Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jimi Hendrix Available Now
One of the worst things those dummies at Classic ever did. The mono mix is just plain awful.
Their reissue of the mono mix is flat and dry with practically no Tubey Magic whatsoever.
It positively screams “CHEAP REISSUE.” That two word description reminds me of this record, although to be fair the sound is quite a bit worse on the Hendrix.
Is it the worst version of the album ever pressed? It almost has to be, doesn’t it?
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim Available Now
Although I have been a big fan of this album at least since the 90s, it took us years to get around to doing a shootout. We were pleasantly surprised at just how well recorded this album is.
Credit engineer Phil Ramone for correctly capturing the sound of every instrument here: the guitars, piano, flutes, strings, drums, percussion instruments — everything has the natural timbre of the real thing. I used to think this recording erred on the bright side, but not the Hot Stamper copies. They are tonally Right On The Money. (When the balance lacks lower midrange the sound gets lean, which causes the strings to seem brighter than they really are, a not uncommon problem with some of the pressings we played.)
Claus Ogerman
The string arrangements by the phenomenally talented producer/arranger Claus Ogerman surely contribute a great deal to the beauty of this music, and much of its “feel.”. This is the man who made Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim such an original and powerful departure in Sinatra’s body of work. He continued to work with Jobim on a number of follow-up albums, including A Certain Mr. Jobim (1967) and Wave (1967). From 1963-67 he arranged some 60-70 albums for Creed Taylor’s Verve and then went on to work with him extensively at CTI.
And what would “Breezin’” be without Ogerman’s lush strings? Not to be too unkind, but probably just another George Benson album.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bob Dylan Available Now
I don’t think mono works for this Highway 61, so we never carried this Sundazed pressing, and we certainly would not have recommended it back in the days when we were still selling Heavy Vinyl, which we officially stopped doing in 2011).
Stick with the 360 stereo pressings for the best sound. (Other 360 pressings that win shootouts can be found here.)
To see our current selection of Hot Stamper pressings that sound better in mono, click here.
Dylan Discography
Here you will find his albums through 1989, after which you are on your own. The later recordings have never sounded right to us and we have no plans to do shootouts for any of them.
Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Piano Recordings Available Now
On this record, we say stick with stereo.
This album is much more common in mono than stereo, but we found the sound of the mono pressing we played deeply unsatisfying.
Where is the wall to wall space of the live club?
It has been shrunken down into the area between the speakers.
Much of the ambience disappeared with it, destroying the illusion the album was trying to create, that you are actually there with Ramsey and his rhythm section.
In mono, you really aren’t.
For albums that actually can sound sound good in mono, so good they can win shootouts, click here.
Hot Stamper Pressings of Bossa Nova Albums Available Now
As part of our recent [probably from 2011] shootout for the album, one of the pressings we played was a later reissue, most likely from the late 70s or early 80s.
As a general rule we make a point to go out of our way to play practically any copy we can get our hands on, in the off chance that a reissue will beat the original. It’s happened plenty of times. Those of you with White Hot Stamper shootout winning copies of some of our favorite titles know what I’m talkin’ about.
Imagine our surprise when this pressing — in a stereo jacket, with a label with the word “stereo” printed right on it — turned out to be dead MONO.
The sound was godawful — small, flat, and bereft of the ambience that makes this recording so enjoyable. The same would probably be true for the mono originals, but since I haven’t played one of those in decades I will just say that that would be no more than a guess, albeit an educated one.
Yet another reason not to believe a word you read on an album jacket or label.
A public service from your record loving audiophile friends here at Better Records. (more…)
Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Rudy Van Gelder Available Now
It’s certainly a proposition worth considering, mostly because so many audiophiles seem to believe it. Or maybe in spite of their believing it, skeptics such as myself being the troublemakers they always are.
So let’s dig down into the dirt of a record that Rudy both recorded and mastered.
None of the Rudy Van Gelder cuttings we played of Eric Dolphy’s 1961 release of Out There were better than passable, and some had sides that were downright awful sounding, as you can plainly see from our notes.
The copies that won our most recent shootout were mastered by George Horn, and the best of them sound amazing. Here are some comments we made for the album years back as well as the Allmusic review:
Insanely good sound throughout with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades. This copy was doing it all right: rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical yet still super open and spacious.
“A somber and unusual album by the standards of any style of music, Out There explores Dolphy’s vision in approaching the concept of tonality in a way few others — before, concurrent, or after — have ever envisioned.” – 5 stars
As you will see from our notes, we played some very disappointing early pressings. All the early pressings we had on hand were expensive to acquire, the vintage jazz pressing market being what it is: expensive and full of optimistic record graders of questionable skill. (For these kinds of vintage pressings we probably return 70-80% of what comes our way.)
We have to pay top dollar to get copies that are clean, even on the 60s and 70s reissue labels. Noisy old jazz records are simply not saleable to audiophiles no matter how good they sound.
None of the early copies we played earned grades good enough to bother pursuing, not when there are wonderful sounding vintage reissues from the 80s available. On a more positive note, this being our first shootout for the album in many years, we certainly learned a lot, so let’s just chalk up the losses to the cost of doing business. Our newfound knowledge of the best pressings will continue to pay dividends for years to come now that we know what the right stampers tend to be.
Hot Stamper Pressings of Electric Blues Albums Available Now
The Shootout Winning early stereo pressing that we played recently was indeed a very special record. Everything we said about it in our review was true:
These are just a few of the the things we had to say in our notes: “big and tubey and 3D”…”jumping out of the speakers”…”very full vox”…”weighty and rich”…”great energy”…”so much room and detail.”
No other copy came close to this one, and we had a bunch, many of which earned minimal grades of 1.5+ because, on this record, you really have to know what to look for in the dead wax.
But nothing of the sort can be said of the early Blue Label mono pressing we played. It was barely passable on side one, and we didn’t even bother to play side two since no pressing that earns a grade of 1+ on either side can be considered a Hot Stamper.
Here is what we heard on side one:
And that was enough. Who wants to play a record with that kind of sound? Or one that’s been sped up?
If you’re one of those music lovers who’s still holding a torch for mono, Born Under a Bad Sign is not a hill you want to die on.
We personally don’t care one way or the other if any particular mono record has good sound or bad. We just play them and call them as we hear them. We called this one “meh” and recommend you steer clear of it if you are looking for good sound.
Hot Stamper Pressings of Revolver Available Now
A great sounding record in stereo, potentially anyway, but this later reissue in mono is so awful it deserves a special place in our hall of shame.
My notes for side one: hard, sour, no bass.
Side two: dumbass small mono, so unclear.
Is it the worst version of the album ever made? That’s hard to say. There is no shortage of competition, that’s for sure.
But it may be the worst sounding version of the album we’ve ever played, and that should be good enough for any audiophile contemplating spending money on this kind of rubbish.
We love the mono mix of For No One, but not when it sounds like this.
The only Beatles vinyl we offer on our site are stereo pressings. Our reasons for doing this are straightforward enough.
The Beatles records in mono, contrary to the opinion of audiophiles and music lovers alike, virtually never have the presence, energy and resolution found on the best stereo copies. If your stereo cannot resolve all the information on the tape, sure, Twin Track Stereo (used on the first two albums, hard-panned multi-track afterwards) ends up sounding like some of the instruments are stuck in the speakers, hard left and hard right, with nothing but a hole in the middle.
But there is a great deal of information spreading into the middle when we play those records here, and nothing feels stuck in the speakers that doesn’t sound like it was supposed to be heard coming directly from one of the speakers.
It is our contention that the best audio equipment, properly tweaked, can show you a world of musical information that exists only on the stereo pressings, information that the mono mixes mostly obscure.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Charles Mingus Available Now
Although this album is fairly common in mono, we found the sound of the mono pressing we played seriously wanting. It’s dramatically smaller and more compressed than even the worst of the other pressings we played in our shootout.
We will never buy another, and of course we would never sell a record that sounds as bad as this mono pressing does.
For those looking for the best sound, the mono pressing is hard to take seriously, and for that reason, we say skip it.
For records reviewed on the blog that sound their worst in mono, click here.
Are You a Jazz Collector or an Audiophile?
If you’re a jazz collector, of course you want the mono. If you’re an audiophile who likes jazz, you should want the stereo.
And if you are a very serious audiophile who has a great deal of time and money tied up in his equipment and room, someone whose motto might best be summarized as “nothing but the best,” then you need one of our killer Hot Stamper pressings of the album.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now
We recently found ourselves with an unexpected opportunity — we were given the chance to hear the mono pressing of Saucerful of Secrets, the one that Bernie Grundman mastered for Record Store Day back in 2019.
We had ordered a vintage stereo pressing from a dealer, and instead of sending us what we ordered, we got the RSD mono instead.
Knowing the record well, we figured why not give it a listen. Maybe the mono mix is the way to go! Who can say until they’ve heard it.
Well, we’ve now heard it, and if there is a worse sounding version of the album, whether in stereo or in mono, we would find even the possibility of such a thing very hard to believe. You’re going to have to prove it to us, because this record is as bad as it gets.
I can’t say we hate a lot of records — most of the time we’re just disgusted and disappointed with all the crap Heavy Vinyl being produced these days — but we sure hated this one.
If you had played it, I can only hope you would have hated it too.
Side One
Track Four