6-2021

Seals & Crofts’ Folky Rock – What to Listen For

More of the Music of Seals and Crofts

Hot Stamper Pressings of Folk Rock Albums Available Now

In our recent shootout, all our best copies had very similar numbers and letters in the dead wax, which doesn’t happen all that often but does from time to time.

This album does not have a single set of stampers that always win, but it does have a set of very similar stampers that always win. All of the best stampers can only be found on the Green Label original pressings, if that’s any help.

What We’re Listening For On Summer Breeze

Here are some of the things we specifically listen for in a vintage Folk Rock record. Our hottest Hot Stamper copies are simply doing more of these things better than the other copies we played in our shootout. The best copies have:

  • Greater immediacy in the vocals (most copies are veiled and distant to some degree).
  • Natural tonal balance (many copies are at least slightly brighter or darker than ideal; those with the right balance are the exception, not the rule).
  • Good solid weight (so the bass sounds full and powerful).
  • Spaciousness (the best copies have wonderful studio ambience and space).
  • Tubey Magic (without which you might as well be playing a CD).
  • And last but not least, transparency, the quality of being able to see into the studio, where there is plenty of musical information to be revealed in this sometimes simple, sometimes complex and sophisticated recording.

Further Reading

If you would like to run your own tests on the Folk Rock records you own, we make that easy. Here are some other titles that are good for testing these qualities, many with specific advice on what to listen for.

Casino Royale Can Be Amazing on the Right Copy, If You’ve Got the System For It…

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Burt Bacharach Available Now

This is a record that has its share of problems, but if you’ve got the system for it (huge, heavily tweaked, fast, free from obvious colorations and capable of tremendous resolution), the best pressings are sure to impress.

Having heard the best sounding pressings I now understand why this has been such a highly regarded long-term resident of the TAS Superdisc List. The best copies are SUPERDISCS… while the average copy of this album is anything but. Who could take such harsh, grainy, thin, veiled, compressed sound seriously? What was Harry Pearson smokin’?

I can honestly and truthfully say that until we discovered the Hot Stampers for this album, I never thought this record deserved the praise Harry heaped upon it. Now I do. I once was blind but now I see, or something like that.

And by the way, does his copy sound as good as this one? Let’s face it: the late Harry Pearson was simply not the kind of guy who would sit down with five or ten copies and shoot them out.

When you listen to the average pressing of Casino Royale, you get the feeling that you’re hearing a standard-issue, boxy, lightweight, blary ’60s soundtrack. Perhaps you hear some promise in the recording, but it’s a promise that’s unfulfilled by the record on your turntable. This copy will completely redefine what you know about the sound of this music.

The space is big and the sound relatively rich (although the sound does vary quite a bit from track to track). The vocals have notably less hardness than most and the orchestra is not as brash as it can be on so many of the copies we audition. Huge amounts of Tubey Magic as well, which is key to the best sounding copies, and critical to The Look of Love.

The sound needs weight, warmth and tubes or you might as well be playing a CD.

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Cat Stevens and His Sparkling Acoustic Guitars?

More of the Music of Cat Stevens

In the commentary for America’s first album we noted that:

The guitars on this record are a true test of stereo fidelity. … most of the pressings of this record do not get the guitars to sound right. … on a copy with a bit too much top end they will have an unnatural hi-fi-ish sparkle. 

This kind of sparkle can be heard on many records Mobile Fidelity made in the ’70s and ’80s. Tea for the Tillerman, Sundown, Year of the Cat, Finger Paintings, Byrd at the Gate, Quarter Moon in a 10 Cent Town — the list of MoFis with sparkling acoustic guitars would be very long indeed, and these are just the records with prominent acoustic guitars!

(On a side note, if you want a very different sounding Mobile Fidelity record, try anything mastered by Jack Hunt. They are every bit as wrong, but in the tonally opposite direction: murky, fat and way too smooth. This is the sound favored by another audiophile label, this one, and the fact that audiophiles actually buy into this kind of third-rate sound is confounding to say the least.)

Next time you drop the needle on a Mobile Fidelity record — one of the ones pressed in Japan and mastered by Stan Ricker; the Anadisq series tends to have the opposite problem, no top end at all — listen carefully to the acoustic guitars and tell me if you don’t think they sound a tad sparkly.

We’ve all heard acoustic guitars up close, at parties and coffee shops and what-have-you. They don’t really sound like that, do they? I should hope not.

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Peter Gabriel’s So – An Overview

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Peter Gabriel Available Now

We wrote this about a killer copy that came our way years ago:

Here is a copy of So with the big and bold Peter Gabriel sound we love.

If you want your art rock to actually rock as well as be arty, this is the copy for you.

It’s not a perfect recording by any means, but when it sounds this good you can just forget its shortcomings and marvel at how consistently good the material and the production are.

No Mean Feat

It’s exceptionally hard to find good sounding copies of this album. With a digital recording such as this, the margin for mastering error is very slim. Most copies just aren’t worth the vinyl they’re pressed on. More often than not they will sound harsh, gritty, grainy, edgy, and thin.

We did a shootout many years ago that taught us a few things. The most surprising finding? The Brit copy I had in my own collection sucked — how about that! As a rule, I like the Brit pressings best for PG, but that rule got broken after playing all these domestic copies, some of which really sound good, clearly better than the Brits we had on hand.

Are rules made to be broken?

Yes they are.

This is a digital recording, and most of the time it is BRIGHT, SPITTY and GRAINY the way digital recordings tend to be, which plays right into the prejudices of most audiophiles for the “100% analog” approach they favor.

After hearing a bad copy, what audiophile wouldn’t conclude that all copies will have these bad qualities?

After all, it’s digital. It can’t be fixed simply by putting it on vinyl.

Ah, but that’s where logic breaks down. Proper mastering can ameliorate many if not most of a recording’s shortcomings. When we say Hot Stampers, we are talking about high-quality mastering doing exactly that.

Mass Produced Plastic Problems

But of course the mastering is only one part of the puzzle. I have multiple copies with the same stampers. Some of them are terrible, some of them are wonderful — you just can’t rely on the numbers to guide you with a piece of mass-produced plastic like this. You have no choice but to play the record to know what it sounds like. (And that’s a good thing. Keeps you honest. There’s no “cheating” when you have nothing to go by but the sound.)

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The Definitive Vinyl Version? Perhaps There Is a Third Way

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Available Now

If I had to choose one record that separates the men from the boys, the stereos that really work from the typical audiophile system you might read about in the magazines or hear at an audio show or high-end salon, Blue would make a darn good choice.

The problem there is that you have to be one serious record collector to have a great copy of Blue. But good pressings are out there, if you can clean and play them properly. This is exactly why we created a game you can play with Blue.

Naturally we are happy to do the shootouts for you and charge you the pretty penny the winners command, but for those of you who want to find out what’s wrong with the new Blue from Rhino and don’t want to buy a Hot Stamper from us, there is a third way: Blue, the game.

Finding a killer pressing of Blue may be difficult but it’s definitely doable. We are happy to help you get there, but the unfortunate reality is that most of the work has to be done by you.

Playing The Blue Game is designed to help you get started.

Further Reading

I Am the Blues – First Question: How Big Is the Sound?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Soul, Blues and R&B Albums Available Now

It was pretty easy to separate the men from the boys in this shootout. A quick drop of the needle on each side would immediately answer our number one question: “How BIG is the sound?”

The copies that lacked top end extension or heft in the bottom end were just too uninvolving. This is the BLUES, baby — you think it’s supposed to sound small and distant?

Another problem we ran into on many copies was excessive smoothness. When a copy was overly rich or smeary, it usually lacked the “gritty” feel that music like this should have.

I don’t know about you, but if I’m listening to the blues, I am not looking for glossy sound. Give me the raw texture and the detail that was put on the tape. I don’t want the sound to be “fixed” after the fact, and I definitely don’t want it to be modified to give it more audiophile appeal.

The sound and the arrangements here are perfectly suited to Willie’s material. Since most vintage blues recordings leave a lot to be desired sonically, and most modern “hi-fi” blues recordings are less-than-engaging musically, this album is the cure for the blues-lovin’ audiophile’s blues!

The material here is TOP NOTCH — Dixon was one of the blues’ greatest songwriters, responsible for Spoonful, Hoochie Coochie Man, Little Red Rooster, Back Door Man and other songs you’ve probably heard your favorite classic rock band covering.

We had an absolute blast with this one. It’s the rare blues recording that has the audiophile goods, so it was a real treat to hear an album that could deliver authentic blues music with such strong sonics.

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