*Favorite Engineers

Roy Wallace Is One of Our Favorite Engineers

More Recordings Engineered by Roy Wallace

More of Our Favorite Engineers

The Complete List of Roy Wallace Engineered Albums We’ve Reviewed

Roy Wallace was the engineer for many of our favorite sessions in Geneva’s glorious sounding Victoria Hall. 

The gorgeous hall the Suisse Romande recorded in was possibly the best recording venue of its day, possibly of all time. More amazing sounding recordings were made there than any other hall we know of. There is a richness to the sound that exceeds all others, yet clarity and transparency are not sacrificed in the least. It’s as wide, deep and three-dimensional as any, which is of course all to the good, but what makes the sound of these recordings so special is the weight and power of the brass and the timbral accuracy of the instruments in every section. 

These are the kinds of records that will make you want to take all your heavy vinyl classical pressings and put them on Ebay.

Quality record production is a lost art, and it’s been lost for a very long time.

New to the Blog? Start Here

Basic Concepts and Realities Explained 

Important Lessons We Learned from Record Experiments 

Making Audio Progress 

Hot Stampers Rule

(more…)

Bill Halverson Is One of Our Favorite Engineers

Bill Halverson Engineered Albums with Hot Stampers

Bill Halverson Engineered Albums We’ve Reviewed

More of Our Favorite Engineers

Bill Halverson is one of our favorite recording and mixing engineers.

Many of his recordings can be found in our Rock and Pop Top 100 List, which we limit to only those titles that we can actually find sufficient copies of with which to do our Hot Stamper shootouts.

New to the Blog? Start Here

What Exactly Are Hot Stamper Pressings?

Basic Concepts and Realities Explained 

Improving Your Critical Listening Skills

Bruce Botnick Is One of Our Favorite Engineers

Bruce Botnick Engineered Albums with Hot Stampers

Bruce Botnick Engineered Albums We’ve Reviewed

More of Our Favorite Engineers

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

New to the Blog? Start Here

Basic Concepts and Realities Explained

Important Lessons We Learned from Record Experiments 

Henry Lewy Is One of Our Favorite Producer/Engineers

Henry Lewy Engineered or Produced Albums with Hot Stampers

Henry Lewy Engineered or Produced Albums We’ve Reviewed

More of Our Favorite Engineers

Henry Lewy is one of our favorite producers and recording engineers.

Many of his recordings can be found in our Rock and Pop Top 100 List.

This Top 100 list is far from comprehensive. When it comes to our Hot Stamper shootouts, we have no choice but to limit ourselves to titles that are common enough to be findable in audiophile playing condition. They must also contain music popular enough to appeal to a wide group of our customers.

 

Andy Johns Is One of Our Favorite Engineers

Andy Johns Engineered Albums with Hot Stampers

Andy Johns Engineered Albums We’ve Reviewed

More of Our Favorite Engineers

ANDY JOHNS is one of our favorite recording and mixing engineers.

Many of his recordings can be found in our Rock and Pop Top 100 List of Best Sounding Albums (limited to titles that we can actually find enough copies to do our Hot Stamper shootouts).

Partial Discography

You may notice that we have done shootouts for a great many of these titles!

  • Stand Up – Jethro Tull (1969)
  • Town and Country – Humble Pie (1969)
  • Spooky Two – Spooky Tooth (1969)
  • Ssssh -Ten Years After (1969)
  • Blind Faith – Blind Faith (1969)
  • Led Zeppelin II – Led Zeppelin (1969)
  • Traffic – John Barleycorn Must Die (1970)
  • Led Zeppelin III – Led Zeppelin (1970)
  • Highway – Free (1970)
  • Led Zeppelin IV – Led Zeppelin (1971)
  • Sticky Fingers – Rolling Stones (1971)
  • Brain Capers – Mott the Hoople (1971)
  • Exile on Main St. – Rolling Stones (1972)
  • Living in the Past – Jethro Tull (1972)
  • Goats Head Soup – Rolling Stones (1973)
  • Houses of the Holy – Led Zeppelin (1973)
  • It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll – The Rolling Stones (1974)
  • Physical Graffiti – Led Zeppelin (1975)
  • “Eddie Money” – Eddie Money (1977)
  • Shadows and Light – Joni Mitchell (1980)
  • Coda – Led Zeppelin (1982)

Martin Birch Knows How to Get the Big Rock Sound of Deep Purple on Tape

More Recordings Engineered by Martin Birch

More of Our Favorite Engineers

Hot Stamper Pressings of Deep Purple Albums

When you get a Hot Stamper pressing like this one, Machine Head is a True Rock and Roll Demo Disc. Since our stereo is all about playing these kinds of records, and playing them at good loud levels as nature — and the artists — intended, we had a helluva time with Machine Head.

It had the kind of presence and energy that puts most copies of this album to shame. It’s also amazingly spacious, the result no doubt of it being recorded practically live in the studio.

On the best copies you can really hear the sound bouncing off the studio walls, just as you can on the best Zep, AC/DC and Bad Co. albums. You can just tell they are all playing this one live: it’s so relaxed and natural and REAL sounding. (More recordings with that sound can be found here.)

The vocalist is no doubt in a booth, but everyone else seems to be in a lively studio. With lovely extension up top this was a very sweet copy that cried out to be turned up good and loud. The louder we played it the better it sounded.

If you’ve got the full range dynamic speakers to play Deep Purple good and loud, you will discover, as we have, what a powerful British Blues Rock band they were.

(more…)

Hugh Padgham Is One of Our Favorite Producer-Engineers

Hugh Padgham Engineered or Produced Albums with Hot Stampers

Hugh Padgham Engineered or Produced Albums We’ve Reviewed

More of Our Favorite Engineers

Hugh Padgham is one of our favorite engineers and producers . Click on the links to find our in-stock HP engineered or produced albums, along with plenty of our commentaries about the quality of their sound. 

(more…)

Rudy Van Gelder is One of Our Favorite Engineers

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings Engineered by Rudy Van Gelder

Reviews and Commentaries for the Recordings of Rudy Van Gelder

More of Our Favorite Engineers

RVG is one of our favorite recording and mastering engineers. The really good RVG pressings (often on the later labels) sound shockingly close to live music — uncompressed, present, full of energy, with the instruments clearly located on a wide and often deep soundstage, surrounded by the natural space and cool air of his New Jersey studio. As our stereo has improved, and we’ve found better pressings and learned how to clean them better, his “you-are-there” live jazz sound has come to impress us more and more.

(more…)

Kenneth Wilkinson Is One of Our Favorite Engineers

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Kenneth Wilkinson

Reviews and Commentaries for the Recordings of Kenneth Wilkinson

More of Our Favorite Engineers

Click on the links above to find our in-stock Kenneth Wilkinson engineered albums, as well as plenty of our famous commentaries. 

Reviews and Commentaries for Recordings by Decca

Top Studios and Concert Halls – Kingsway Hall

Top Studios and Concert Halls – Victoria Hall

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).