Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Thelonious Monk Available Now
The Riverside 9242 pressing of Monk’s Music we played recently was very much not to our liking.
In fact, every copy of this record we have ever played sounded terrible. The early pressings sounded bad and the OJC sounded bad.
We give up. We’re cutting our losses. We love Monk, but why on earth would we keep throwing money down this rathole? Our notes for this copy read:
- Dry (more records with dry sound can be found here), and
- Bright (more records with bright sound can be found here),
- Overall grade: No Good
Some reviewers of the audiophile persuasion prefer to review only records that sound good to them and ignore the rest. We think this does the audiophile community a disservice.
Like Consumer Reports, we like to test things. They test toasters, we test records. We put them through their paces and let the chips fall where they may.
They want to find out if the things they are testing offer the consumer good quality and value.
We want to find out if the records we are testing offer the audiophile good sound and music.
It takes a dedicated group of people and a healthy budget to carry out these kinds of tests in large numbers.
No other record dealers, record reviewers or record collectors could possibly have auditioned more than a small fraction of the records that we’ve played. We’ve been looking for the best sounding pressings of the recordings that have stood the test of time for decades. Now, with a staff of ten or more, we can buy, clean and play records at a scale that would be unimaginable for any single person to attempt.
That puts us in a unique position to help audiophiles looking for the highest quality pressings.
Yes, we have the resources, the staff and the budget. More importantly, we came up with a much scientifically reliable approach.
