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Lee Ritenour – Friendship

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  • Superb sound throughout this original Direct-to-Disc Japanese import pressing, with both sides earning Double Plus (A++) grades – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Full-bodied and warm, exactly the way you want your vintage analog to sound – the guitar is surprisingly real here
  • Both of these sides are Tubey Magical, lively and funky, with the kind of rich, solid sound that will fill your listening room from wall to wall
  • “The third of three Lee Ritenour sets originally cut for Japanese JVC matches the studio guitarist with … Ernie Watts (on tenor and soprano), both Dave and Don Grusin on keyboards, electric bassist Abraham Laboriel, drummer Steve Gadd and percussionist Steve Forman.”

This is one of my all time favorite audiophile discs. It’s actually real music.

The song “Woody Creek” is wonderful and reason enough to own this excellent album. The guitar of Lee Ritenour and the saxophone of Ernie Watts double up during a substantial portion of this song and the effect is just amazing.

Special kudos should go to Ernie Watts on sax, who blows some mean lines. But everybody is good on this album, especially the leader, Lee Ritenour. I saw these guys live and they put on a great show.

By the way, looking in the dead wax I see this record was cut by none other than Stan Ricker of Mobile Fidelity fame himself!

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Various Artists / Woodstock

More Live Albums

  • These original pressings boast seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on all SIX sides
  • With Mint Minus Minus vinyl and no marks that can be heard, you will have a very hard time finding a copy that plays this well
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more richness, fullness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market
  • “As potent a musical time capsule as ever existed, it captures the three-day, 1969 concert event that united close to half a million members of what came to be known as the ‘Woodstock Generation.’ It topped the Billboard Charts for four weeks and sold two million copies.”

You will have a very hard time finding a quieter copy!

Folks, it was a struggle, let me tell you! Not as much of a struggle as putting on the concert itself to be sure, but a struggle for those of us charged with finding good sound on this famously badly recorded album.

First off there are six sides to play for every copy.

Secondly the sound is problematical at best; figuring out what the best copies do well that the run-of-the-mill copies don’t takes quite a bit of concentration, and one has to stay focused for a long time (most of the day in fact). After a while it can really start to wear on your nerves. (more…)

Rachmaninoff – Piano Concerto No. 3 / Ashkenazy / Fistoulari

More of the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) 

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

  • A vintage London Stereo pressing of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 boasting excellent Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • Spacious, rich and smooth – only vintage analog seems capable of reproducing all three of these qualities without sacrificing resolution, staging, imaging or presence
  • Looking to demonstrate just how good 1963 Tubey Analog sound can be? This outstanding copy may be just the record for you
  • If you love this well-known piano concerto as much as we do, this is surely a classic from 1963 that belongs in your collection.

This Decca-engineered recording from the Walthamstow Assembly Hall is rich and natural, with lovely transparency and virtually no smear to the strings, horns or piano.

What an amazing recording. What an amazing piece of music.

The sound is explosively dynamic and on this copy it was positively jumping out of the speakers. In addition, the brass and strings are full-bodied, with practically no stridency, an unusual feat the Decca engineers seem to have accomplished.

Big, rich sound can sometimes present problems for piano recordings. You want to hear the percussive qualities of the instrument, but few copies pull off that trick without sounding thin. This one showed us a piano that was both clear and full-bodied.

With huge amounts of hall space, weight and energy, this is Demo Disc quality sound by any standard. Once the needle has dropped you will quickly forget about the sound (and all the money you paid to get it!) and simply find yourself in the presence of some of the greatest musicians of their generation, captured on one the greatest analog recordings of the day.

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Dave Brubeck Quartet – Time Further Out in Mono

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Mono or Stereo? Both Can Be Good

  • With superb Double Plus (A++) sound throughout, this vintage 6-Eye Mono pressing will be very hard to beat – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • It’s extremely unlikely that any mono pressing will win a shootout, but just to keep us on our toes, we like to put some monos of famous albums in our shootouts from time to time to see how they measure up
  • This 2+ early pressing was the best of the bunch, and it’s guaranteed to beat the pants off any modern Heavy Vinyl pressing ever made
  • These sides are Tubey Magical, rich, full-bodied and warm, yet clear, lively and dynamic
  • This copy demonstrates the big-as-life Fred Plaut Columbia Sound at its best – better even than Time Out(!)
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The selections, which range in time signatures from 5/4 to 9/8, are handled with apparent ease (or at least not too much difficulty) by pianist Brubeck, altoist Paul Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright, and drummer Joe Morello on this near-classic.”
  • Mono or Stereo? Both Can Be Good

Time Further Out is consistently more varied and, dare we say, more musically interesting than Time Out.

If you want to hear big drums in a big room, these Brubeck recordings will show you that sound better than practically any record we know of. These vintage recordings are full-bodied, spacious, three-dimensional, rich, sweet and warm in the best tradition of an All Tube Analog recording.

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Sarah Vaughan – After Hours on Emus

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More Pop and Jazz Vocal Recordings

  • STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides of this vintage pressing put the living, breathing Divine One right between our speakers
  • With simple arrangements, featuring Mundell Lowe’s guitar and George Duvivier’s double bass, Vaughan’s soulful voice can take center stage
  • “…a quiet and intimate affair, with Vaughan more subtle than she sometimes was… some fine jazz singing.”
  • If you’re a fan of Sarah’s, or Live Jazz Club Recordings in general, this Top Title from 1961 belongs in your collection.

This early Emus Stereo pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records cannot even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio, this is the record for you. It’s what Vintage Records are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds. (more…)

Aerosmith – Draw The Line

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    • An incredible pressing of Aerosmith’s fifth studio album with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
    • These sides were richer, fuller, with better bass and more Tubey Magic than all other copies we played in our recent shootout
    • “1977’s Draw the Line managed to be another down-and-dirty Aerosmith release… Draw the Line catches fire more times than not. Unlike their most recent album successes, the band shies away from studio experimenting and dabbling in different styles; instead they return to simple, straight-ahead hard rock.”

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The Beatles – A Hard Day’s Night

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More Reviews and Commentaries for A Hard Day’s Night

  • With killer sound throughout, we guarantee you’ve never heard the 14 tracks of A Hard Day’s Night sound remotely as good as they do here
  • Both sides are big, spacious and absolutely jumping out of the speakers, with relatively rich, smooth sound
  • This one gets the heart of the music right – the lad’s voices – and that’s what makes The Beatles FUN to listen to
  • 5 stars: “Decades after its original release, its punchy blend of propulsive rhythms, jangly guitars, and infectious, singalong melodies is remarkably fresh.”

Drop the needle on any song on either side to see why we went crazy over this one. The emotional quality of the boys’ performances really comes through on this copy. They aren’t just singing — they’re really beltin’ it out. Can you imagine what that sounds like on the title track? We didn’t have to imagine it, we heard it!

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Rick Nelson – Garden Party

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More Country and Country Rock

  • Garden Party finally returns to the site on this original Decca pressing that boasts two INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides
  • This is an amazingly rich, Tubey Magical recording, and when you get a good copy with enough clarity and top end extension to bring it to life it can sound very good indeed
  • If you like the sound of albums engineered by Stephen Barncard (think Deja Vu, American Beauty and Tarkio for starters) then you are going to find much to like about the sound of this album
  • “Rick Nelson’s Garden Party rocks a lot harder than the title track would lead one to believe, and is also as much of a showcase for the Stone Canyon Band as it is for Nelson.”

It’s tough to find copies without marks, or ones that play this quietly.

The music is quite enjoyable — even the younger guys around here were getting a lot out of it. Drop the needle on the title track (a top ten single) or “Are You Really Real?” to hear these guys at their best. Rick’s Stone Canyon Band at times featured future members of Poco and The Eagles, so that should tell you something.

Acoustic guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this recording. The harmonic coherency, the richness, the body as well as phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum. (more…)

Stevie Wonder – Fulfillingness’ First Finale

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More Soul, Blues and R&B

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  • An early Tamla pressing of Stevie Wonder’s 1974 Soul Masterpiece with superb Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on both sides
  • Finding the right balance between Tubey Magical Richness and Transparency is the trick, and we think this copy strikes that balance as well as any pressing we’ve heard
  • “Boogie On Reggae Woman” and “You Haven’t Done Nothing” were the big hits but the other tracks on the album are where the REAL Stevie Wonder MAGIC can be found
  • 4 1/2 stars [but we give it 5]: “The songs and arrangements are the warmest since Talking Book, and Stevie positively caresses his vocals on this set, encompassing the vagaries of love, from dreaming of it (‘Creepin”) to being bashful of it (‘Too Shy to Say’) to knowing when it’s over (‘It Ain’t No Use’).”
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” but with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Fulfillingness’ First Finale is a good example of a record most audiophiles don’t know well but should.
  • If you’re a Stevie Wonder fan, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this title from 1974 is clearly one of his best, his two best in our opinion, just a tad behind his masterpiece, Inner Visions

We’re big fans of Stevie here at Better Records, but it’s always a challenge to find good sound for his albums. Tons of great songs here, including the ones everybody knows, Boogie On Reggae Woman and You Haven’t Done Nothing. Both sound WONDERFUL on this pressing.

But…

For the first time in my life, over the course of the last five years or so I’ve really gotten to know the album well, having found a CD at a local store to play in the car (and now I also have a cassette to play in my Walkman while working out).

I’ve listened to Fulfillingness’ First Finale scores of times. I now see that it is some of the best work Stevie Wonder ever did, right up there with Innervisions and ahead of any other Stevie Wonder album, including Talking Book and Songs in the Key of Life.

The best songs on the album to my mind are the quieter, more heartfelt and emotional ones, not the rockers or funky workouts. My personal favorites on side one are: Smile Please. Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away, Too Shy to Say and Creepin’, which, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, are all the songs that weren’t hits.

On side two the two slowest songs are the ones I now like best: It Ain’t No Use & They Won’t Go When I Go (famously and brilliantly covered by George Michael on Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 in 1990). (more…)

Harry Nilsson – Pussy Cats

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More John Lennon

  • Pussy Cats returns to the site on this vintage RCA pressing with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Both of these sides are rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical with lots of energy
  • Produced by John Lennon, Nilsson’s partner in crime, it’s a really fun album, with an appealingly ragged and spontaneous vibe
  • “It may not be as wild as the lost weekend itself, but it couldn’t have been recorded at any other time and remains a fascinating aural snapshot of the early days of 1974.”

The soundstage is huge and open, there’s some real richness and body to the vocals and, perhaps most importantly, you get all the energy and presence required to bring this wild album to life.

John Lennon and Harry Nilsson were notorious partiers during Lennon’s “lost weekend” away from Yoko, and the album basically plays like all that excess playing out in the studio. The vibe is loose and spontaneous, and Nilsson’s voice is at its most ragged. That looseness and raggedness results in some startlingly emotional peaks — “Many Rivers To Cross” and “Don’t Forget Me” are positively spine-tingling — and some good-natured romps through classic covers like “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Rock Around The Clock.” It’s a whole lot of fun — especially when you have a copy that sounds like this!

This album may not be a demo disc like A Little Touch of Schmilsson In The Night, but that’s really not the point here. This record is about the atmosphere, and this copy has the kind of big, open soundstage and smooth, musical tonality that really make the music work! It’s actually one of the best-sounding Nilsson albums, and the sound is perfectly matched to the material.

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