Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Eric Clapton Available Now
During our shootout we discovered that the true test for side two was the second track, the old blues song Early In The Morning.
It’s by far the best sounding track on the album, with huge space, rich bass, a fat snare and Tubey Magic to die for. This is the kind of sound that the likes of Glyn Johns gets down on tape, live in the studio no doubt, and it made it easy to do the shootout for side two.
The bigger, the richer, the tubier, the more transparent the better. It’s THE track to demo with.
Both sides have rich, smooth, clear sound. Listen for the guitars on the first track on side one; the grungier the better. Punchy bass too.
Turn It Up and Let It Rock
The typical pressing of Backless, much like the typical pressing of Slowhand, is just too thick, dull, compressed and veiled to be much fun.
At the very least you need to turn this album up good and loud to get it to do anything.
The copies that are solid and weighty love getting loud; the copies that are thin and bright only get worse as the level goes up, a sign that they leave a lot to be desired. This is a rock album after all.
We Was Wrong
We used to note the following regarding the country that produced the best sounding pressings:
We had top quality copies on both domestic and British vinyl. Both were cut here in L.A.. It makes sense that either can be good.
This should have been corrected a long time ago, as far back as 2017, perhaps earlier. The domestic copies, thought cut at The Mastering Lab, are not competitive with the British LPs also cut there and then sent to England for pressing.
Live and learn is our motto, and progress in audio is a feature, not a bug, of record collecting at the most advanced levels.
We may have liked the domestic pressings a long time ago, but with changes to the system and many shootouts under our belts, the sonic superiority of the Brits cannot be denied.
