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Paris 1917-1938 – Side One Versus Side Two

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Living Presence Records Available Now

UPDATE 2025

This listing was written all the way back in 2012 for the first Hot Stamper pressing of SR 90435 we’d ever listed as a Hot Stamper.

Note that it only had one good side, and even that side had a serious problem.

Thirteen years later in 2025 we would do a real shootout for this wonderful recording and learn something very few audiophiles know to this day — that the best stampers and the worst stampers are sometimes the same stampers.

Our 2012 Review

Super Hot Stamper sound for Eric Satie’s wonderfully eccentric Parade (and the Auric piece as well) can be found on this rare original promo copy of Mercury SR 90435, a record that was previously on the TAS List if I’m not mistaken.

It certainly deserves to be. The sound is BIG and OPEN, and like so many Mercury recordings with the London Symphony, it’s rich and full-bodied, not thin and nasally as is so often the case with their domestically recorded releases. Above all the sound is transparent, lively and dynamic.

In many ways this album would certainly serve quite well as an audiophile Demo Disc: the timbre of the wide array of instruments used is (mostly) Right On The Money.

Check out the lengthy and humorous producer’s notes for the sessions below. And people think The Beatles discovered experimental sounds in the studio.

The Brass Lacked Weight

With one small exception: the brass doesn’t have all the weight of the real thing, and for that we have deducted one plus from our top grade of three.

Side one has classic bad Mercury sound.

So screechy, hard and thin. How many audiophiles own records like this and don’t know that the sound of one side is awful and the other brilliant?

Since so few have ever commented publicly about such matters — and even supposedly knowledgeable audiophile reviewers never bother to even bring up the subject of one side versus the other — one must conclude that this is a subject that has yet to pierce the consciousness of most of our audiophile brethren, especially the ones who haven’t yet discovered this site.

Now’s a good time to start. Dig in, you may be surprised by what you find.

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Listening in Depth to Romantic Warrior

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Return to Forever Available Now

Romantic Warrior is my favorite Jazz/Rock Fusion album of all time. As good as the music is, the sound is even better.

This is the Jazz/Rock Demo Disc that stands head and shoulders above the rest. In my experience, no record of this kind is more dynamic or has better bass. Not one.

Demo Disc doesn’t begin to do this kind of sound justice.

Simply put, not only is this one of the greatest musical statements of all time, it’s one of the great recording achievements. Few albums in the history of the world can lay claim to this kind of sonic power and energy.

But the Super Sound has a purpose, a raison d’etre. This is the kind of music that requires it; better yet, demands it. In truth, the sound is not only up to the challenge of expressing the life of the music on this album, it positively enhances it.

Just to take one example: Those monster Lenny White drum rolls that run across the soundstage from wall to wall may be a recording studio trick, but they’re there to draw your attention to his amazing powers, and it works! The drums are everywhere on this album, constantly jumping out of the soundfield and taking the music into the stratosphere where it belongs.

Side One

Medieval Overture

The grandiose opening of this record serves as an important sonic checkpoint, as well as a tipoff for the pyrotechnics to come. On the better copies Corea’s multi-layered, swirling synths occupy their own space, clearly separated from each other, not blurred and inarticulate as they are on the poorer pressings.

Also notice how much attack Lenny White’s drums have, especially in the more exposed sections. The transients are breathtakingly immediate. Run-of-the-mill copies tend to flatten Mr White, making his acrobatic playing seem two-dimensional and less-than-inspired. The best copies prove that nothing could be further from the truth.

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Letter of the Week – “To think I spent all those years playing a record that was bright and edgy, none the wiser to matrix numbers and pressing variations.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Michael Jackson Available Now

Our good customer who goes by the handle ab_ba on the web wrote to us about his experience with the White Hot Stamper pressing of Michael Jackson’s Thriller he recently acquired.

Part one of his letter can be found here.

Here he tells us about the shootout he conducted, which included a “pricey Japanese pressing” and a pressing that the forums recommended as the “holy grail.”

A few weeks later, on the eve of the closing of the return window, I shot it out against the best of my other copies. They range from the copy I grew up with, one of the few records from childhood that I held onto, to a pricey Japanese pressing in great shape (purchased long ago, when I thought Japanese pressing were where it’s at), to some copies I’ve picked up over the years because they looked to be in good shape and they were just five bucks, and a pressing that the forums told me was the “holy grail.”

None stacked up to the white hot stamper. In fact, they really weren’t even close. Here’s what I found:

The copy I grew up with is bright and edgy. To think, I spent all those years playing and re-playing a record that was bright and edgy, none the wiser to matrix numbers and pressing variations.

Some other lucky kid back then was surely listening to the copy I now own. I wonder if he ever said to himself, “wow, there’s something about this record. It sounds really special.”

The pressing with a sought-after matrix code had phenomenal bass, but the vocals were recessed. I’d so easy to be impressed with those huge drums on Billie Jean, but that alone is not enough to tell you it’s a great pressing. A lot of pressings seem to get that right.

My Japanese pressing was clear and full. But too smooth. The guitars don’t bite. Also, it fatigued me by about halfway through the side. This is energetic music. It might exhaust you, but it doesn’t have to fatigue you. This is an example of where if you don’t have a white hot stamper to compare it to, you’ll just assume your version sounds as good as it can get.

Dear ab_ba,

Most Japanese pressings cater to the sound a mid-fi system would need to sound good and a hi-fi system would find disastrous. They are almost always made from dubbed tapes, which are then brightened up in the mastering phase since that is the sound that appeals to the Japanese market for some reason unknown to me. (Old school audio equipment — horn speakers and vintage tube electronics — would be my guess.)

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Shoot Out The Lights – Bigger, Taller, Wider, Deeper

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Richard Thompson Available Now

One of the qualities we don’t talk about nearly enough on the site is the SIZE of a record’s presentation. Some copies of the album don’t extend all the way to the outside edges of the speakers, and don’t seem to take up all the space from the floor to the ceiling. Other copies do, creating a huge soundfield from which the instruments and voices positively jump out of the speakers. 

When you hear a copy that can do that, needless to say (at least to anyone who’s actually bought some of our best Hot Stamper pressings) it’s an entirely different listening experience.

With constant improvements to the system, Shoot Out the Lights is now so powerful a recording that we had no choice but to add it to our Top 100 list in 2014, but we would go even further than that and say that it would belong on a list of the Top Ten Best Sounding Rock Records of All Time.

The guitars are HUGE — they positively leap out of the speakers on the title cut, freeing themselves from a studio that seems already to be the size of a house.

Not long ago we played an amazing copy of The Sky Is Crying, one of the biggest — and by that we mean tallest, widest and deepest — sounding records we have ever heard. This album is every bit as big. It’s nothing less than astounding.

We live for that sound here at Better Records. If you do too, you might want to check out the albums in this group we consider to be Demo Discs for size and space.

There is the kind of solid, powerful kick to the drums on every track that only the best of the best rock records ever display, the Back in Blacks and Zep IIs, with deep punchy bass augmenting the drums, just as it does on the Hot Stamper pressings of those two titles.

It’s no exaggeration to say that this record should put to shame 99% of all the rock records you have ever heard.

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Letter of the Week – “I immediately noticed an improvement in lower end presence with the white hot stamper.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jackson Browne Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some a Hot Stamper pressing of Late for the Sky he purchased a while ago:

Hey Tom, 

It’s been a good day of listening! Something about this copy of Late for the Sky is bugging me. Jackson’s voice just doesn’t seem as natural sounding as in the other albums I have. Wondering if the white hot stamper you have might be a better choice? Thinking this album (more his voice) should sound as good as the other two I bought ? If you think the white hot stamper would be a better choice should I just order it then send this one back?

Thanks again for your help!

Rob

Rob,

It is always a good idea to hear the best copy against whatever you have, even when you have a Hot Stamper. It’s unlikely to fix the problem you hear with the voice — not sure what those might be, the recording is what it is and if they wanted the voice to sound the way it does, we just accept it as a choice they made, grading on a curve and all that — but it is possible you might like it better, even a lot better. 

Go ahead and order it, you have nothing to lose and plenty to gain. Hang on to your old copy for now so you can play the two against each other.

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Don’t Skip the OJC of Carl’s Blues

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Available Now

UPDATE 2025

The OJC pressings we played recently had much better sound than we described back in 2019 when our original highly-critical review was posted.

We told our customers to skip the OJC, but that turned out to bad advice as the right OJC pressings can be awesome sounding.

Seems we were dead wrong about this pressing. Live and learn is our motto, for this very reason.

And we don’t mind admitting to past mistakes, as that is a clear sign of progress.

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For Concerto No. 1, This Is the Way the Piano Should Sound

Hot Stamper Living Stereo Classical and Orchestral Titles Available Now

We love the huge, solid and powerful sound of the piano on this recording. This piano has weight and heft. As a result, it sounds like a real piano.

For some reason, a great many Rubinstein recordings are not capable of reproducing those all-important qualities in the sound of the piano.

Those are, as I hope everyone understands by now, the ones we don’t sell. If the piano in a piano concerto recording doesn’t sound solid and powerful, what is the point of playing such a record?

Or, to be more accurate, what is the point of an audiophile playing such a record? (Those of you who would like to avoid bad sounding vintage classical and orchestra records have come to the right place. We’ve compiled a very long list of them precisely for that purpose, and we’ve been adding to it regularly.)

No doubt Kenneth Wilkinson made sure the recording captured the weight of the piano he was listening to as it played all those years ago in the wonderful acoustics of Kingsway Hall.

The strings have lovely Living Stereo (Decca-engineered) texture as well.

As befits a Wilkinson recording from 1961, there is no shortage of clarity to balance out the Tubey Magical warmth and richness.

When you add in the tremendous hall space, weight and energy, this becomes a Demo Disc orchestral recording by any standard.

Notes from a 2024 Shootout

Our notes above point out that:

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Armed Forces Deserves to Be More Popular

Hot Stamper Pressings of Elvis’s Albums Available Now

Armed Forces is one of the best sounding rock records ever made.

I would put it in the first percentile of all the rock recordings I’ve ever played, ahead of 99% of the pack — but only if you have the right Brit pressing, with the kind of sound we describe at length in our reviews for the top copies.

Armed Forces sets a standard few records can meet. It will make every audiophile Half-Speed and Heavy Vinyl pressing you own sound positively sick by comparison.

The real thing just can’t be beat, and Armed Forces is as real as it gets, baby!  A true Demo Disc on big speakers at loud levels.

The hottest copies have unbelievably punchy, rock-solid bass and drums. I would say the sound of the rhythm section of this album ranks up there with the very best ever recorded. Beyond that, the musical chops of this band at this time rank with the very best in the history of rock. Steve, Bruce and Pete rarely get the credit they deserve for being one of the tightest, liveliest backing bands ever to walk into a studio or onto a stage.

There are about 100 records we think deserve to be more popular with audiophiles, and Armed Forces is one of them.

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Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs – Tubey Magical on the Red Label?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Tubey Magical Rock Records in Stock Now 

UPDATE 2023

In 2023 we did another shootout for this devilishly difficult-to-find album, and none of the Red Label pressings we played scored better than 1.5+ on any side. Many of them were hopeless thin and dry.

We would not recommend Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs at anything but a nominal price.

Our older commentary follows.

Years ago we noted that the red label Columbia reissues of most of their catalog leave much to be desired. Here is an excerpt from a listing for The Byrds’ Greatest Hits.

One might assume that the later label copies would be the ones that would most likely have been cut with lower distortion equipment, the way the later Kind of Blues are cut so much cleaner than the earlier ones.

On The Byrds’ albums this is almost never the right approach. The Tubey Magic of the earlier pressings is absolutely crucial to the sound of these albums. It is the sine qua non of Classic 60’s Rock sound. Without it you might as well be playing a CD.

It turns out that some copies of Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs on the later red label can actually sound amazingly Tubey Magical, especially on side two. In fact we heard a red label side two that was even more rich than the best 360s.

Since the person listening to the record has no idea what the actual label is of the record being evaluated — which is about as close an approximation of the Scientific Method as we can manage around here — it was very surprising to hear such glorious Tubey Magical Richness and Sweetness come from such an unexpected source.

A good reason not to avoid later pressings and reissues absent any evidence of their inferiority.

And a good reason to judge your records by playing them whenever possible. (more…)

Remastered, But Why on Earth Would They Bother?

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Supersax Plays Bird is awful music with awful sound.

In 1980 this record single-handedly convinced me that MoFi would lower themselves to remastering records that have little in the way of actual musical value.

UPDATE 2022

I just looked up the mastering engineer credited with cutting the original pressings in 1973, Wally Traugott. Now what are the chances that Stan Ricker cut this record better than Wally Traugott? One in a million? That would be my guess.

Which simply means that the right domestic pressing on Capitol might just be a good sounding record.

But why should anyone care? The music is hopeless.

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