- This vintage pressing (only the second copy to hit the site in years) boasts INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish
- Both of these sides are rich and full with plenty of space around all of the instruments, and exceptionally breathy and present vocals
- Here’s the Midrange Magic that’s missing from the reissues and whatever 180g pressing has been made from the tapes (or, to be clear, a modern digital master copied from who-knows-what-tapes)
- Engineering by Phil Ramone, who went on to win the Grammy the following year for Still Crazy After All These Years
- “Her graceful and affecting versions of Jimmy Webb’s ‘The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress’ and Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Send in the Clowns’ (as well as her own ‘Houses’) are lovely and inspired…”
John Haeny, Engineer
Little Feat / Dixie Chicken
More Little Feat
- Here is a vintage Green Label pressing (only the second copy to hit the site in more years than anyone can remember) that was doing just about everything right, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades
- You get lovely extension up top, good weight down low, as well as remarkable transparency in the midrange, all qualities that were much less evident on the average copy we played
- It’s the rare copy that’s this lively, solid and rich… drop the needle on any track and you’ll see what we mean
- No Burbank label copy earned a better grade than 1.5+, and even most of those fell short, not to mention the truly awful later label
- 5 stars: “It all adds up to a nearly irresistible record, filled with great songwriting, sultry grooves, and virtuosic performances that never are flashy. Little Feat, along with many jam bands that followed, tried to top this album, but they never managed to make a record this understated, appealing and fine.”
Hot Stamper sound on both sides — yes, it is possible, and this very copy is Proof with a capitol “P.” Most copies of this album sound like cardboard, especially the later pressings on the Palm Tree and tan labels. To get the best sound, you need originals of this album, and Warner Brothers Green Label originals are getting pretty darn hard to find as more and more collectors and audiophiles are coming to the realization that the unending stream of Heavy Vinyl reissues flooding the market leaves a lot to be desired. (Our desire for them is at zero, as we no longer bother to order the stuff.)
Folks, this is no Demo Disc by any means, but the later pressings strip away the two qualities that really make this music work and bring it to life: Tubey Magic and big bass. This copy has both in spades.
Listen to how breathy and transparent the chorus is on the first track. Now layer that sound on top of a fat and punchy bottom end and you have the formula for Little Feat Magic at its funky best. This is the sound they heard in the control room, of that I have no doubt, and it is all over this copy.
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.
The Dillards – Copperfields
More of The Dillards
More Country and Country Rock
- You’ll find seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout this vintage Elektra pressing
- Both of these sides are relatively rich, full-bodied and warm, yet clear, lively and dynamic
- Those of you who enjoy the country-fried style of the Flying Burrito Bros., Gram Parsons or The Byrds will probably get a lot out of this one
- 4 stars: “…it was a similarly eclectic and, for the most part, joyous romp through a fusion of bluegrass, rock, folk, and country, with a bit of pop and orchestration along the ride, and the group’s superb vocal harmonies being the main constant.”
This is the band the Jayhawks grew up listening to, along with, I’m guessing, The Byrds (circa Sweetheart of the Rodeo), The Grateful Dead (American Beauty), The Eagles (first LP), Poco, and no doubt plenty of other bands that never became famous.
Actually, the Dillards themselves never became famous, which is too bad, because based on this album they should have. It’s full of wonderfully melodic songs, with all the boys pitching in for harmony, backed by every stringed instrument that’s fit to pick: guitar, mandolin, banjo, pedal steel, fiddle, dobro — you name it, they play it. They even do one by the Beatles. And that’s not nostalgia: the Beatles were together (sort of) when this record was made!
By the way, the guy front and center is Herb Pederson. I never knew who he was until I attended a concert that Chris Hillman and his acoustic trio gave at a coffee house (!) and then again at a home concert (where I was lucky enough to sit three feet from them and got to chat with them during the break).
They performed mostly old bluegrass and country tunes (with Hillman on mandolin, his first and favorite instrument), some originals, and even covered one or two of The Byrds’ hits. The guitarist in the band turned out to be Herb Pederson, and one day I noticed a similarity between the 55+ year old gentleman I saw that night and the guy on the cover of The Dillards. Sure enough, that’s him.
You can also find his name on dozens of country rock records by artists like Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris. He was the “go to” guy back in the day, with his top notch harmonies and authentic country guitar playing. Which is what he brings to this album too.
We’ve been trying to find great sound for this band for years, but it is one tough task. For one thing, it’s difficult to find clean copies out in the bins and even when we do most of them don’t sound that hot. It took years worth of purchases to get enough of these together for a shootout, and even then very few of them delivered the way this one could.
Our last shootout was 2013, close to a decade ago. Sometimes it takes ten years to find enough copies to do a shootout, and this is one of those times.
Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge – Full Moon
More Kris Kristofferson
More Rita Coolidge
- You’ll find excellent Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this early A&M pressing
- The vocals are wonderfully breathy and sweet, the bass is killer and everything is natural and musical
- 4 stars: “Despite Kristofferson’s greater celebrity, the LP was made with Coolidge’s strengths in mind. . . The songs were set in her key, with Kristofferson crooning along in an unusually high register. The tempos were mostly slow, emphasizing the dreamy quality of Coolidge’s voice.”
Linda Ronstadt – Heart Like A Wheel
More Linda Ronstadt
More Women Who Rock
- With two outstanding sides, this vintage Capital pressing was giving us the sound we were looking for on Linda Ronstadt’s Best Album
- “You’re No Good” was the hit but “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” “Faithless Love” and “The Dark End of the Street” are every bit as good – and that’s just side one!
- A Must Own Classic, the best album Ms Ronstadt ever made, and a True Country Rock Masterpiece practically without peer
- 5 stars: “What really makes HLAW a breakthrough is the inventive arrangements that producer Peter Asher, Ronstadt, and the studio musicians have developed. …[they] help turn Heart Like a Wheel into a veritable catalog of Californian soft rock, and it stands as a landmark of ’70s mainstream pop/rock.”
- If you’re a Country Rock fan, then Linda’s Masterpiece from 1974 belongs in your collection.
- The complete list of titles from 1974 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.
I’ve been playing HLAW since the year it came out, roughly 48 years by my calculation, and I can tell you it is no easy task to find this kind of smooth, sweet, analog sound on the album. Folks, we heard it for ourselves: the Heart Like A Wheel magic is here on practically every song.
Pay special attention to Andrew Gold‘s Abbey Road-ish guitars heard throughout the album. He is all over this record, playing piano, guitar, percussion and singing in the background. If anybody deserves credit besides Linda for the success of HLAW, it’s Andrew Gold.
A key test on either side was to listen to all the multi-tracked guitars and see how easy it was to separate each of them out in the mix. Most of the time they are just one big jangly blur. The best copies let you hear how many guitars there are and what each of them is doing.
Bonnie Raitt / Sweet Forgiveness – One of Her Two Best from the 70s
- Full-bodied and warm, with harmonically rich guitars as well as real immediacy to Bonnie’s heartfelt vocals, this is the classic sound of Seventies Rock
- The sound is big, bold, clear, rich and dynamic, which wouldn’t mean anything if the music weren’t good, but this actually happens to be Bonnie’s best album in our opinion, with Home Plate a close runner-up
I learned recently that John Haeny is one of the two engineers on this album, which goes a long way toward explaining the excellent ’70s analog sound. He worked on The Pretender, Don’t Cry Now, and many of the early and quite wonderful sounding albums Judy Collins did for Elektra in the earlier part of the decade. This guy knows sound.
(A good copy of The Pretender is an amazing Demo Disc that will put 99% of all the rock records you’ve ever played to shame. But the truly Hot Stamper pressings are few and far between, so most audiophiles have no idea how well recorded that album is.) (more…)
Rita Coolidge – It’s Only Love
More Rita Coolidge
- This outstanding pressing boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish
- Fans of Linda Ronstadt’s ’70s music are going to find a lot of Tubey Magical sound to like here – spending some time with Rita and getting reacquainted with her albums is just the kind of thing that makes record collecting fun
- John Haeny, the principal engineer for Rita and hubby Kris Kristofferson during the ’70s, in fact worked on some of Linda’s albums, as well as those by Judy Collins, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Little Feat and many others
- If you’re a fan of Rita’s, this 1975 release is one of her best and surely belongs in your collection
Judy Collins – Who Knows Where The Time Goes
More Judy Collins
Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Judy Collins
- The sweetness and transparency to the guitars and vocals on this wonderful pressing won us over
- “Who Knows Where the Time Goes” – one of our favorite Judy Collins songs – is achingly powerful here
- 4 stars: “Enthusiasts of Judy Collins rank this among their favorite recordings and it is likewise a perfect touchstone for the burgeoning listener as well.”
- If you’re a fan of Judy’s, this early pressing from 1968 surely belongs in your collection
- The complete list of titles from 1968 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.
Finding the Best Sound
Most copies were a bit thinner than ideal, and even the best pressings we heard had a bit of that quality. Frequency extension high and low was also hard to come by.
If the sound is rich and full-bodied, yet clear and transparent, you probably have yourself one of the few that were mastered and pressed properly — and one of the few that survived the turntables of their day to be playable forty-plus years later on the revealing equipment you undoubtedly own.
If you don’t own such a copy, and with all due respect chances are you don’t, we have a lovely copy right here for you, only a click away.
Linda Ronstadt – Don’t Cry Now
More of the Music of Linda Ronstadt
- The transparency and vocal presence here are wonderful – the piano is solid and Linda’s vocals are breathy and heartfelt
- We love her emotionally powerful interpretations of Desperado, Sail Away and Neil Young’s achingly sublime I Believe in You
- She really belts it out on this album – it’s what she does best – but only the best copies allow you to turn up the volume good and loud and let her do her thing
- Rolling Stone raves it’s “the Ronstadt album for which we’ve been waiting.”
- If you’re a Linda Ronstadt fan, this has to be considered a Must Own Title of hers from 1973.
- The complete list of titles from 1973 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.
A key to recognizing the best copies is the fact that they tend to be highly resolving. Two places to check:
Note how breathy her voice is in the quiet passages. Only the least smeared, most transparent copies reproduce that breathy quality in her voice.
Next check out the tambourine on Silver Threads and Golden Needles. If the sound is delicate, not gritty or transistory, you have yourself a winner in the resolution department.