breakthrough-2005

Sergio Mendes And Brasil ’66 / Stillness – Our Reversed Polarity Copy from 2005

More of the Music of Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66

Stillness Is a Record We’ve Discovered with (Potentially) Excellent Sound

This is one of the pressings we’ve discovered with Reversed Polarity.

This was a SEALED copy of Stillness, one of my favorite records of all time. Side two of this album is possibly THE MOST MAGICAL side of an album I’ve ever played. I don’t know of any other record like it. It seems to be in a class of its own. It’s my current favorite test disc as well [or was at the time anyway]. All tweaks and equipment changes and room treatments must pass the Stillness test. To fail to make this record sound better is to fail completely. The production is so dense, and so difficult to reproduce properly, that only recently have I begun to hear just how good this record can sound. 

There is still plenty to discover locked in these grooves, and I enthusiastically accept the challenge to find all the sounds that Sergio created in the studio, encoded in this vintage vinyl record all those years ago.

The sound is AMAZING. But only on one condition. You must REVERSE YOUR POLARITY! I discovered today (1/25/05) this fact and I owe Robert Pincus a debt of gratitude for suggesting it. These stampers have always sounded bright, upper midrangy and aggressive, with congested loud passages and thin bass. I just assumed that it was because of bad mastering. Bad mastering is the rule, not the exception, around here. I play badly mastered records all day long, searching for the exceptional pressings that for reasons unexplained succeeded in capturing the magic of the music in their grooves.

Reversing the absolute phase on this record today was a REVELATION. There before me was all the ambience, openness, sweetness, silkiness and warmth I had come to expect from the Hot Stampers. For the first time, these stampers showed their true colors.

But you need a special key to unlock the magic. You must either switch the positive and negative at the speaker, the amp, or at the head shell leads (which is what I do), or you must have a switch that inverts phase on your preamp. If you can’t do any of those, or are unwilling to do any of those, this is not the record for you.

Further Reading

After the Gold Rush – Our “Hard” Work in 2005 Continues to Pay Dividends

More of the Music of Neil Young

Reviews and Commentaries for After the Gold Rush

After the Gold Rush Is Yet Another Record We’re Obsessed With

Below you will find our first Hot Stamper listing for Neil’s masterpiece from 1970.

This is an album we admit to being obsessed with. We love the album and we hope you do too. If you have some time on your hands — maybe a bit too much time on your hands — please feel free to check out our commentaries.

Folks, your Hot Stamper collection is just not complete without a knockout copy of After The Gold Rush; that’s why we’ve named it a Better Records All Time Top 100 title. We built our reputation on finding records that sound like this, because who else can find a copy of this album that delivers so much magic? When you drop the needle on any track on side two, you’ll know exactly why we are able to charge these kind of prices for a record like this — because on the right system, it’ll sound like a million bucks! (more…)

The Beatles / Our First Shootout for Sgt. Pepper’s – 2005

Hot Stampers Pressings of Sgt. Peppers in Stock Now

More Breakthrough Pressing Discoveries

We started doing massive shootouts in 2004 — Teaser and the Firecat was our first — and it wasn’t long before we got around to doing one of the most important albums of popular music ever produced.

It was a milestone for us here at Better Records, and there have been quite a number of them since.

Here is our review from 2005. Please excuse all the unnecessary capitalization.

Drumroll please… FREAKISHLY GOOD SOUND ON BOTH QUIET SIDES. This White Hot Sgt. Pepper’s is absolutely stunning with huge amounts of LIFE, ENERGY, PRESENCE, and IMMEDIACY.

The huge soundfield will fill up your living room — and then some.

Side One is a TUBEY MAGICAL MONSTER! We rate the first two tracks an A++ because the bass is a bit more bloated than we would like. But in true champion form, the bass tightens up during “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” to earn its THIRD PLUS and to show the world what correct tonal balance sounds like. 

The vocals here are virtually strain free, which is a miraculous feat for any Beatles album. Unless you happen to be Sir George Martin, we guarantee you have never heard Sgt. Pepper’s sound so good. After the bass tightens up, you’ll be treated to some serious MASTER TAPE SOUND!

Side Two is a heavyweight in its own respect. The voices sound excellent with lots of texture and ambience, really conveying the boys’ performances in the studio. The clarinet on When I’m 64 sounds OUT OF THIS WORLD! There’s lots of texture to the various instruments, particularly the strings, and the piano has nice weight to it. There’s lots of deep, well-defined bass, and the transparency is breathtaking. 

Sgt. Pepper’s checks off a number of important boxes for us:

The blog you are on now as well as our website are both devoted to very special records such as these.

Pepper is the very definition of a big speaker album. The better pressings have the kind of ENERGY in their grooves that are sure to have most audiophile systems begging for mercy.

This is The Audio Challenge that awaits you. If you don’t have a system designed to play records with this kind of SONIC POWER, don’t expect to hear them the way the band, Geoff Emerick, George Martin and everybody else involved in the production wanted you to.

This album wants to rock your world, and that’s exactly what our Hot Stamper pressings are especially good at.

It’s clear that The Beatles albums informed not only my taste in music but the actual stereo I play that music on. It’s what progress in audio is all about. I’ve had large scale dynamic speakers for close to five decades, precisely in order to play demanding recordings such as these, the music I fell in love with all those years ago.

Further Reading