Mussorgsky / Pictures at an Exhibition (Piano Version) / Ashkenazy

More of the music of Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881)

  • A superb early London stereo pressing of our favorite solo piano performance of Mussorgsky’s masterful suite, with Double Plus (A++) sound from the first note to the last
  • The weight and warmth of side one’s recording from Kingsway Hall is faithfully captured in all its beauty on this very disc
  • The orchestral performance of the work is squeezed onto the second side of the record, and that is just not going to work with a 30-minute-long piece of music — the sound is compressed and bass-shy

(more…)

Talking Heads – More Songs About Buildings and Food

More of the Music of Talking Heads

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy of Talking Heads’ one true masterpiece that sounds remotely as good as this original Sire pressing – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • We guarantee that you have never heard these songs sound as big, bold and alive as they do here – “Take Me to the River” is really rockin’ on this side two
  • With Eno producing and Rhett Davies engineering, every track is (psycho) killer – truly this is a must own from 1978
  • 5 stars: “Brian Eno brought a musical unity that tied the album together, especially in terms of the rhythm section, the sequencing, the pacing, and the mixing.”

(more…)

The Vintage Sound of The Genius After Hours

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Ray Charles Available Nowcharlgenius

The first copy of the album I got my hands on and needle-dropped back in 2015 or thereabouts blew me away with its big, clear, solid mono sound. Close to a year later when we had enough copies to do this shootout, sure enough it won. That rarely happens — in a big pile of records there’s almost always something better than whatever we’ve heard — but it happened this time.

Imagine if I had played one of the bad sounding or noisy ones to start with. It’s unlikely I would have been motivated to pursue the title and consequently the shootout we just did would never have happened. Lucky for us all that that first copy was so good.

Side One

Big and clear with a very solid piano and all its harmonic overtones. What piano recording from 1956 sounds like this? None that I know of. And it’s Ray Charles at the keys!

Side Two

The exceptionally dynamic brass that comes jumping out of the soundfield is nonetheless warm and full – what a great sound!

There’s much more space here than on most copies, making it sound less mono.

Proof positive that there is nothing wrong with remastering vintage recordings if you know what you’re doing. These sessions from 1956 (left off of an album that Allmusic liked a whole lot less than this one) were remastered in 1985 and the sound — on the better copies mind you — is correct from top to bottom.

The highest compliment I can pay a pressing such as this is that it doesn’t sound like a modern remastered record.

It sounds like a very high quality mono jazz record from the 50s or 60s.

Unlike modern recuts, it doesn’t sound EQ’d in any way.

It doesn’t lack ambience the way modern records do.

It sounds musical and natural the way modern records rarely do.

If not for the fairly quiet vinyl, you would never know it’s not a vintage record. The only originals we had to play against it were too noisy and worn to evaluate critically. They sounded full, but dark and dull and somewhat opaque.

And although it is obviously a budget reissue, it sure doesn’t sound cheap to these ears.

(more…)

After the Gold Rush – Because Sound Matters?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

I don’t know why I wasted so much time critiquing the sound of this remastered (2009) pressing. Frankly, it really wasn’t worth it.

However, since I listen to records for a living, I figured I might as well listen to this one, head to head with an excellent vintage pressing, of course. What other way to do it is there?

Since we do shootouts for this album regularly, we know just how good the best pressings of After the Gold Rush can sound, and this newly remastered vinyl is missing almost everything that makes the album essential to any right thinking music lover’s collection.

We can summarize the sound of this dreadful record in one word: boring.

Since some of you reading this review are no doubt fans of Chris Bellman, the engineer credited on the album, and a man apparently held in some esteem by a great many audiophiles, perhaps we owe it to his fans to break down the sonic strengths and weaknesses of this pressing in more detail.

What It Does Right

It’s tonally correct. Unlike many modern pressings, it is not overly smooth.

Uh, can’t think of anything else…

What It Does Wrong

Where to begin?

(more…)

Listening in Depth to Bookends

More of the Music of Simon and Garfunkel

Musically side two is one of the strongest in the entire Simon and Garfunkel oeuvre (if you’ll pardon my French). Each of the five songs could hold its own as a potential hit on the radio, and there is no filler to be found anywhere. How many albums from 1968 can make that claim?

The estimable Roy Halee handled the engineering duties. Not the most ‘natural” sounding record he ever made — the processing is heavy handed on a number of tracks — but that’s clearly not what neither he nor the duo were going for.

If you want natural, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme has what you are looking for. That said, as of 2022 both are Top 100 Titles.

The three of them would obviously take their sound much farther in that direction with the Grammy winning Bridge Over Troubled Water from 1970.

The bigger production songs on this album have a tendency to get congested on even the best pressings, which is not uncommon for four track recordings from the 60s. Those of you with properly set up high-dollar front ends should have less of a problem than some. $3000 cartridges can usually deal with this kind of complex information better than $300 ones.

But not always. Expensive does not always mean better, since painstaking and exacting setup is so essential to proper playback.

The Wrecking Crew provided top quality backup, with Hal Blaine on drums and percussion, Joe Osborn on bass and Larry Knechtel on piano and keyboards.

Side One

Bookends Theme
Save the Life of My Child

I used to think this track would never sound good enough to use as an evaluation track. It’s a huge production that I’d found practically impossible to get to sound right on even the best original copies of the album. Even as recently as ten years ago I had basically given up trying.

Thankfully things have changed. Nowadays, with great copies at our disposal and a system that is really cooking, virtually all of the harmonic distortion in the big chorus near the opening disappears. It takes a very special pressing and a very special stereo to play this song.

(more…)

Did We Get The Power of the Orchestra Wrong, or Are These Just Bad Stampers?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now

In 2007, we wrote the following review for The Power of the Orchestra, VCS 2659:

DEMO DISC QUALITY ORCHESTRAL SOUND like you will not believe. We put two top copies together to bring you the ultimate-sounding Pictures At An Exhibition. Folks, it doesn’t get any better than this for huge orchestral dynamics and energy.

I confess I badly misjudged this record over the course of the last few years. I remember liking it in the early ’90s; at that time it was the only Golden Age recording of Pictures whose performance moved me. I never liked the famous Reiner, LSC 2201, and Ansermet’s performance on London also lacks drive and coherency in my opinion.

I then went on to extoll the many virtues of the recording, making special mention of the brass, dynamics and bass, which you can read about here.

More recently we played a copy of VCS 2659 in one of our regular Pictures at an Exhibition shootouts and were not the least bit impressed by it.

Side One:

Steely and opaque, not that good.

Side Two:

Strings are not very [unintelligible, might be bright], not much weight.

In other words, it just sounded like an old record.

(more…)

Pat Benatar – Crimes of Passion

More Pat Benatar

More Women Who Rock

  • This vintage copy (only the second to hit the site in nearly three years) is close to the BEST we have ever heard, with both sides earning incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades, just shy of our Shootout Winner – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • All kinds of big hits can be found on this one, including Benatar classics such as “Treat Me Right,” “You Better Run” and “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Benatar avoids the synth-happy trends of the early 80s and delivers a hard rocking ten-song session of power pop tempered with a few ballads for balance.”

Credit for the sound must go to the brilliant engineer Keith Olsen, the man behind the amazing sounding Fleetwood Mac self-titled release from 1975. Is there a better sounding Fleetwood Mac album? I certainly can’t think of one.

The man knows Big Rock sound as well as anyone in the business. The two recordings mentioned above and our Crimes of Passion here have too much in common for it to be a mere coincidence. All three have tons of bass (which is the sine qua non of live rock music), huge size and scope, richness, Tubey Magic, a smooth top and last but not least, hard-rockin’ energy.

Those of you who’ve seen the documentary on Sound City know its reputation for great acoustics, along with all the best analog recording equipment and tube microphones. You can clearly hear all of it come together on this album — if you have a copy that sounds like this one that is.

By the way, I note with special interest their first few recording projects from 1970 as listed on their discography page: Spirit’s Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus (a personal favorite of yours truly), produced by David Briggs, along with another rather well known David Briggs production, After the Gold Rush. The list of Great Sounding Timeless Classic Rock Albums recorded there is a long and glorious one.

(more…)

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 – The Classic Pressing Can Have Very Good Sound

More of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Somehow we managed to have a Classic Records pressing on hand to play in our most recent shootout for the Beethoven Symphony No. 4.

We knew all the way back in 1997 that Classic had done a good job with the record — we recommended it as one of the best Classic Records pressings in our catalogs at the time — but we sure didn’t expect it to do as well as it did, earning 2 pluses on one side and close to that on the other.

Years ago we wrote:

Here is the kind of sound that Classic Records could not ignore, even though the original was only ever made available as part of RCA’s budget reissue series, Victrola.

Don’t let its budget status fool you — this pressing puts to shame most of what came out on the full price Living Stereo label. (And handily beats any Classic Records reissue ever made.)

The top and bottom are wrong to varying degrees on both sides of the Classic, as you can see from our notes, which read:

(more…)

Chet Atkins – Caribbean Guitar

More Chet Atkins

More Recordings in Living Stereo

  • You’ll find superb Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides of this famous TAS Super Disc RCA Living Stereo LP
  • Plays fairly quiet too – about as quiet as these RCA pressings from the early 60s ever will
  • If you have ever heard one of our luscious Living Stereo Chet Atkins records, you know what to expect – off the charts Tubey Magic unlike anything made in the last fifty years, or more!
  • Engineer Bill Porter just doesn’t know how not to make an amazing sounding Living Stereo recording – everything the guy touches is gold
  • If you’re a fan of the smooth guitar stylings of Mr. Atkins, this is a classic from 1962 that belongs in your collection.

This is one of Chet Atkins’ best albums. Sonically, it’s right up there with The Other Chet Atkins and the Hollywood album. It seems like Bill Porter just doesn’t know how not to make an amazing sounding Living Stereo recording. He knocked this out of the park.

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 can tell after a minute or two that it’s in that very special class of great recordings.

This album is a little more lively than some of his other recordings, which can be criticized for being a little too laid back. For example, try side 2, cut 2 where Chet actually jams.

The last track on side 2 where Chet is joined by a trumpet player is my favorite on the album. That guitar-trumpet combination is pretty magical on that song. And you’ve got to love the kind of sound Bill Porter get from a trumpet. That’s the kind of sound we audiophiles drool over. I do anyway.

(more…)

Letter of the Week – “The most expensive record I ever bought but well worth the dough!”

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

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

I will share with you guys a few more observations.

You will not be surprised to learn that the Led Zep 2 WHS leads the pack. The most expensive record I ever bought but well worth the dough!

Your description says it all: Freakishly good! Firmly trounced my early UK plum and my German RL (side 1).

No disapointments regarding the sound whatsoever with all others. One has to understand though that a 3/3 is an absolute judgement but a relative one (Bruce Springssteen comes to mind) but if one follows you long enough the prices asked for give a bit of indication so that‘s fine with me.

Christian ended his letter with these thoughts.

You made my life better with your records. I keep learning a lot from you following your site everyday now, enhanced my listening skills and sometimes detect now my own HS (just listening and comparing my two early UK Track Who Tommy inspired by your listing yesterday) and am amazed by the quality but also differences from side to side).

Best.
Christian

Christian,

We are so happy to hear that we’ve made your life better with our records, who could ask for anything more?

It wasn’t hard for us to beat your UK and German pressings, the UK original is a joke next to the good RL pressings. I hope you had a chance to play our Hot Stamper against the Heavy Vinyl reissue. If you did, please let us know what you heard.

As for your copies of Tommy have side to side differences, we’ve been going on about that for three decades, but for some reason audiophiles and those who write for them never notice these things.

(more…)