5-2019

Mussorgsky / Pictures At An Exhibition – A Good Record (Potentially), Not a Great One

More of the music of Modest Mussorgsky

More of the music of Benjamin Britten

This Chicago Symphony recording by RCA in 1968 has that BIG HALL SOUND we love here at Better Records.

Multi-miking is kept to a minimum, which allows the listener to visualize the orchestra from a more natural perspective than some of the other recordings of the work you may have heard. 

The sound is open and spacious, with lovely texture to the strings. The larger horns are especially well-captured here, Their dark and powerful sound, coupled with the fact that the recording is so dynamic and full-bodied, can really be quite moving. It might just send some shivers up your spine. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “I was blown away by the energy captured on this double set…”

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

Hey Tom, 

Thanks so much for London Calling. Despite having a fair few brilliant records with magic ability to release prodigious amounts of energy (Led Zeppelin, Chicago, BST etc.) I was blown away by the energy captured on this double set and I never thought it would sound soooo good sonically.

I was living in London from 1978 and remember well what a noise this album made. I had it on double cassette and played it constantly, never bought the vinyl at the time but did buy the CD later. I never got the same buzz from the CD and to be honest they didn’t really sound all that good which I put down to the recording. One of my mates at the time was Nick Simonon, the bass player’s younger brother, so I knew they could play really well when they wanted to.

You get to thinking that you’re just getting old and things like London Calling were heard through the heightened emotions of youth and, well, sex and drugs and rock and roll as Mr Dury said. The absolutely brilliant, and I imagine rare, White Hot Stamper has put paid to that, witness a 58 year old singing badly at the top of his lungs as he pogos around the living room! (more…)

Letter of the Week – “These prices are insane – but then so is the quality. And you notice I keep buying more.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now

Hey Tom, 

Please let me know if you have a better copy on hand. Being Rumours and all you will probably want a fortune for it I’m sure, but please let me know anyway. These prices are insane – but then so is the quality. And you notice I keep buying more. Thanks!

Charles

Charles,

We do indeed charge a fortune for Rumours these days, but the music and the sound justify the price many times over in our opinion. We can’t keep them in stock, if that tells you anything.

Happy to put you on the list for the next killer copy. Like you, those who have tried one of our Hot Stamper pressings seem more than a little pleased with the sound quality.

Thanks for writing,

TP

Back In Black – Our Four Plus Shootout Winner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of AC/DC Available Now

Musically Back In Black has everything you’d want from this kind of hard rock — a tight, punchy rhythm section; raging guitar riffs; and deliciously decadent lyrics screamed to perfection. What surprised us is how amazing this music sounds on the right copy. You’ve probably heard these songs a million times, but we bet you haven’t heard them sound like this. This is the kind of record that you’ll want to keep turning up. The louder you play it, the better it gets — but only if you’ve got a great pressing like this.

Side two earned our rare A++++ grade. Our sonic grade graphics only go up to three pluses, but this side two took it all the way to four!

We awarded this copy our very special Four Plus A++++ grade on side two, which is strictly limited to pressings (really, individual sides of pressings) that take a recording to a level never experienced by us before, a level we had no idea could even exist. We estimate that about one per cent of the Hot Stamper pressings we come across in our shootouts earn this grade. You can’t get much more rare than that.

Note that we no longer give out the A++++ Beyond White Hot Stamper grade for the kinds of pressings, like this one, that blew our minds, with sound so far superior to any copy we had ever heard that they actually broke our grading scale.

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Tommy – Simply Vinyl Reviewed

More of the Music of The Who

Reviews and Commentaries for Tommy

Sonic Grade: B

One of the BEST titles on Simply Vinyl! Better than the Classic version, that’s for sure. This one has the bass that’s all but missing from the new 200 gram pressing.  

The Classic Tommy Has No Bass

It could have had amazing bass, like their Who’s Next, but it doesn’t. Why I have no idea. The overall sound is thin, so thin that we immediately knew there was no point in carrying it. (The only Classic Who record we ever carried was Who’s Next; the rest of them are dreadful, some of the worst sounding reissues out there.) Not when there’s a very fine Heavy Vinyl pressing already around. You guessed it: the Simply Vinyl pressing, the one from that label that some reviewer thinks is “screwing up the market.”

Who’s Screwing Whom?

We invite all our readers and listeners to do the shootout for themselves. Both versions of Tommy are in print and widely available. [Woops, not any more, both are long out of print.]

If you do find the Classic to be more to your liking, we simply ask that you send us your copy with a note as to the tracks you compared and what you found, so that we can hear it for ourselves. As you know from reading about Nirvana Nevermind, no two records, not even new audiophile ones, sound the same, so if you managed to get hold of a hot copy of the Classic, we want to hear it too!

After we have picked our jaws up off the floor we will happily send it back to you.

Letter of the Week – “Steve Winwood’s voice sounds great on this copy, not strained or harsh.”

More of the Music of Traffic

More of the Music of Steve Winwood

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

Hey Tom, 

Tom, had a couple of copies of Traffic’s Shootout at the Fantasy Factory on hand but none of them came even close to this Hot Stamper copy that I purchased from you.

Steve Winwood’s voice sounds great on this copy, not strained or harsh. All of the instruments sound great too.

I want to thank you and The Better Records Crew for all the time and dedication that it takes to find such wonderful recordings as this.

Jim S.

We Loved This Copy So Much in 2005 We Had the Gall to Charge $200 for It

More of the Music of Neil Young

Reviews and Commentaries for After the Gold Rush

This is the story of how we discovered our very first killer copy of After the Gold Rush. What a thrill it was to finally hear the album sound so amazing, this after hearing so many mediocre copies over the years.

It’s records like this that made us eventually put 100% of our resources into finding records that sound like this one — or better!  

This is the way we heard After the Gold Rush in 2005. Embarrassingly, we liked it so much we compared it to the best DCC records we were selling back then, ouch! A textbook case of Live and Learn. (more…)

Rock Of Ages – What We Thought We Knew in 2009

White Hot Stampers for side two — WOW! Check out the track listing for that side: Stage Fright / The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down / Across the Great Divide / This Wheel’s on Fire / Rag Mama Rag

Pretty hard to beat that batch of Band songs; practically every one is a classic. And considering how difficult it is to get a good sounding copy of the albums those songs are taken from, this double album is a great way to go if you love The Band. The performances are uniformly excellent, and the live horn section adds a lot to the fun and energy of the music.

The same can be said for Little Feat’s live album, Waiting for Columbus. We’ve been trying to find Hot Stampers on that one for years with little luck. Guess we’ll just have to keep trying.

[That was 2009. We have been selling Hot Stamper pressings of WFC for about ten years now.]

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