Ted Templeman, Producer – Reviews and Commentaries

Letter of the Week – “Oh man, what a difference. Huge sound – really alive – the way you remember this sound should be like.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Van Halen Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom,  

I just got a super hot stamper Van Halen and immediately got out my DCC version – which is a record I’ve had no complaints about – compared to most of the heavy vinyl remaster crap – but, oh man, what a difference.

Huge sound – really alive – the way you remember this sound should be like – I saw these boys when they first hit – one of my first rock concerts.

Thanks again – this was money well spent – and on this one, I can even ebay away the DCC and more than break even (I almost feel guilty about that!).

Richard

Richard,

Isn’t it funny how a record that doesn’t sound “bad” in any way — the DCC – falls so far short of what it really should have sounded like? How will the audiophile record collectors of the world ever get better sound when they already think they have it?

(more…)

Letter of the Week – “For me it is like the difference between 2-D and 3-D”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently (emphasis added):

Hey Tom, 

As a newcomer to your business, and to the entire concept of “Hot Stamper” records, I was naturally skeptical. Many of us have invested in a wide variety of vinyl that simple failed to live up to expectations. Initially I was going to order one and only one record from you, and test your bold promises. Instead, I ended up ordering a nice variety to truly put it to the test… investing a couple thousand dollars on faith. In short, I am now your customer for life.

As a point of reference, my system includes a pair of Wilson Audio Alexia powered by 2 monoblock McIntosh tube Amps and a Mc-tube preamp. Most importantly, a Brinkmann mag drive turntable with a Sumiko low output moving coil cartridge. So, not the world’s best system, but enough to discern what is to follow.

I ordered the following:
* Carole King Tapestry, ((White Hot Pressing)
* The Doobie Brothers, What Were Once Vices (White Hot Pressing)
* James Taylor, Sweet Baby James (White Hot Pressing)
* Paul McCartney, McCartney (Super Hot Pressing)
* Led Zeppelin, Houses of the Holy (Super Hot Pressing)
* Steely Dan, Countdown to Ecstasy (Super Hot Pressing)
* Donald Fagen, The Nightfly (White Hot Pressing)

I warmed up my amps with the tuner for an hour or so and then sat and listened to some of my other records and reacquainted myself with the music from my system. First up was “What Were Once Vices…”. It was immediately apparent that I was getting a range as wide, if not wider than anything I had ever heard from my stereo. Then when I got to the last song on side one, “Road Angel” the guitar and drum interplay in the instrumental jam completely blew me away. Midway through I took the volume from loud to louder, and it exposed nothing but pure, sweet rock and roll. Literally gave me goose bumps.

I then listened to “Countdown to Ecstasy” and in this instance I owe a clean original copy, so I put it to the test. Back to back. I did not have to go past “Bodhisattva” to know it was no contest. If I had to apply a percentage, something like 20% more music comes from the Hot Stamper, and this (like all of my orders) is one of my all time favorite albums.

I won’t go on and on, suffice to say that the experience repeated itself on all of the above.

Even the Fagen copy was WAY better than the 1982 MoFi copy I paid an arm and a leg for. I have always thought that record had a true analog quality, was surprised the first time I learned it was laid down on a digital track. The Hot Stamper even adds to this great sounding record.

(more…)

Takin’ It to the Streets – The Rich, Smooth Sound of Seventies Analog

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Doobie Brothers Available Now

Recently we did one of our regular shootouts for Takin’ It To The Streets, using pressings we know from experience to have the potential for Hot Stamper sound. We cleaned them as carefully as we always do, then we unplugged everything in the house we could get away with, carefully warmed up the system, Talisman’d it, found the right VTA for our Triplanar arm (by ear of course) and proceeded to spend the next couple of hours playing copy after copy on side one, after which we repeated the process for side two.

If you have five or ten copies of a record and play them over and over against each other, the process itself teaches you what’s right and what’s wrong with the sound of the album. Once your ears are completely tuned to what the best pressings do well that the others do not do as well, using a few specific passages of music, it will quickly become obvious how well any given pressing reproduces those passages.

The process could not be more simple. The first step is to go deep into the sound. There you find something special, something you can’t find on most copies. Now, with the hard-won knowledge of precisely what to listen for, you are perfectly positioned to critique any and all pressings that come your way.

The Rich, Smooth Sound of Seventies Analog

Credit Donn Landee (and Ted Templeman too) with the rich, smooth, oh-so-analog sound of the best copies. He’s recorded many of our favorite albums here at Better Records.

(more…)

Time Loves a Hero May Be Transparent in the Midrange, But So What?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Little Feat Available Now

Sonic Grade: D

After playing a killer Hot Stamper pressing of the album many years ago, we wrote the following: 

If you own the Nautilus Half-Speed, a record we actually liked years ago even after we had forsworn those kinds of pressings, you are really in for a treat. THIS is what the band sounds like in the REAL world, not the phony audiophile world that so many of our fellow hobbyists appear to be perfectly happy living in.

Just listen to how punchy the drums are on the real pressings, a perfect example of what proper mastering does well and Half-Speed mastering does poorly.

When you listen to a top quality pressing, you feel that you are hearing this music EXACTLY the way Little Feat wanted it to be heard. I just don’t get that vibe from the Half-Speed.

I was fooled back in the day myself. The one thing these pressings have going for them is that they tend to be transparent in the midrange.

It sounds like someone messed with the sound, and of course someone did. That’s how they get those audiophile records to sound the way they do.

For some reason, some audiophiles like their records to sound pretty and lifeless with sloppy bass.

That is not our sound here at Better Records. We don’t offer records with those qualities and we don’t think audiophiles should have to put up with sound like that.

Further Reading on the subject of Half-Speed mastering

(more…)

Letter of the Week – “The sound was simply amazing! I was listening to the master tapes!”

More of the Music of The Doobie Brothers

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased a while back:

Hey Tom, 

The Doobie Brothers album “Livin’ on the Fault Line” has been my favorite album from one of my favorite bands of all time. It is full of great songs, phenomenal musicianship, and Michael McDonald at his best.

As a retiree who has very modest means today I have “shot out” more than a dozen copies of this lp and have a very good copy and backup. So last week Tom put up a double sided Triple Plus White Hot Stamper of “Livin’ on the Fault Line”. Could it be THAT much better than my best copy considering that my copy was the best of over a dozen and when played really sounds great? AND the Better Records copy would be almost 100 times the cost of my used record store “finds”.

But I couldn’t resist so I pushed the button and the Better Records White Hot copy arrived yesterday. I couldn’t wait to play it. It was in minty condition. I heated up the rig and sat down and laid my Jan Allearts “needle” (economy model $3000 cartridge with its Fritz Geiger stylus, ruby cantilever and hand wound gold coils that extract just about everything a record groove contains) on the band of the song “Little Darlin”.

Suddenly Michael McDonald was in the room in front of me. The sound was simply amazing! TOTALLY transparent. Dynamics were fantastic…..harmonics were great without losing the high end or low end to the midrange. I was listening to the master tapes!

Now this record was not one of the Doobies biggies. It’s a sleeper… a lot were made but you can find them easily and the used prices in bins are dirt cheap. Your average copy sounds pretty good and a good one sounds great BUT this White Hot Stamper just put ALL of them to shame!

This makes it a RARE find and Tom has alluded to how he hasn’t found many that sound this good. And that brings me to the thing that is most disturbing about collecting vinyl (forget CDs)… WHY could the record companies do such a really poor job shipping a majority of poor to good records when they also shipped a minority of fantastic Hot Stamper LP’s. I could say it’s the 80/20 rule where 20% of anything is great and 80% of everything is much less to awful. Like you want your car mechanic or your brain surgeon to be in the 20%! Then with vinyl you have to find the small percentage of the 20% that survived stems, twigs, coke, and horrible record players that destroyed most of all the records ever produced including the 20%.

But hey… there’s Tom Port and Better Records to do the hard work of finding a tiny percentage of a tiny percentage.

Are they expensive? Sure.

(more…)

Domestic Pressings of Clear Spot? Forget ‘Em!

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Captain Beefheart Available Now

We did this shootout many years ago, so many years ago that I cannot find a record of it.

I remember we thought the German pressings were perhaps a bit boosted on both ends and not as natural sounding as the domestic pressings.

After a multitude of improvements in our cleaning and playback, we would agree with our previous understanding that the German pressings are often wrong, but now we also know how right the right ones can be.

It turns out tha some German pressings are not particularly good, another piece of the puzzle that fell into place during our most recent shootout, as painful as that turned out to be considering the money wasted on them.

Did we have the bad German stamper pressings last time around? Who knows?

The producer, Ted Templeman, (Doobie Brothers, James Taylor) brought his mainstream talents to bear on this music, and when the Captain’s free-form tendencies smashed into Templeman’s conservatism, the result was this musical supernova — out there, but not too far out there.

(Play Trout Mask Replica sometime if you miss that feeling from your old hippie days of being on acid. With that music, drugs are entirely superfluous.)

I don’t know how many audiophiles like Captain Beefheart, probably not too many, but if you’re ever going to try one of his albums, this is the place to start: his masterpiece.

(more…)

Van Halen – What to Listen For

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Van Halen Available Now

Most copies just do not have the kind of weight to the bottom and lower mids that this music needs to work. Put simply, if your Van Halen LP doesn’t rock, then what exactly is the point of playing it?

The other qualities to look for on the best pressings are, firstly, space — the best pressings are huge and three-dimensional, with large, lively, exceptionally dynamic choruses.

The copies with the most resolving power are easy to spot — they display plenty of lovely analog reverb trailing the guitars and vocals.

And lastly (although we could go on for days with this kind of stuff), listen for spit on the vocals. Even the best copies have some sibilance, but the bad copies have much too much and make the sibilance gritty to boot.

(more…)

Van Halen on DCC – Not My Idea of Good Sound

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Van Halen Available Now

As I recall it isn’t very good — thick and dull and closed-in; in other words, boring as all get out — but, in its defense, I confess I played it quite a while ago.

If your copy sounds better, more power to you.

But I bet it doesn’t.

Any copy we sell is guaranteed to blow the doors off of it — as well as any other pressing you own — or your money back.

Here are other records, many of them on Heavy Vinyl or Half-Speed Mastered, that we found to have similar shortcomings. They are, to one degree or another:

(more…)

Minute By Minute – Nautilus Reviewed

More of the Music of The Doobie Brothers

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Doobie Brothers

Sonic Grade: D

You may remember reading on the site that we used to like the Nautilus Half-Speed of this title. Playing our Nautilus copy against the better domestic pressings made us wonder what the hell we must have been smoking.

The Nautilus was awful — veiled and compressed, with a lightweight bottom end. (The Nautilus of Threshold of a Dream is another one we used to like and boy does that record sound awful these days.)

Maybe we had played a better copy years ago, or maybe we had played some really bad domestics back then, who can say? A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then.

All we can say for now is that our Hot Stampers are going to blow that audiophile piece of junk — and any other pressing of the album that might exist — right out of the water. (Or your money back.)

And the gold CD too of course. I have never in my life heard a CD sound like this record does, and I don’t think anyone else has either. CDs do some things reasonably well, but few of them have the kind of richness, sweetness and Tubey Magic that the best vinyl copies of this album do, cleaned right and played on a proper stereo of course. (more…)

Clear Spot – Ted Templeman Is The Man

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Captain Beefheart

The producer, Ted Templeman, (Doobie Brothers, James Taylor) brought his mainstream talents to bear on this music, and when the Captain’s free-form tendencies smashed into Templeman’s conservatism the result was this musical supernova — out there, but not too far out there. (Play Trout Mask Replica sometime if you miss that feeling from your old hippie days of being on acid. With that music drugs are entirely superfluous.) I don’t know how many audiophiles like Captain Beefheart, probably not too many, but if you’re ever going to try, this is the place to start: his masterpiece.

I’ve been listening to this album for 50 years, all of my adult life. I still have my original copy in the clear plastic sleeve even. It never grows old and it never grows tired. I have the CD in the car and return to it regularly.

I’ll be disappointed if few of you try this one, but probably not too surprised. Great stereo equipment offers the listener a window on the wonderful world of music. Why do so many audiophiles keep that window opened just a crack?

What to Listen For

These German pressings, the only ones we can find with quiet enough vinyl and good sound, have a tendency toward hi-fi-ishness, with a bit of boost on both ends, the famous EQ “Smile Curve”.

The worst ones are phony as all get out, but the good ones have no trace of hyped-up extremes.

(more…)