White Hot grade, so this is a very special side indeed. [Now that we are much better at our jobs — see the advice at the end of this review — this happens only a few times a year.]

We didn’t run into any awful CTI originals the way we do with the typical rock record from the 70s, but it’s the rare copy that has a real top end, or much in the way of transparency, or freedom from smear. This copy has all three, without any sacrifice in richness or Tubey Magic.

Rich, full-bodied sound is not hard to find on Bad Benson; most copies had the goods in the bass and lower midrange.

Your Old Stereo (If You Had One in the Seventies)

On the other hand, clarity, top end, transparency and freedom from smear were hard to come by on all but a few copies. Most copies sound pretty much like your old ’70s stereo system — you know, the one you had with the three-way box speakers sitting on concrete blocks.

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California Dreaming on Cisco Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Wes Montgomery Available Now

Beware any and all imitations, even this one, which I admit I used to like somewhat.

The Cisco pressing of California Dreaming barely begins to convey the qualities of the real master tape — scratch that, make that the recording — the way the best pressings do.

Our Hot Stampers exhibit huge amounts of ambience and spaciousness, with far more energy and the kind of “see into the studio” quality that only the best vintage pressings ever have.

Note especially how so much musical information is coming from the far sides of the soundfield on the best copies.

The Cisco reissue makes a mockery of that wall to wall sound, sucking it into the middle and flattening it into a single plane. You can thank Kevin Gray and his lousy cutting chain for all of the above and more.

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Letter of the Week – “Thank you for getting me off the ‘original pressings are the best’ gerbil wheel”

Hot Stamper Pressings that Sound Their Best on the Right Reissue

One of our good customers had this to say about some records he purchased locally, not even from us! (Bolding has been added.)

By the way, have I thanked you yet for getting me off the “original pressings are the best” gerbil wheel? I’ve now got a stack of two-fers that I paid $15 apiece for that sound fantastic.

Yup, the very same records that Fremer ridiculed you for selling. [1]

I can buy a copy of an original pressing of Saxophone Colossus [2] for $300 on discogs with absolutely no notes on how the music sounds and no return policy. Or, I can get it for $15 in a twofer at my neighborhood shop, and I can’t imagine it sounding better. Folks just aren’t buying records for the way they sound. It’s nuts.

Tom, you’re like a consultant. It’s almost like I pay you for your knowledge and guidance by buying records from you, but you’re giving information away for free to anybody willing to listen.

In another letter ab_ba added this thought after posting on the Hoffman forum and watching the LP 45 guy video with Geoff Edgers as his guest:

What a learning experience the last couple of days have been for me. I am just really surprised how little interest in evidence and objectivity my co-hobbyists have proven to have. I know we are in a very anti-objective time right now, but it’s actually almost scary how pervasive it seems to be.

For my own journey into vinyl, a tremendous amount of exploration, experimentation, and tinkering have been essential. I can’t imagine going about it any other way. I’ve begun to wonder what on earth all these other chaps are doing. I mean, does vinyl even sound better than digital on their rigs?? If you don’t try stuff out, you’ll never make progress.

Anyway, looking for open-mindedness, curiosity, and balance in this discussion is futile.

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Tell It Like It Is – Another A&M Half-Speed Mastered Disaster

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of George Benson Available Now

The Half-Speed is pretty — pretty lifeless if you ask me, in the way that so many Half-Speed mastered records are.

It’s cut very clean, but until you play a good A&M pressing, you don’t know how much meat has been stripped from the bones. The best A&M pressings sound like a Rudy Van Gelder recording, which, of course, they are.

These A&M Half-Speeds suffer from all the same shortcomings that other Half-Speeds suffer from: the kind of pretty but lifeless and oh-so-boring sound that we describe in listing after listing.

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What Exactly Does Van Gelder Stamped in the Deadwax Tell You?

Hot Stamper Pressings of CTI Titles Available Now

The section of the stamper sheet we wrote up after our most recent shootout belongs to George Benson’s White Rabbit album, the one released by CTI in 1972.

We think these stampers illustrate an important reality regarding the variability of record pressings, and it’s one that we run into on regularly during shootouts.

Keep in mind that the notes you see were made without the listener knowing what the stamper numbers were for the copy being evaluated. Some relevant facts:

  • Rudy Van Gelder cut all the original domestic pressings for the album that we played in our shootout since those are the only ones we know of to have the potential for Hot Stamper sound. (Hint: forget the reissues, imports, etc.)
  • The stampers for the two copies you see below were the two worst performers out of the six we had to work with. (We started out with more than six copies to audition. Unfortunately, some of the copies we clean and play get tossed out during the shootout for having noise issues — scratches that play, bad vinyl, inner groove distortion, etc. Noisy copies of  fairly common jazz records are not saleable no matter how good they sound.)
  • The top pressing shown below earned good, not great Hot Stamper grades of 1.5+ on both sides. This is the minimal rating any Hot Stamper pressing must earn to be offered to our customers. As you can see, A12/B2 are the stampers for this pressing.
  • There was another A12 side one in our shootout that did slightly better, earning a 2+ grade. The pressing you see at the bottom also had an A12 side one, but it did not make the grade. (The N/A means we didn’t play side two of that copy because the 1+ side one makes the record not worth the bother.)

We know that White Rabbit is an outstanding George Benson album, recorded by the immensely talented Rudy Van Gelder himself. All the original pressings were mastered by him as well. We’ve been doing shootouts for the album for more than a decade and in that time have heard some amazing sounding copies. I don’t recall one ever being returned, for any reason.

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On First Light Listen for a Smeary Trumpet

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Freddie Hubbard Available Now

UPDATE 2026

A shootout for First Light from way back in 2011 taught us a thing or two about trumpet smear.

This Hot Stamper original CTI pressing from our shootout in 2011 has a truly SUPERB side two that put to shame most of what we played.

Smeary, blurry trumpet blasts? Not here. Nope, the transient bite and energy of the trumpet is as REAL as it gets. 

Side Two

This Super Hot side earned a grade of A++ with its exceptional high end (although it doesn’t extend quite all the way, just most of the way) and its amazing transparency. It’s so clear! You really hear into this one, in the way that the best of the classic jazz recordings allow you to do, recordings such as Kind of Blue and the better Contemporaries.

And no smear. Trumpet records with no smear, by Freddie Hubbard or anyone else, or hard to come by. A bit more richness and this one would have been in White Hot Stamper territory. It is awfully close to the best we heard.

Side One

Earning a grade of A Plus, this is the side where some of that smear we discussed earlier can clearly be heard. The sound is rich, richer than side two even, with a huge stage and correctly sized instruments. It’s just that the midrange is a bit veiled and smeary, and the midrange is where the trumpet is.

Digging Creed Taylor Inc. and RVG

We’ve been really digging Creed Taylor‘s productions for years now. On the better albums such as this one, the players tend to sound carefree and loose — you can tell they’re enjoying the hell out of these songs. Don’t get me wrong — we still love the Blue Note and Contemporary label stuff for our more “hard core” jazz needs, but it’s a kick to hear top jazz musicians laying down these grooves and not taking themselves so seriously…especially when it sounds as good as this copy does.

Rudy Van Gelder gets one hell of a lively trumpet sound in this period of his career. If you have a good pressing of one of his early 70s jazz recordings, the sound can be positively explosive, with what feels like the power of live music.

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Getz Au Go Go on Polygram – Isn’t This Record Supposed to Be Stereo?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Bossa Nova Albums Available Now

As part of our recent [probably from 2011] shootout for the album, one of the pressings we played was a later reissue, most likely from the late 70s or early 80s.   

As a general rule we make a point to go out of our way to play practically any copy we can get our hands on, in the off chance that a reissue will beat the original. It’s happened plenty of times. Those of you with White Hot Stamper shootout winning copies of some of our favorite titles know what I’m talkin’ about.

Imagine our surprise when this pressing — in a stereo jacket, with a label with the word “stereo” printed right on it — turned out to be dead MONO.

The sound was godawful — small, flat, and bereft of the ambience that makes this recording so enjoyable. The same would probably be true for the mono originals, but since I haven’t played one of those in decades I will just say that that would be no more than a guess, albeit an educated one.

Yet another reason not to believe a word you read on an album jacket or label.

A public service from your record loving audiophile friends here at Better Records. (more…)