What Did Harry Really Know About this Chet Atkins Album?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chet Atkins Available Now

You can feel the cool air of the studio the minute the needle hits the groove on this killer copy.

What we are offering here is the superior sounding re-recording from 1961, produced by Dick Peirce.

Chet took the orchestra tapes back to his home studio in 1961 and re-recorded his parts over them, and we think he managed to do a much better job the second time around.

This TAS list recording will have you asking why so few Living Stereo pressings actually do what this one does. The more critical listeners among you will recognize that this is a very special copy indeed.

I suppose we owe a debt of gratitude to Harry Pearson for pointing out to us with his TAS List what a great record this is, although I’m pretty sure anybody playing this album would have no trouble telling after a minute or two that this copy is very special indeed.

The pressing that Harry seems to have preferred — it’s the one recommended on his list, along with the Classic Records repress — is the inferior-sounding original recording, the one with the cover showing a guitar superimposed over the cityscape.

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Dave Brubeck – Time Out

More of the Music of Dave Brubeck

  • This Six-Eye Stereo pressing boasts out of this world Demo Disc sound
  • Time Out captures the ambience and huge space of Columbia’s studio like practically no other record has (with a little reverb thrown in for good measure)
  • A knockout pressing of Brubeck’s astonishingly well recorded Jazz Classic, this is a record that belongs in every audiophile’s collection
  • Early stereo LPs in clean condition like this one are getting awfully tough to find nowadays…
  • “Buoyed by a hit single in Desmond’s ubiquitous Take Five, Time Out became an unexpectedly huge success, and still ranks as one of the most popular jazz albums ever. That’s a testament to Brubeck and Desmond’s abilities as composers, because Time Out is full of challenges both subtle and overt — it’s just that they’re not jarring.”
  • If you’re a fan of Brubeck and company, this 1959 album belongs in your collection, along with quite a few others from the classic jazz era

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Quincy Jones – Gula Matari

More Jazz Fusion

More Large Group Jazz Recordings

  • Gula Matari makes its Hot Stamper debut on this early A&M pressing with two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides
  • The sound is rich and Tubey Magical, yet transparent and spacious in the way that only vintage pressings ever are
  • Valerie Simpson’s vocals on the R&B cover of S&G’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” on side one are wonderfully sweet and breathy with remarkable in-your-listening-room presence
  • Another title that was rarely pressed on good vinyl — A&M made some awfully good sounding records, but they rarely play as quietly as we audiophiles would like them to
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…the roaring big band comes back with a vengeance in ‘Walkin’,’ where Milt Jackson, Herbie Hancock, Hubert Laws, and other jazzers take fine solo turns, and things really get rocking on Nat Adderley’s ‘Hummin”… The whole record sounds like they must have had a ball recording it.

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Billy Joel – Streetlife Serenade

More Billy Joel

  • A killer copy of Joel’s third studio album, here with a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a seriously good Double Plus (A++) side two
  • The sound is transparent and the piano is clear and weighty, showcasing Joel’s somewhat underrated talent at the keys
  • Features some of Billy’s big hits, including “The Entertainer” as well as “Los Angelenos”
  • This is one of the toughest classic Billy Joel albums to find with good sound and quiet vinyl, but this one is doing practically everything we could hope to expect (minor condition issue noted below notwithstanding)

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Why Is It So Hard for Mobile Fidelity to Get the Midrange Right?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

We recently auditioned the Mobile Fidelity One-Step pressing of Blue and made the notes regarding the sound you see below.

We focussed on the quality of their pressing’s vocal reproduction, for the simple reason that a Joni Mitchell album that gets the vocals wrong is a Joni Mitchell album that no music lover and certainly no audiophile  would ever want to play.

The fact that some audiophiles do want to play this record speaks poorly of their ability to reproduce it properly. Accurate playback will reveal the problems with Joni’s voice described in detail below. The post-it for side one is on the left, for side two on the right.

We try to be very specific about the shortcomings of these records, which is why we reproduce our notes whenever they are available.

Side One

  • Tonally not far off, a bit too stringy and flat. Not awful. Congested vocals at peaks, harsh. 1+

Side Two

  • Vocal peaks like “traveling, traveling, traveling…” or “California” get squashed and harsh, lacking the real dynamics, presence and space of the vocals. No grade. (Awful in other words.)

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For Top Quality Sound on Maiden Voyage, Skip the Black B

Blue Note Pressings with Hot Stampers Available Now

The three copies we had in our recent shootout for Maiden Voyage on the 70s Black B label did poorly.

Like a lot of the records we play when they weren’t mastered properly, they were small, smeary and weak. Considering how bad they sounded, it’s possible — accent on the word possible — that someone remastering the album for a modern audience could do a better job than Blue Note was doing in the late-70s.

This, of course, is not our standard, nor should it be anyone else’s.

Below you will find links to other records with the same problems as this Blue Note reissue.

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Ed Graham – Hot Stix (45 RPM)

More Direct to Disc Recordings

More Percussion Recordings of Interest

  • Hot Stix appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER throughout this original M&K RealTime direct to disc pressing
  • Side one was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be amazed at how big and rich and tubey the sound is
  • Both of these West German-pressed sides were more spacious, natural, and transparent than most of the others we played
  • This copy is full-bodied and lively, with solid weight down low, as well as excellent clarity all around – it raises the bar for this kind percussion-based, free improv jazz on vinyl

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Shelly Manne and His Men / At The Blackhawk Vol. 1 – Live West Coast Jazz in 1960 Is Hard to Beat

More Shelly Manne

More Contemporary Label Jazz

  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, this vintage stereo pressing will be very hard to beat – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Side one has the best condition grade we give out, Mint Minus – there may not be another record on the site with vinyl that quiet!
  • This is West Coast Jazz at its best, and if anyone can capture the realism of a live jazz club, it’s the engineers and producers at Contemporary
  • Each instrument here sounds right – the piano is weighty and percussive; the drums are punchy, and the brass has lovely leading edge transients
  • We were surprised that Volumes One and Four had much better sound than Two and Three
  • Until we can crack the code for those other two titles, don’t expect to see them on the site
  • If you’re a fan of live jazz, this Contemporary from 1960 belongs in your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1960 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

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Witches’ Brew on Classic Records and How Crazy Wrong I Was, Part One

Hot Stamper Living Stereo Orchestral Titles Available Now

Well below the reproduction of the front page of our old catalog you will find the review I wrote in 2007 for the Classic Records’ Heavy Vinyl pressing of Witches’ Brew.

Clearly I did not care for it in the least. In fact, I thought it was one of the worst reissues I’d ever heard, so aggressive, boosted and unnatural it defied understanding that anyone could ever play such a record and not notice how wrong it sounded.

Now when I think about the Classic Records reissue of Witches’ Brew and its awful sound, it’s obviously a modern remastering I could not possibly have liked.

However, in preparing to move to Georgia in 2022, I found myself digging through some old catalogs from the early Nineties. Something I read in one of them chilled me to the bone.

There it was in black and white: my rave review for the Classic Records pressing of Witches’ Brew.

It’s actually on the front page of the catalog, along with at least one other record that I would be mortified to sell today: the OJC pressing of Saxophone Colossus.

(As soon as I find my review in the old catalog for Saxophone Colossus, I will post it. I can hardly believe I wrote it, but I did. I wrote all my catalogs back then. My lack of competence and the guilt associated with my lack of expertise at the time is undeniable. It obviously would be foolish and wrong of me to try to deny any of it, so I don’t.)

Below you will find a commentary from 2007 detailing the shortcomings of the Classic.

I sure had a lot of nice things to say about it in 1994.

I thought my stereo was awesome back then, but it was not nearly as awesome as I thought it was. It was better than any system I had heard in a stereo salon, audio show or friend’s house, but that has to be seen as a pretty low bar, and it may even be lower now than it was back then.

I’ve written a bit about the limitations of my 90s system here.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is real, and I clearly suffered from it.

In 1994 I had been a fairly dedicated audiophile for more than twenty years, and a strongly opiniated audiophile record dealer, one who took pride in curating his vinyl offerings right from the start of the business in 1987.

I thought I knew what I was talking about. Looking back it’s clear I had a lot to learn.

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Schubert / Octet / Vienna Octet

More Classical Recordings Featuring the Violin

  • Amazing sound throughout this original London pressing of the Vienna Octet’s performance of Schubert’s sublime chamber work, with both sides earning INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • The rich, textured sheen of the strings was far more natural and more real than on all other copies we played, with a clarity and sweetness we were looking for in the violin and cello
  • Both of these sides are super spacious and positively dripping with ambience — talk about Tubey Magic, the liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny

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