Bernie Grundman, Engineer (Vintage)

James Taylor / One Man Dog – A Personal Favorite and Forgotten Gem

More of the Music of James Taylor

  • This early Green Label pressing boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout
  • Big, rich and solid on both sides, with a more relaxed, musical quality, as well as the clarity that was missing from most other copies we played
  • The sound of the best pressings is raw, real and exceptionally unprocessed
  • There is not a false note to be found on side one: it’s brilliant from start to finish, and side two is almost as good – we love the Abbey Road-like medley that makes up most of it
  • “Taylor turns in his best singing performance, running through the songs with fire, force, and enthusiasm…” – Rolling Stone
  • If you’re a fan of old JT, this overlooked title from 1972 surely belongs in your collection

Play Chili Dog here, one of our favorite tracks, and note not only the clarity and spaciousness, but the PUNCH and LIFE of the music. This song is supposed to be fun. The average compressed dull copy only hints at that fact.

Then skip on down to the hit at the end of the side, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight, another favorite track for testing. There’s a lot of bass in the mix on this track, but the best copies keep it under control. When it gets loose and starts blurring the midrange, the vocals and guitars seem “blocked”. The best copies let you hear all that meaty bass, as well as into the midrange.

One Man Dog, like many early WB pressings, has a tendency to be dull and opaque. (Most side twos have a real problem in that respect.) When you get one like this, with more of an extended top end, it tends to come with much more space, size, texture, transparency, ambience and openness.

Of course it does; that’s where much of that stuff is, up high. Most copies don’t have nearly enough of it, but thankfully this one does.

Tubey Magical acoustic guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this recording. Simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum, along with richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and especially from modern remasterings).

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Joni Mitchell – The Hissing of Summer Lawns

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • You’ll find INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout this early Asylum pressing
  • Lots of Tubey Magic, textured synths, big bass and breathy vocals – this copy brings Joni’s jazzy folky fusion to life
  • Check out the big bottom end on “The Jungle Line,” which features the Drummers Of Burundi
  • Who made a more original, forward looking and interesting album in 1975 than this? I can’t think of anyone, can you?
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Joni Mitchell evolved from the smooth jazz-pop of Court and Spark to the radical Hissing of Summer Lawns, an adventurous work that remains among her most difficult records [as difficult as it is brilliant] … a strange and beautiful fusion of jazz and shimmering avant pop.”

Both sides here are airy, open, and spacious, with plenty of ambience. The bottom end is tight and punchy throughout with good solid weight, and the top end is silky sweet. Many copies of this album have a phony hi-fi “glare” that made us wince, but the sound here is warm and natural.

After hearing a few copies that bored us to tears years ago we had pretty much given up on finding good sound for this album, but once we found some truly hot Hot Stampers we found ourselves really enjoying this sophisticated Jazzy Folk Pop music.

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Joni Mitchell – Ladies Of The Canyon

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • This vintage Reprise pressing boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • Ladies of The Canyon is a very strong album for Joni, with some of her most well known, seemingly timeless songs: “Morning Morgantown,” “For Free,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Woodstock,” “The Circle Game” and more
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more space, richness, 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
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Yet another essential listen in Mitchell’s recorded canon.”
  • If you’re a fan of this lady, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this title is clearly one of the best of 1970 and a true Must Own for the audiophile

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Jackson Browne – The Pretender

More Jackson Browne

 More Asylum Label Recordings

  • ou’ll find STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this this vintage Asylum pressing
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “weighty and rich”…”vox jumping out of the speakers”…”smooth and full and present”…”3D and rich”…”lots of bass”
  • The best pressings are Rock / Pop Demo Discs – they’re so rich and full-bodied they make most of the competition sound positively anemic
  • Five Stars in Rolling Stone, one of their Top 500 Albums, and a true classic from 1976
  • One of the best sounding records Jackson Browne ever made, along with his debut – this is the pressing that backs up everything we say and more
  • If you’re a Jackson Browne fan, this title from 1976 is surely a Must Own
  • Asylum in the Seventies was known for its especially smooth recordings, but plenty of other labels produced smooth recordings, and here is a link to some of our favorites
  • These superb vintage pressings are quite different from the ones they are making these days, which have taken the concept of “smooth sounding analog” and stretched it well past its limits, resulting in a great many pressings that are far too smooth to be taken seriously

As I’m sure you know by now, especially if you own a few copies, most pressings of The Pretender don’t sound like Demo Discs. In fact, most copies of this record are mediocre at best — thin, grainy, and flat sounding.

This copy is none of those things. And it positively kills the famous MoFi pressing.

Problems to Watch For

Some of the more common problems we ran into during our shootouts were slightly veiled, slightly smeary sound, with not all the top end extension that the best copies have.

You can easily hear that smear on the guitar transients; usually they’re a tad blunted and the guitar harmonics don’t ring the way they should.

These problems are just as common to the original Asylum pressings as they are to the later LPs. Smeary, veiled, top-end-challenged pressings were regularly produced over the years. They are the rule, not the exception.

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Michael Jackson – Off The Wall

More Michael Jackson

Reviews and Commentaries for Off the Wall

  • A vintage pressing of this MJ classic with some of the most heartfelt, emotional and powerful music he ever recorded, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Believe it or not, no copies in our most recent shootout, aside from the shootout winner and Nearly White Hot, had even Super Hot stampers on both sides, which was surprising since we know the right stampers and there were plenty of them in the shootout
  • If you need top quality sound, and assuming it takes as long to get our next shootout going as it did this last one, please check back with us in late 2025
  • The sound is lively, punchy, and powerful (particularly on side one) – with all due respect, it should murder whatever copies you may have
  • We’re constantly blown away by just how good the best copies of Off The Wall sound – what a recording!
  • 5 stars: “This was a visionary album … part of a colorful tapestry of lush ballads and strings, smooth soul and pop, soft rock, and alluring funk.”
  • This is our pick for MJ’s best sounding album. Roughly 150 other listings for the best recording by an artist or group can be found here on the blog

As consistently brilliant as Thriller may be musically — it is the biggest selling album of all time, after all [scratch that, the Eagles Greatest Hits took the top spot away from Thriller in 2018] — speaking strictly in terms of sonics, the sound of the better copies of Off The Wall are substantially sweeter, tubier, more natural, richer, and more analog than Thriller.

Thriller is clearly more aggressive and processed-sounding than Off The Wall. “The Girl Is Mine” or “Human Nature” from Thriller would fit just fine anywhere on Off The Wall, but could the same be said for “Beat It” or “Thriller”? Just thinking about them you can hear the artificiality of the sound of both those songs in your head. Think about the snare that opens “Beat It.” I’ve never heard a snare sound like that in my life. Practically no instrument on Off The Wall has that kind of overly processed EQ’d sound.

Normally when you have a copy with plenty of presence, it can be somewhat sibilant in places. Sibilance is hardly a problem here. For some reason this copy has all the highs, but it’s cut so clean it practically doesn’t spit at all. Even on the song “I Can’t Help It,” which normally has a problem in that respect. Since that’s my favorite song on this album, and probably my favorite MJ song of all time, hearing it sound so good was a revelation.

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Rob Wasserman – Duets

More Rob Wasserman

  • This rare and wonderful album from 1988 on the original MCA label boasts KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this incredible copy in our notes: “really full and present vox”…”good weight”…”the most space” (side one)…”detailed and textured and spacious”…”deep bass”
  • In-the-room vocal presence (Jennifer Warnes is stunning on Leonard Cohen’s “Ballad Of The Runaway Horse”) and tight, note-like bass are key to the best pressings
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Some amazing duets and a great lineup that includes Aaron Neville (v), Stephane Grappelli (violin), Dan Hicks (v, g), and so on. The jazz community missed this one.” [But the audiophile community loved it.]
  • Our old friend Bernie Grundman handled the mastering for Duets, back when he was still making good sounding records. Everything changed when he started working for Classic Records in the ’90s. Based on the scores we’ve played, the vast majority of his remastered pressings leave a lot to be desired. You can read more about them here.

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Joni Mitchell – Hejira

More Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell – An Overview

  • Outstanding sound throughout this vintage Asylum label pressing, with both sides earning Double Plus (A++) grades
  • Most copies we played were too compressed or veiled to involve you in the music, but this one has the big, rich, clear sound of analog at its best that Joni’s spacey “beatnik jazz” needs to work its magic
  • “Joni Mitchell’s Hejira is the last in an astonishingly long run of top-notch studio albums dating back to her debut… Performances are excellent, with special kudos reserved for Jaco Pastorius’ melodic bass playing… This excellent album is a rewarding listen.”

We played a ton of copies and heard a lot to dislike. Many copies have a tendency to sound phony, a case of heavy-handed EQ in the mastering perhaps. When a copy sounds glossy, it loses its natural warmth and starts to sound like any old audiophile LP. We’re ideally looking for something akin to Blue here, and not the sound you find on Patricia Barber LPs. (Gratuitous maybe, but it feels like it’s been too long since we took a swipe at that junk. But I digress…)

Plenty of copies had natural sound but no real life or presence to speak of. It’s a sound you could live with until you heard a good one, but there’s no going back once you’ve heard what the album’s really capable of. A copy like this one gives you lots of richness and warmth without sacrificing the texture to the instruments or the breath to Joni’s voice. The percussion really comes through, the bass has more weight and the immediacy of the vocals put Joni front and center, just where she should be.

If you aren’t familiar with this album, it’s a few more steps down the path she started taking on Court and Spark. The musicians include Larry Carlton and Jaco Pastorius, so that should give you an idea about the jazz-fusion direction of the arrangements. It was a fun album to get to know and on a copy like this one, it really rewards multiple listens.

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Michael Jackson / Thriller – A Rock, Pop and Soul Masterpiece

More of the Music of Michael Jackson

  • This pressing of Michael Jackson’s Masterpiece of Hard Rockin’ Funky Pop earned very good grades on both sides
  • The sound is huge – big, wide, deep, and open, with a punchy bottom end and rhythmic energy to spare, as well as cleaner, smoother, sweeter upper mids and a more extended top
  • A Top 100 title and the full 5 stars on AMG: “This was a record that had something for everybody, building on the basic blueprint of Off the Wall by adding harder funk, hard rock, softer ballads, and smoother soul — expanding the approach to have something for every audience.”
  • In our estimation, there are about 40 Must Own rock, pop and soul records from the 80s, and if there’s any album that belongs on that list, it’s Thriller
  • There is a version cut at Half-Speed by Mobile Fidelity, and as you can imagine, we did not much care for it

This is some of the best High-Production-Value rock/pop/soul music of the 80s. The amount of effort that went into the recording of Thriller 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 of our favorites 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.

Sound that came lumping-out-of-the-speakers coupled with driving rhythmic energy were the hallmarks of the best copies. These qualities really brought this complex music to life, gave it room to breathe, and made it possible for us to enjoy the hell out of it. This is yet another definition of a Hot Stamper — it’s the copy that lets the music work as music. (more…)

Joni Mitchell / Shadows and Light

More Joni Mitchell

More Asylum Label Recordings

  • An outstanding copy of Mitchell’s second live album with Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on all FOUR sides of these vintage Asylum pressings
  • The sound is full-bodied, lively and dynamic, with wonderful immediately to Joni’s remarkably present and breathy vocals (particularly on sides two, three and four)
  • If you’re a fan of Joni’s more experimental work from the mid to late ’70s, this album is a Must Own
  • “…it serves as a good retrospective of her jazzy period from 1975-1979. As expected, she assembles a group of all-star musicians including Pat Metheny (guitar), Jaco Pastorius (bass), Lyle Mays (keyboards), and Michael Brecker (saxophone) who give these compositions more energy than on the studio recordings.”

Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in exceptionally clean shape. Most of the will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG

Four superb sides! We recently had a huge shootout for this famous double album and this copy blew our minds with Double Plus sonics (or close to it) and reasonanbly quiet vinyl from start to finish. In the high-stakes game of Better Records Double Album Poker, that’s a full house, man! This one gives you the kind of you are there immediacy and transparency that put you front and center for a late ’70s jazzy Joni Mitchell show. Not too many copies will do that!

Joni’s voice is breathy and present with real texture, and the three-dimensional imaging gives the music a real sense of space — just like you’d get at a concert. This helps convey the intimacy of the songs and the performances, and isn’t that what we audiophiles got in this crazy hobby for in the first place?

Good luck finding another copy that sounds this good and plays this quiet on all four sides! It was a huge project to clean and play so many pressings of this double LP, and I wouldn’t expect that we’ll get around to this shootout again any time too soon. If you’re a fan of Joni and particularly of her work from this era, you don’t want to miss out on this one!

Joni’s voice is breathy and present with real texture, and the three-dimensional imaging gives the music a real sense of space — just like you’d get at a concert. This helps convey the intimacy of the songs and the performances, and isn’t that what we audiophiles got in this crazy hobby for in the first place?

Good luck finding another copy that sounds this good and plays this quiet on all four sides! It was a huge project to clean and play so many pressings of this double LP, and I wouldn’t expect that we’ll get around to this shootout again any time too soon. If you’re a fan of Joni and particularly of her work from this era, you don’t want to miss out on this one.

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Joni Mitchell – Court and Spark

Hot Stamper Pressings of Court and Spark Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for Court and Spark

  • Both sides of this early Asylum pressing were doing practically everything right, earning stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • The sound is rich, warm and natural, with wonderful transparency, ambience and loads of Tubey Magic
  • Musically this is one of our favorite Joni albums here at Better Records, and probably her Best Recording as well
  • A proud member (along with Blue) of our Top 100 Rock and Pop albums – yes, it’s that good sounding when it’s mastered and pressed as well as this copy is
  • 5 stars: “[A] remarkably deft fusion of folk, pop, and jazz … the music is smart, smooth, and assured from the first note to the last.”
  • If I were to compile a list of my favorite rock and pop albums from 1974, this album would definitely be on it

Court and Spark deserves to be heard with all the clarity, beauty and power that our Hot Stampers reproduce so well. If there is a better sounding album with Joni Mitchell’s name on the cover, you’ll have to prove it to us.

What you hear is the sound of the real tape; every instrument has its own character because the mastering is correct and the vinyl — against all odds — managed to capture all (or almost all; who can know?) of the resolution that the tape had to offer. (more…)