Top Engineers – Frank Laico

Leonard Cohen – New Skin For the Old Ceremony

More Singer-Songwriter Albums

  • New Skin For the Old Ceremony, here with solid Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish
  • If you’re trying recreate a solid, palpable Leonard Cohen singing live in your listening room – sounding just as his did in the studio back in 1974 – these Hot Stamper sides will let you do just that
  • 4 stars: “New Skin for the Old Ceremony may be Leonard Cohen’s most musical album, as he is accompanied by violas, mandolins, banjos, and percussion that give his music more texture than usual. The fact that Cohen does more real singing on this album can be seen as both a blessing and a curse – while his voice sounds more strained, the songs are delivered with more passion than usual.”

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Frank Sinatra – Trilogy: Past, Present and Future

More of the Music of Frank Sinatra

  • A killer copy of Sinatra’s wonderful 1980 release with Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound on all SIX sides – just shy of out Shootout Winner (side four actually won the shootout)
  • The sonics here are rich and full-bodied with much less grain and much more Tubey Magic than practically all other copies we played in our recent shootout
  • Credit the brilliant engineering of Frank Laico for the excellent sound – this record doesn’t sound like 1980, and that’s a very, very good thing
  • “An audacious, ambitious way to stage a comeback, each of the album’s three records was conceived as an individual work, and each was arranged by one of Sinatra’s major collaborators. . . the best moments are triumphant, proving that the Voice was still vital in his fourth decade of recording.”

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Alberta Hunter / Amtrak Blues

More Soul, Blues, and R&B

  • A vintage pressing (one of only a handful of copies to hit the site in years) with solid Double Plus (A++) grades from start to finish
  • The sound is absolutely wonderful – Alberta is uncannily present and real on this copy
  • Both of these sides are open, clear and lively as any record you’ve heard in a very long while
  • 4 stars: “Alberta Hunter’s second recording since launching her remarkable comeback (she was 83 when this album was cut) finds the veteran blues singer (a survivor of the 1920s) still in surprisingly strong form and full of spirit.”

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Miles Davis – Miles In The Sky

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) sides, this original Stereo 360 pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Miles In The Sky you’ve heard
  • Superb sound courtesy of Arthur Kendy’s and Frank Laico’s engineering at the famed Columbia Studio B in NYC
  • Miles here is backed by his classic 60s All Star crew – Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter & Tony Williams
  • “…Miles Davis explicitly pushed his second great quintet away from conventional jazz, pushing them toward the jazz-rock hybrid that would later become known as fusion… intriguing music…”

We just finished a big shootout for this superb Miles Davis album and this copy was dramatically better sounding than most others we played. Both sides have excellent bass, correct sounding brass, wonderful transparency and loads of Tubey Magic.

Many copies didn’t have the kind of transparency or openness that we heard here, which made it harder to appreciate the contributions of the different players. This one puts plenty of separation between the various instruments, so you can make sense of what each of these heavy-hitters adds to the mix. You will have a very hard time finding a copy out in the bins that sounds as good as this one!

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1962 Tubes and The Sound That’s Been Lost for Fifty Years

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocal Albums Available Now

UPDATE 2025

This review was written many years ago, circa 2010 I would guess, right about the time we first started doing shootouts for the album. (Here is what we have to say about I Left My Heart in San Francisco these days, suspiciously similar to what we had to say in 2010. As the song says, ‘”The fundamental things apply…”)

Everything that’s good about All Tube vocal recordings from the 50s and 60s is precisely what’s good about the sound of this record.

The huge studio the music was recorded in is captured faithfully on this pressing. The height, width and depth of the staging are extraordinary, a true Demo Disc in that regard.

We are not big soundstage guys here at Better Records, but we can’t deny the appeal of the space to be found on a record that sounds as good as this one does.

Transparency and Tubey Magic are key to the sound of the orchestra and you will find both in abundance on these two sides.

(Other records that are good for testing those two qualities can be found here and here.)

Albums such as this live and die by the quality of their vocal reproduction. On this record Mr. Tony Bennett himself will appear to be standing right in your listening room, along with the 38 other musicians from the session. (Actually, come to think of it, they’re probably sitting.)

On the best pressings, the space of your stereo room will seem to expand in all directions to accommodate them — an illusion of course, but nevertheless a remarkably convincing one.

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Miles Davis / Bitches Brew

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • A seriously good Stereo 360 copy of this 2 LP set with roughly Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on all FOUR sides
  • Sides one, two, and three are clean, clear, lively and present with an abundance of space around all of the players, and side four is not far behind in all those areas
  • You can hear right into the soundfield, and you can be sure that there’s a whole lot more going on in there than you can bring out, but that’s what makes audio fun
  • Improving your playback can reveal more and more of what’s always been in the grooves of your records
  • This is not an easy album to find in clean condition, let alone a copy that sounds like this and plays reasonably well throughout
  • If jazz-fusion is your bag, the Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) side three of this copy will take you on a trip like few other records can
  • 5 stars: “Thought by many to be the most revolutionary album in jazz history, having virtually created the genre known as jazz-rock fusion (for better or worse) and being the jazz album to most influence rock and funk musicians, Bitches Brew is, by its very nature, mercurial.”

The incredible musicianship and Teo Macero’s innovative production each help take these jazz-fusion soundscapes to places most folks had never imagined before. And a copy like this one takes the entire production to a whole new level. I can’t begin to tell you how many crappy copies have hit our table over the years, but after finding this one I’m really glad we never gave up on this album.

I remember buying this record when I was in college and I had a hell of a time trying to make any sense of it. I also bought the first two Weather Report albums and had a hell of a time with those. But then when Sweetnighter came out, which was angular but still accessible, this kind of music started to make sense to me. This is music for those who want to be challenged. It’s as true today as it was 53 years ago when this record came out.

Our favorite track on this album, “Miles Runs The Voodoo Down,” is found on the Double Plus (A++) side four, which means the sound for it is OUTSTANDING.

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Charlie Byrd – Delicately

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Guitar

  • Superb sound for Byrd’s 1968 release, with solid Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides of this original 360 Stereo pressing
  • Teo Macero‘s production here is rich, sweet, and highly resolving, with all the space and three-dimensionality that Frank Laico‘s brilliant engineering is known for
  • The music on this enchanting jazz / pop guitar album is every bit as good as the sound quality (and that is rarely the case with these kinds of records – we should know, we’ve played scores of them)

Hearing is definitely believing, especially in our unique corner of the record business — we don’t give a fig about who, why or when a record was made; we just play it and judge it based on what we hear in its grooves. Needless to say. this pressing of the album was judged to be a knockout.

Apparently the album has garnered attention from other audiophiles – HDTracks offers a high-rez digital download of it! (more…)

Another 30th Street Studio Knockout – This One’s from Tony Bennett

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tony Bennett Available Now

UPDATE 2018

This review was written many years ago, circa 2010 I would guess, right about the time we first started doing shootouts for the album. (Here is what we have to say about I Left My Heart in San Francisco these days, suspiciously similar to what we had to say in 2010. As the song says, ‘”The fundamental things apply…”)

Everything that’s good about All Tube vocal recordings from the 50s and 60s is precisely what’s good about the sound of this record.

The huge studio the music was recorded in is captured faithfully on this pressing. The height, width and depth of the staging are extraordinary, a true Demo Disc in that regard.

We are not big soundstage guys here at Better Records, but we can’t deny the appeal of the space to be found on a record that sounds as good as this one does.

Transparency and Tubey Magic are key to the sound of the orchestra and you will find both in abundance on these two sides.

(Other records that are good for testing those two qualities can be found here and here.)

Albums such as this live and die by the quality of their vocal reproduction. On this record Mr. Tony Bennett himself will appear to be standing right in your listening room, along with the 38 other musicians from the session. (Actually, come to think of it, they’re probably sitting.)

On the best pressings, the space of your stereo room will seem to expand in all directions to accommodate them — an illusion of course, but nevertheless a remarkably convincing one.

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Tony Bennett – I Left My Heart In San Francisco

More Tony Bennett

 More Recordings on Vintage Columbia Vinyl

  • Boasting two superb Double Plus (A++) sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this black print Stereo 360 pressing
  • Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience (maybe too much ambience), dead on correct tonality, and wonderfully breathy vocals – everything that we listen for in a great record is here
  • Huge amounts of three-dimensional space and ambience, along with boatloads of Tubey Magic – here’s a 30th Street recording from 1962 that demonstrates just how good Columbia’s engineers were back then
  • The title track became a gold-selling Top Ten hit that stayed on the charts for almost three years (!) and earned Bennett two Grammy Awards (Record of the Year and Best Solo Vocal Performance)
  • To hear the real Tony Bennett, play “Once Upon a Time” – it’s here and nobody sings it better
  • 5 stars: “…Bennett had been searching for a … musical approach beyond his long-gone pop work…. With this album, [he] found the key, not only by happening across a signature song in the title track, but also in the approach to songs like ‘Once Upon a Time’…and Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh’s ‘The Best Is Yet to Come,’ which Bennett helped make a standard.”

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Joni Mitchell – Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter

More Joni Mitchell

  • You’ll find superb Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on all FOUR sides of these original Asylum pressings
  • Sides two, three, and four are close to the BEST we have ever heard, earning stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Rich, full-bodied, yet open and clear – this is what vintage analog is all about, that smooth sound that never calls attention to itself and just lets the music flow
  • Mastered by Bernie Grundman back when he was still cutting some of the best records around
  • Joni Mitchell meets Weather Report is the best way to describe much of the vibe here

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