Top Engineers – Ray Fowler

Could This Be the Sound Audiophiles Complain About with Vintage Pressings?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Red Garland Available Now

A rare and expensive (!) early stereo pressing that we played in a recent shootout for Bright and Breezy was passable at best.

As you can see from the notes reproduced below, we found the sound to be “sweet, relaxed, but badly veiled and lacking weight and bass.” (Note that records without a 1.5+ grade or better on both sides are not considered Hot Stamper pressings.)

In other words, it sounded too much like an old record, and not a very good one at that. The world is full of them. (For this album, clearly the best sound is found on the right OJC.)

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Wes Montgomery – The Alternative Wes Montgomery (Revisited)

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Wes Montgomery Available Now

UPDATE 2025:

Many years ago, back in our pre-shootout days, we played a copy of this album and liked what we’d heard.

We just got another copy in and thought the sound was not worthy of a Hot Stamper shootout.

We judge it to have middling sound quality.

If you see one for cheap, pick it up, but don’t expect the sound to be anything special.

Our Old Review

This Milestone Two-Fer LP with EXCELLENT sound has 14 unreleased alternate versions of songs recorded in a variety of settings by guitarist Wes Montgomery during his period with Riverside. In many cases, the versions here are dramatically different from the versions that appear on his original albums. 

Producer Orrin Keepnews, who assembled this collection, notes, “With an artist who insisted on several takes, and the obvious need to eventually pick only one for release, we had to make some rather arbitrary, borderline decisions that at the time seemed to have doomed some excellent music to oblivion.”

This set helps to rescue some of that excellent music. The tracks feature Montgomery playing with notable musicians such as include Milt Jackson, Wynton Kelly, Kenny Burrell, Philly Joe Jones and Victor Feldman.

On compilations of unreleased material such as this, the master tapes are used to make the record. There’s no need for a copy tape to have ever been made.

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Skip the OJCs of Letter from Home and Come Along With Me

Hot Stamper Pressings of Excellent Jazz Recordings Available Now

If you see this OJC pressing in your local record store, our best advice is to skip it. We found the sound to be much too dry and bright — think CD-like sound — for our tastes. Veiled too, lacking the resolution common to good vintage pressings.

We’ve never played an early pressing of the album, but we know a bad sounding record when we hear one, and this OJC is pretty bad.

It clearly lacks Tubey Magic as well as weight in the lower registers, and that is simply not a sound we can abide, whether it’s found on a cheap jazz reissue or a modern Heavy Vinyl pressing.

Same with Come Along With Me. The copy we played years ago had many of the same problems.

Our OJC Overview

We’ve easily played more than a hundred OJC pressings in the more than 37 years we’ve been in the record business.

Some OJC pressings have the potential to be great.

We’ve even found some of the more recent pressings on OJC that have good — not great mind you, but good — sound. (Just to be clear, any OJC produced this century is to our way of thinking a recent pressing.)

Some are we’ve played are just awful.

And the only way to judge them fairly is to judge them individually, which requires actually throwing one on the turntable and giving it a spin. If it shows promise, we buy a bunch more and see if we can find some good ones.

If the sound is hopeless, we don’t pursue it. We have way too many potentially good sounding records waiting to be played.

It’s a Lot of Work

Since virtually no record collectors or audiophiles like going the extra mile, they draw faulty conclusions based on their lack of rigor, among other things, when evaluating pressings. They are quick to judge the whole series based on a few examples.

OJC’s are cheap reissues sourced from digital tapes, run for the hills!

Those who approach the problem of finding top quality pressings with what can only be described as an utter lack of seriousness can be found on every audiophile forum there is. The youtubers are the worst, but are the self-identified aristocrats of audio any better?

I see no evidence to support that proposition, for or against. None of them in our estimation seem to know much about the mysteries and arcana that lie at the heart of the vinyl LP.

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Red Garland Trio – Bright And Breezy

More of the Music of Red Garland

  • This vintage copy was doing practically everything right, with both sides earning STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • The sound is clear, spacious, relaxed, and full-bodied, with Tubey Magical richness and analog smoothness that only the better vintage pressings can offer
  • The typical copies are thin, lean, and lifeless, but we managed to unearth some copies that really get it right and here is a knockout one
  • “During 1961-1962…pianist Red Garland recorded four LPs for the Jazzland label. [T]his trio set with bassist Sam Jones and drummer Charlie Persip…is very much up to par. An enjoyable straight-ahead session.”

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Bill Evans – Conception

More Bill Evans

  • This wonderful Milestone Two-Fer from 1981 boasts STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on side one and excellent Double Plus (A++) sound on the other three – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • You’d be hard-pressed to find a copy that’s this well balanced, big and lively, with wonderful clarity in the mids and highs
  • 4 stars: “Even in 1956, Evans had his own chord voicings and a lyrical yet swinging style… A strong start to a significant career.”
  • “In addition, there is a full album of previously unreleased music: an alternate take of ‘No Cover, No Minimum,’ an unaccompanied version of ‘Some Other Time’ from 1958 and four solo pieces that Evans cut in 1962, his first recordings after the tragic death of his bassist Scott LaFaro.”
  • If you’re a Bill Evans fan, this All Tube Recording released in 1957 should make a welcome addition to your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1957 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

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Milt Jackson & Wes Montgomery / Bags Meets Wes!

More Wes Montgomery

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Guitar

These two guys were made for each other; they have the same musical sensibilities.

Credit must also go to Wynton Kelly; his every solo is a thing of beauty. The three principals here are at the tops of their games and the sound will have you drooling. Good luck finding a more involving and enjoyable jazz record with this kind of sound — they just aren’t out there. That’s why, even with some surface problems, we think you are getting your money’s worth and more with this one.

If you’re a jazz fan, this Must Own Title from 1962 belongs in your collection

The complete list of titles from 1962 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

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Cannonball Adderley – A Forgotten Jazz Classic

More Cannonball Adderley

Yet Another Record We’ve Discovered with (Potentially) Excellent Sound

  • An exceptionally rare and amazing sounding early stereo pressing (that’s the mono you see pictured btw) – it boasts Triple Plus (A+++) sound from first note to last 
  • These originals are by far the best way to go, in stereo of course, putting Cannonball’s breathy, melodic sax right between your speakers, with the rest of the band – including Sergio Mendes on keys – spread out around him
  • Truly an undiscovered gem in the Adderley catalog – the audiophiles here at Better Records were digging both the music and especially the superb sound
  • Another top quality recording from the superbly talented Ray Fowler, the house engineer for Riverside and the man behind many of the best Thelonious Monk and Cannonball Adderley recordings done for that great jazz label
  • A Jazz Classic from 1963 that should appeal to any fan of Bossa Nova music
  • The complete list of titles from 1963 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

I think I first heard this album on the original pressing about ten years ago. Of course I liked it immediately; samba jazz and pop are two of my favorite styles of music, from Getz Au Go Go to Astrud Gilbert, on to Antonio Carlos Jobim and ending with the bottled-sunshine Pure Pop of Sergio Mendes and Brazil ’66.

For us audiophiles both the sound and the music here are enchanting. If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good 1962 All Tube Analog sound can be, this killer copy will do the trick. (more…)

Sonny Red – Images

  • A STUNNING copy of Sonny Red’s 1962 release with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from top to bottom – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Tubey Magical Analog – the sound is open, spacious and transparent, with a huge three-dimensional soundfield
  • If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good 1962 All Tube Analog sound can be, this killer copy will do the trick, thanks to the superb engineering skills of Ray Fowler

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Charlie Byrd – Byrd at the Gate

This is a nice Early Riverside stereo pressing (not as pictured) with excellent sound! It’s also a title Mobile Fidelity ruined, and having just played this record, I can see hear how they did it.

First of all, the guitar and the drums are tonally right on the money. Mobile Fidelity of course brightened up both and the results are a phony sounding guitar and a phony sounding drum kit, with tizzy cymbals. (The Wes Montgomery MoFi title has many of the same faults, but it’s not quite as bad as this one.)   

The other reason the Mobile Fidelity is such a joke is that this recording inherently has a lot of ill-defined bass. Since Half-Speed mastering causes a loss of bass definition, their pressing is even WORSE in this respect.

Mobile Fidelity rarely understood what an acoustic guitar was supposed to sound like. They blew it on all the Cat Stevens masterpieces, brightening up the guitar which emphasized the “picking” at the expense of the resonating guitar body and vibrating string harmonics.

What makes Byrd At The Gate a good record is the natural acoustic guitar tone. Once you screw that up, what’s left?

An audiophile record. For audiophiles who like phony sounding guitars.

Riverside cut this record, and they knew how to cut it right.

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Jimmy Heath – Swamp Seed

  • Jimmy Heath makes his site debut here with this superb Riverside Black Label stereo pressing of his 1963 album, which boasts Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish
  • With Donald Byrd on trumpet and Herbie Hancock on piano (as well as French horns and a tuba!), this is a fun session with top players 
  • Based on what we’re heard, this is an outstanding recording – the top opens up nicely and there’s plenty of space in the studio, giving all the players room to breathe
  • “This is a delightful if underrated set… The multi-talented Jimmy Heath has many consistently rewarding and distinctive tenor saxophone solos..

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