Top Engineers – Eric Stewart

10cc / Sheet Music – Their Brilliant Second Album

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  • This original UK import pressing of Sheet Music boasts outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from top to bottom – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Rich, full-bodied, with sound that just jumps out of the speakers, this is a Truly Amazing Demo Disc on the order of Crime of the Century or Dark Side of the Moon
  • If you don’t know 10cc’s music well, this is probably the best place to start – you just might find yourself as big a fan as we are here at Better Records
  • Bassist Graham Gouldman calls it “the definitive 10cc album” and he’s probably right about that (although we love The Original Soundtrack that came out a year later)
  • “Three hit singles spun off the record, and most of the other tracks could have followed suit; it says much for Sheet Music’s staying power that, no matter how many times the album is reissued, it has never lost its power to delight, excite, and set alight a lousy day.”
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” with an accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Sheet Music is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but would be well advised to get to know better.

Sheet Music is, in our opinion, the most consistently well-written and produced 10cc album, with every track performed with heart and recorded with exquisite attention to detail. Each song flows into the next and there is simply not a dull moment to be found. Sheet Music is arguably the best record they ever made, although I’m such a fan, I think they’re all great. (The first five albums anyway.)

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10cc – Deceptive Bends

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Reviews and Commentaries for 10cc

  • With seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound throughout, this copy of Deceptive Bends will be hard to beat
  • These sides are bigger, with even greater immediacy in the vocals, as well as more bass and dynamics, all qualities that are much less audible when playing the average copy
  • A longstanding member of our Top 100, this is one of the most dynamic, energetic, well recorded pop albums we know of, right up there with the band’s Masterpiece, The Original Soundtrack.
  • 4 stars: “Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman kept the group alive and turned in a surprisingly solid album with 1977’s Deceptive Bends. It may lack the devil-may-care wackiness that popped up on previous 10cc albums, but it makes up for it by crafting a series of lush, catchy pop songs that are witty in their own right. All in all, Deceptive Bends is the finest achievement of 10cc’s post-Godley and Creme lineup…”
  • Deceptive Bends is a Demo Disc for Bass, a Demo Disc for Dynamics, and a Demo Disc for Energy all rolled into one.

This is an AMAZINGLY WELL RECORDED album, a record I would have no problem ranking in the Top Rock Recordings of All Time. We’re tough graders on this album because we know how good it can sound, which is SHOCKINGLY GOOD. (more…)

Universals’s Reissue of 10cc’s Masterpiece on Heavy Vinyl Gets Panned

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Reviews and Commentaries for 10cc

Sonic Grade: F

This review was written circa 2005.

This Universal Super De Luxe import LP appears to be the regular vinyl version that, for all we know, might actually still be in print in Europe. It appears to have been specially pressed on heavy import vinyl for our domestic market as part of the new Universal Heavy Vinyl series.

Either that or it’s being made from the old metalwork for the LP that would have been available most recently in Europe (out of print by now I should think).

Which is a very long-winded way of saying that it is not in any real sense remastered, if such a claim is being made for it or the series. Rather it has simply been repressed on Heavy Vinyl in Europe and imported to the states.

None of which is either here nor there because the record is an absolute DISASTER.

The top end is so boosted, after the cutter-head-emphasis gets done with it all that’s left is pure DISTORTION. No one with two working ears and even a halfway-decent stereo can fail to notice how awful this pressing sounds. How a record this poorly mastered (or pressed, perhaps it’s a manufacturing defect) could get through the Quality Control department at Universal is beyond me.

Wait a minute.  Who say they even have a quality control department? 

They, like every other company that produces records these days, could apparently care less whether the records they make are any good or not. There is not an iota of evidence to support the contention that anyone at any of these companies knows what the hell he is doing.

This is a classic example of a phrase that is widely misused, that phrase being “begging the question,” which typically refers to assuming something that one should be required to prove. If you assume that any modern record label had a quality control department, you should be required to provide evidence of its existence. I am not aware of any.

Oh, but it’s ANALOG. Folks, take it from me: because it’s on vinyl, heavy or otherwise, doesn’t have a whole lot to do with whether it sounds any good or not. The Hoffman-mastered DCC Gold CD is a million times more analog sounding than this piece of crap. Unlike this LP, the tonality of his CD is right on the money. It’s still a CD, and the Hot Stamper pressings we sell will trounce it sonically, but it’s worlds better than this Analog Vinyl.

If any record ever deserved a failing grade, it’s this one. After a few minutes you simply will not be able to be in the same room with it.

This link will take you to some other exceptionally bad records that, like this one, were marketed to audiophiles for their putatively superior sound. On today’s modern systems, it should be obvious that they have nothing of the kind and that, in fact, the opposite is true.

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