Top Engineers – Bruce Botnick

The Doors / Waiting For the Sun

More of The Doors

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  • With two seriously good Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this vintage Gold Label pressing
  • The sound is present, lively and tonally correct, with Jim Morrison’s baritone reproduced with the palpable weight and presence that the reissues barely begin to reproduce
  • It’s tough (not to mention expensive) to find these early pressings with this kind of sound and reasonably quiet vinyl, but we found this one, and it blew our mind
  • “Krieger, Ray Manzarek and John Densmore were never more lucid… This was a band at its most dexterous, creative, and musically diverse …”
  • If I were to make a list of my favorite rock and pop albums from 1968, this album would definitely be on it, close to the top I should think
  • Our review detailing the somewhat surprising shortcomings of the DCC pressing can be found here, and the story of how long it took me to figure out The Doors on vinyl (30 years or so!) can be found here

Here is THE BIG SOUND that makes Doors records such a thrill to play. Morrison’s vocals sound just right — full-bodied, breathy and immediate. The transparency makes it possible to easily pick out Bruce Botnick’s double tracking of Morrison’s leads.

For a thrill just drop the needle on Not To Touch The Earth. Halfway through the song the members have sort of a duel — Robbie Krieger wailing on the guitar in one channel, Ray Manzarek pounding on the keyboards in the other, and John Densmore responding with drum fills behind them.

On the average copy, the parts get congested and lose their power, but when you can easily pick out each musician, their part will raise the hair on your arms.

It’s absolutely chilling, and it will no doubt remind you why you fell in love with The Doors in the first place. Who else can do this kind of voodoo the way that they do?

Check out the piano on Yes The River Knows on side two (such an underrated song!) or the big snare thwacks on Five To One to hear that Hot Stamper magic.

The overall sound is airy, open, and spacious — you can really hear INTO the soundfield on a track like Yes The River Knows. The opaque quality that so many pressings of this album suffer from is nowhere to be found here.

Not only that, but you will not believe how hard these sides rock. (more…)

The Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed

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  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) sides, here is an outstanding All Analog pressing showcasing the Stones at the peak of their rock and roll powers
  • “Love In Vain” is one of the best sounding Stones songs ever recorded – the acoustic guitar harmonics and the rich whomp of the snare prove indisputably that Glyn Johns is one of the engineering greats
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • Top 100, 5 stars – Jason McNeil wrote that Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed are “the two greatest albums the band’s (or anyone’s) ever made.” [Add Sticky Fingers to complete the ultimate Stones Trilogy.]
  • This is a Must Own album from 1969, one that should have a place in any audiophile’s pop and rock section

This is, in our humble opinion, the second or third best record the Stones ever made. (Sticky Fingers is Number One, and either this or Beggar’s Banquet comes in a strong second.) With this wonderful early domestic pressing we can now hear the power and the beauty of the recording itself, a fact that we consider the very definition of a Hot Stamper.

Killer Stones Sound

Both sides have more ambiance, more life, and more presence than you probably dreamed possible. Take the sound of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” to pick just one example. The breathtaking transparency of this copy allows you to pick out each voice in the intro. The vocals on the other songs are no less present, full-bodied and breathy.

There’s also plenty of deep, tight bass, which is crucial to a song like “Monkey Man.” “Gimme Shelter” is pretty tough to get right but it sounds correct here as well.

Testing Love In Vain

This is our favorite test track for side one. The first minute or so clues you into everything that’s happening in the sound. Listen for the amazing immediacy, transparency, and sweetly extended harmonics of the guitar in the left channel. Next, when Watts starts slapping that big fat snare in the right channel, it should sound so real you could reach out and touch it.

If you’re like me, that Tubey magical acoustic guitar sound and the rich whomp of the snare should be all the evidence you need that Glyn Johns is one of the five best rock engineers who ever lived. Ken Scott, Stephen Barncard, Alan Parsons, Geoff Emerick, Bill Halverson, and a few others are right up there with him of course. We audiophiles are very lucky to have had guys like these around when the Stones (and The Beatles and Pink Floyd and Bowie and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were at their writing and performing peak.

A Must Own Stones Record

I would hope that it would go without saying that this is a recording that belongs in any serious Rock Music Collection, along with a number of other Stones albums.

Others that belong in that category can be found here.

We would love to get the prices down for these must own titles, but finding good sounding vintage pressings with clean surfaces is getting harder every day.

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The Doors – Morrison Hotel

More of The Doors

More Psych Rock

  • With two killer Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sides, this vintage Big Red E pressing is close to the BEST we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner
  • This copy is well balanced yet big and lively, with wonderful clarity in the mids and highs, as well as deep punchy bass and a big, open and spacious soundfield
  • “Roadhouse Blues,” “Waiting For The Sun” and “Maggie McGill” are killer on this pressing – all you Doors fans are gonna flip
  • Circus Magazine praised it as “possibly the best album yet from the Doors” and “Good hard, evil rock, and one of the best albums released this decade.”
  • This is an outstanding title from 1970, a year that just happens to be a great one for Rock and Pop Music, maybe the greatest of them all

Far too many pressings are neither rich nor present enough to get Jim Morrison’s voice to sound the way it should. He’s The Lizard King, not The Frog Prince for crying out loud. When he doesn’t sound present, big, powerful, and borderline scary, what’s the point?

Not to worry. On these sides he sounds just fine. Just listen to him screaming his head off on “Roadhouse Blues” and projecting the power of his rich baritone on “Blue Sunday.” Nobody did it any better.

All the other elements are really working too — real weight to the piano, amazing punch to the bottom end, lovely texture to the guitars and so on. The sound is clean and clear but not overly so; you still get all the Tubey Magic you need.

The sound of the organ on “Blue Sunday” is really something, check it out. Where has that sound gone?

It’s hard to find clean Doors records at all these days, we find a small handful each year — not nearly enough to do these shootouts as often as we would like.

Both sides here have the deep, powerful bottom end this music absolutely demands. You’ve got to hand it to Bruce Botnick — he knows how to get real rock-’em, sock-’em bottom end onto a piece of magnetic tape.

And sometimes that bottom end whomp* actually makes it onto the record, as is the case here, making for one helluva demo disc for bass (if you have speakers big enough to play it, of course.)

Waiting for the Sun

The track to play to hear massive amounts of bass and energy is one we should all know well: Waiting for the Sun.

If you’re looking for Demo Quality song on this album, that’s the one. Prodigious amounts of Tubey Magic as well.

*For whomp factor, the formula goes like this: deep bass + mid bass + speed + dynamics + energy = whomp.

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Eddie Money – One and Done

A Well Recorded Album that Should Be More Popular with Audiophiles

More Debut Albums of Interest

This is clearly Eddie Money’s best sounding album. Roughly 100 other listings for the Best Sounding Album by an Artist or Group can be found here.

In our opinion, his debut is the only Eddie Money record you’ll ever need. Click on this link to see more titles we like to call One and Done

The average copy is way too compressed, which kills the top end (by making the cymbals aggressive) and the vocals too midrangy. When you’ve got a copy of Eddie Money’s debut that’s doing what it’s supposed to do, you know pretty quickly. The highs are sweet and extended, the vocals are present, but without any spit or strain, and there is solid bass and low end propelling everything forward.

Eddie Money has only made one good record in our opinion — this one. Fortunately, it’s a GREAT one and we don’t have to play any of his others. This guy had so much promise, based solely on his debut here. He lost his brilliant guitarist and arranger, Jimmy Lyon, soon after this first album was made, and that may account for his slide into mediocrity.

But this record is outstanding from first note to last. If at the end of the second track — a cover of You Really Got A Hold On Me — you are not rockin’ out, then Eddie Money is just not for you. I love this album and I played it countless times back in the day.

This album checks off a few of our favorite boxes:

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Lowell George – Thanks I’ll Eat It Here

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  • A stunning copy and only the second to hit the site in years, here with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish
  • We’re huge fans of this album and a pressing like this lets the natural quality of the recording shine through
  • We don’t imagine we’ll be tracking down too many copies of this so if you’re a fan, scoop this one up!
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Lowell’s style is so distinctive and his performances so soulful, it’s hard not to like this record if you’ve ever had a fondness for Little Feat.”

This kind of recording quality was abandoned decades ago, but there was a time — I’m old, I remember it — when engineers actually tried to produce recordings with this kind of rich, sweet, thoroughly analog sound. 1979, the year of this album’s release, is right at the tail end of it. Why do you think so much of our Hot Stamper output covers the decade that stretched from the late ’60s to the late ’70s? Only one reason: that’s where some of the best sound can be found. (It’s a bit like Willie Sutton’s famous answer to why he robbed banks, “because that’s where the money is.”)

Which is taking the long way round in saying that this recording has a healthy dose of analog Tubey Magic, in places maybe even a bit too much, as the sound can sometimes get too thick and overly rich, like a cake with too much frosting.

The better copies keep that wonderful analog smoothness and freedom from artificiality, adding to it the life and energy of classic rock and roll. Yes, you can have it all — rich analog sound that jumps out of the speakers! Just listen to those horns on “Honest Man” — that is the sound we are looking for on an album like this.

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The Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed on Decca

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  • With outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades or close to it on both sides, this Boxed Decca UK pressing showcases the Stones at the peak of their Rock and Roll powers – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • Having played a number of Decca pressings of this album, including quite a few that were just plain awful, we doubt that any UK LP is going to win a shootout
  • We have a category for records like this: imported pressings that can sound very good, but can’t beat the best domestics
  • “Love In Vain” is one of the best sounding Stones songs ever recorded – the acoustic guitar harmonics and the rich whomp of the snare prove indisputably that Glyn Johns is one of the Engineering Greats
  • Top 100, 5 stars – Jason McNeil wrote that Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed are “the two greatest albums the band’s (or anyone’s) ever made.” [Add Sticky Fingers to complete the ultimate Stones Trilogy.]

This is, in our humble opinion, the second or third best record the Stones ever made. (Sticky Fingers is Number One, and either this or Beggar’s Banquet comes in a strong second.) With this wonderful early domestic pressing we can now hear the power and the beauty of the recording itself, a fact that we consider the very definition of a Hot Stamper.

“Love In Vain” on a copy like this is one of the best sounding Rolling Stones songs of all time. In previous listings, I’ve mentioned how good this song sounds — thanks to Glyn Johns, of course — but on these amazing Hot Stamper copies it is out of this world.

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The Doors – Bernie Leaned Out the Vocals on This One

More of the Music of The Doors

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Doors

Sonic Grade: D (at best)

A few years back we played the 180 gram reissue of Morrison Hotel that came out in 2009. Initially we thought it pretty good, but the longer it played, the more leaned-out and unpleasant it sounded.

Just listen to the vocals — they’re all wrong.

Jim Morrison has one of the richest and most distinctive baritone voices in the history of rock. When he doesn’t sound like the guy I’ve been listening to for more than forty years, something ain’t right.

And what ain’t right — not to put too fine a point on it — is the sound of that record.

Here are a few commentaries you may care to read about Bernie Grundman‘s work as a mastering engineer in the modern era. We much prefer the work he did back in the old days.

Moderately Helpful Title Specific Advice

The best Hot Stamper copies are always the earlier Big Red E label copies. There’s substantially more Tubey Magic on these pressings.

The typical Early Butterfly Label copy lacks the weight that the older cuttings had, often in spades. The best of these Butterfly Label copies can be passable, but they are not remotely competitive with the right originals.

The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds

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Hot Stamper Pressings that Sound Their Best on the Right Reissue

  • A Pet Sounds like you’ve never heard, with seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on both sides
  • Fairly quiet for this pressing – noisy vinyl is the rule, not the exception
  • Forget whatever dead-as-a-doornail Heavy Vinyl record they’re making these days – if you want to hear the Tubey Magic, size and energy of this wonderful album, a vintage pressing like this one is the way to go
  • The Beach Boys revolutionized the popular music of the day with their genius for harmony, and a copy like this has their voices sounding the way they should (particularly on side one)
  • 5 stars: “The group here reached a whole new level in terms of both composition and production, layering tracks upon tracks of vocals and instruments to create a richly symphonic sound.”

Important Details About This Pressing

There have been a great many versions of Pet Sounds released on vinyl over the years, and most of them in our opinion are awful. (The DCC is acceptable at best.) We’re not going to give away what pressing this is, mostly because it took us many years, a huge amount of effort, and quite a large supply of expensive, ultimately rejected pressings in order to finally figure out what version of Pet Sounds sounds the best.

In short, we ask that you please not order this copy of Pet Sounds expecting to receive an original pressing. We’ve never heard an original that sounded better than tolerable, and tolerable is simply not going to cut it for a Hot Stamper, not at these prices anyway.

What you will receive is the only version of the material that has ever sounded right to us, and naturally that means it will be made from the original mono mix. We would be very surprised to discover another pressing that can compete with it.

As per our policy, if for any reason you are not happy with the sound of the album we send you (or the condition, or the cover, or absolutely anything else, that’s our policy and always has been), feel free to return it for a full refund.

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The Doors / L.A. Woman – Rhino Heavy Vinyl Reviewed

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Reviews and Commentaries for L.A. Woman

The Rhino pressing we auditioned from the Doors Box Set was surprisingly good. It’s rich and smooth with an extended top end — tonally correct in other words — and there’s lots of bass.

This is all to the good. For the thirty bucks you might pay for it you’re getting a very good record, assuming yours sounds like ours, something we should really not be assuming, but we do it because there is simply no other way to write about records other than to describe the sound of the ones we actually have played.

What it clearly lacks compared to the best originals is, first and foremost, vocal immediacy.

Jim Morrison seems to be singing through a veil, an effect which becomes more and more bothersome over time, as these kinds of frustrating shortcomings have a habit of doing.

A bit blurry, a bit smeary, somewhat lacking in air and space, on the plus side it has good energy and better bass than most of the copies we played. All in all we would probably give it a “B.” You could do a helluva lot worse.

Record Collecting Advice

All the ’70s and ’80s reissues of this album we’ve ever played were just awful, especially those with the date inscribed in the dead wax. For more moderately helpful advice, click here.

Remastering Out Too Much of the Good Stuff

What is lost in the newly remastered recordings so popular with the record collecting public these days ? Lots of things, but the most obvious and irritating is the loss of transparency.

Modern records tend to be small, veiled and recessed, and they rarely image well. But the most important quality they lack is transparency. Almost without exception they are opaque. They resist our efforts to hear into the music.

We don’t like that sound, and we like it less with each passing day, although we certainly used to put up with it back when we were selling what we considered to be the better Heavy Vinyl pressings from the likes of DCC, Speakers Corner, Cisco and even Classic Records.

Now when we play those records they either bore us to tears or frustrate us with their veiled, vague, lifeless, ambience-challenged presentation.

It was sometime in 2007 when we turned a corner. The remastered Blue on Rhino Heavy Vinyl came out and was such a mediocrity that we asked ourselves “Why bother?” That was all she wrote.

We stopped selling those second- and third-rate remasters and dedicated ourselves to finding, cleaning, playing and critically evaluating vintage pressings, regardless of era or genre of music.

The result is a website full of great sounding records that should find special appeal with audiophiles who set high standards, who own good equipment and who have well-developed critical listening skills.

These newer records, with few exceptions, tend to be compressed, thick, dull, opaque, veiled, recessed and lacking in ambience. These are currently the hallmarks of the Heavy Vinyl LP.

Here are some of the Commentaries we’ve written about Heavy Vinyl over the years. Please to enjoy.

A Confession

Even as recently as the early 2000s, we were still impressed with many of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings we’d auditioned. If we’d never made the progress we’ve worked so hard to make over the course of the last twenty or more years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues so many audiophiles seem impressed by these days.

We’ll never know of course; that’s a bell that can be unrung. We did the work, we can’t undo it, and the system that resulted from it is merciless in revealing the truth — that these newer pressings are second-rate at best and much more often than not third-rate and even worse.

Some audiophile records sound so bad, I was pissed off enough to create a special list for them.

Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, especially the ones comparing our records to their Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed Mastered counterparts, we know that our customers often see things the same way.

The Doors / The Soft Parade

More of the Music of The Doors

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Doors

  • The sound is incredibly powerful from start to finish – big, rich, full-bodied, present and lively – thanks Bruce Botnick, where would The Doors be without you?
  • Full of great songs: Touch Me, Runnin’ Blue, Wild Child, Wishful Sinful and the amazingly trippy Soft Parade extended suite (with Triple Plus sound no less)
  • “Much like a true “parade” of an English fugue, the song morphs from Morrison’s a capella sermon-like intro to a Baroque ballad to a show tune-like section to the long rock outro, the music masterfully following the flowing, stream of consciousness lyric.” Hell yeah!
  • We’ve written extensively about The Soft Parade, and you can find quite a number of letters and commentaries for the album on this blog.
  • It’s my favorite by the group and one that was instrumental in helping me progress in this exasperating hobby we have chosen for ourselves.

Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in clean shape. Most of them will have at least some ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. Some will have cut corners. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG, and it will probably be VG+. If you are picky about your covers please let us know in advance so that we can be sure we have a nice enough cover for you.

This Doors pressing (either on the Elektra Gold or Big Red E Label, nothing else would qualify as a Hot Stamper) has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back.

Having done this for so long, we understand and appreciate that rich, full, solid, Tubey Magical sound is key to the presentation of this music. We rate these qualities higher than others we might be listening for (e.g., bass definition, soundstage, depth, etc.).

Hot Stamper sound is rarely about the details of a given recording. In the case of this album, a Hot Stamper must succeed at recreating a solid, palpable, rich JIM MORRISON singing live in your listening room. The better copies have an uncanny way of doing just that.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but less than one out of 100 new records do, if our experience with the hundreds we’ve played over the years can serve as a guide. (more…)