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After 40 Years, Waiting for the Sun Comes Full Circle

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Doors Available Now

This commentary was written in 2008, shortly after playing an amazingly magical Gold Label pressing in a shootout.

My favorite of the first three Doors album, Waiting for the Sun is imbued with more mystery and lyricism than previous efforts. The album shows them maturing as a band, smoking large amounts of pot and preparing for the wild ride of their next opus, the ambitious, controversial The Soft Parade.

Actually, as I listen to this album, it reminds me more and more of that one. Now that it sounds as good as The Soft Parade, I find I’ve gained a new respect for Waiting.

More to Come

I started playing these albums in high school on my 8-track tape player. My older stepbrother had the records and I probably played those too.

When I seriously got into audio sometime in the ’70s, I tried every kind of record I could get my hands on — Brits, Germans, Japanese, originals, reissues — but no matter what I did, I couldn’t find good sounding pressings of their albums. Everything I played sounded terrible and I just assumed the band, like so many other ’60s artists, had been poorly recorded.

Then in the early 80s, the MoFi pressing of the first album came out. It sounded amazing to me at the time.

Ten or so years later the DCC pressing on Heavy Vinyl came along and showed me how wrong I — and it — were.

Now we’ve come full circle — back to the right originals. (The operative word there is “right”; some early stampers are terrible. We know, we’ve played them.)

With better cleaning technologies and much better playback equipment, the tables have turned.

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The Doors / Waiting For the Sun

More of The Doors

More Psych Rock

  • With two seriously good Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this vintage Gold Label pressing
  • The sound is present, lively and tonally correct, with Jim Morrison’s baritone reproduced with the palpable weight and presence that the reissues barely begin to reproduce
  • It’s tough (not to mention expensive) to find these early pressings with this kind of sound and reasonably quiet vinyl, but we found this one, and it blew our mind
  • “Krieger, Ray Manzarek and John Densmore were never more lucid… This was a band at its most dexterous, creative, and musically diverse …”
  • If I were to make a list of my favorite rock and pop albums from 1968, this album would definitely be on it, close to the top I should think
  • Our review detailing the somewhat surprising shortcomings of the DCC pressing can be found here, and the story of how long it took me to figure out The Doors on vinyl (30 years or so!) can be found here

Here is THE BIG SOUND that makes Doors records such a thrill to play. Morrison’s vocals sound just right — full-bodied, breathy and immediate. The transparency makes it possible to easily pick out Bruce Botnick’s double tracking of Morrison’s leads.

For a thrill just drop the needle on Not To Touch The Earth. Halfway through the song the members have sort of a duel — Robbie Krieger wailing on the guitar in one channel, Ray Manzarek pounding on the keyboards in the other, and John Densmore responding with drum fills behind them.

On the average copy, the parts get congested and lose their power, but when you can easily pick out each musician, their part will raise the hair on your arms.

It’s absolutely chilling, and it will no doubt remind you why you fell in love with The Doors in the first place. Who else can do this kind of voodoo the way that they do?

Check out the piano on Yes The River Knows on side two (such an underrated song!) or the big snare thwacks on Five To One to hear that Hot Stamper magic.

The overall sound is airy, open, and spacious — you can really hear INTO the soundfield on a track like Yes The River Knows. The opaque quality that so many pressings of this album suffer from is nowhere to be found here.

Not only that, but you will not believe how hard these sides rock. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “I truly was in awe of how sweet the sound was…”

More of the Music of The Doors

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Doors

Our new customer Michel wrote to tell us how much he likes his Doors Hot Stamper pressing.

Hello.

I wanted to share my story with you. At some point in some youtube video I heard about you. I didn’t exactly know what to think about it all. Then over time I heard more, etc. My interest peaked, I eventually went to your website and read and browsed.

I bought a NWH Waiting For the Sun. It turns out to be an original [redacted]. I have at home an original [redacted] pressing.

Just in case it matters, I use a thorens td145 with grado red, linn kairn preamp, hafler xl280,a nd polk model 10’s. So I started with side one.

My copy sounded great…that nice tubey sound…nice presence…that nice ‘OG’ special something. OK, well that was good.

Your copy however was nothing short of magical. I felt like I was at the circus. I truly was in awe of how darn sweet the sound was… each part of the sound was in its perfect place and distinguishable within this wonderful warmth with clarity and no shrillness.

I did my testing at max volume as to expose everything. The crescendo at the end of track one is one to give you goosebumps. I must congratulate you for such a truly wonderful offering. This is truly one magical sounding piece of vinyl.

Many Thanks!
Michel

Michel,

Thanks for your letter.

I think we can all agree that your system is not exactly state-of-the-art. The good news there is that it does not take a megabuck stereo to put you in awe of the albums of The Doors.

All you need is a good pressing. We are not surprised that you were very impressed with our Hot Stamper. The LP you had is from a pressing plant that we are not big fans of.

All the top pressings come from one plant and one plant only. They will always have the Gold Label, but the stamper numbers can vary. Nearly White Hot means you got a copy that was only beaten by one other, and that means it must have been very good indeed.

As for this:

[E]ach part of the sound was in its perfect place and distinguishable within this wonderful warmth with clarity and no shrillness.

That’s what Bruce Botnick brings to the table. The man engineered some of the best sounding rock records ever made.

Waiting for the Sun is an album we think we know well, one that checks off a number of important boxes for us here at Better Records:

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Waiting for the Sun – Don’t the DCC Pressings All Sound Different Too?

More of the Music of The Doors

I recently had a chance to listen again to this DCC pressing for the first time in many years. I was putting it up on ebay to sell and dropped the needle to check the sound. I can’t say I liked what I heard. Knowing the record as well as I do, I could her that the DCC was clearly to be brighter in the midrange.

When I went back to read what I had said about the DCC years ago, I saw that I had described that copy the same way. You can read it for yourself.

Our old review follows.

We rate the DCC LP a B Minus

We used to like the DCC pressing of this Doors album. Now… not so much. It’s a classic case of Live and Learn.

Keep in mind that the only way you can never be wrong about your records is simply to avoid playing them. If you have better equipment than you did, say, five or ten years ago, try playing some of your MoFi’s, 180 gram LPs, Japanese pressings, 45 RPM remasters and the like. You might be in for quite a shock.

Of course the question on everyone’s mind is, “How does this Hot Stamper copy stack up to the famous DCC pressing?” After all, the DCC was the one we were touting all through the ’90s as The One To Beat.

Well, to be honest, the DCC is a nice record, but a really special original copy throws a pretty strong light on its faults, which are numerous and frankly fairly bothersome.

The top end on the copy I played was a touch boosted, causing a number of problems.

For one, the cymbals sounded slightly tizzy compared to the real thing, which had a fairly natural, though not especially extended, top end.

But the real problem was in the midrange. Morrison sounded thinner and brighter, more like a tenor and less like a baritone, with a somewhat hi-fi-ish quality added to the top of his voice. Folks, I hate to say it, but if someone had told me that the record playing was half-speed mastered, I probably would have believed it. I detest that sound, and the DCC pressing bugged the hell out of me in that respect.

Morrison has one of the richest and most distinctive voices in the history of rock. When it doesn’t sound like the guy I’ve been listening to for close to forty years, something ain’t right.

The mid-bass was also a tad boosted — not in the deep bass, but more in that area around 100-200 cycles, causing the sound to be overly rich. None of the originals we played had anything like it, so I’m pretty sure that’s a bit of added EQ Hoffman introduced for reasons best known to him. (Did he like it that way, or was he pandering to some of the audiophile community’s preference for overly rich sound, the kind they confuse with “analog”? Nobody knows.)

Not So Fast There, O Hot Stamper Guru

But wait a minute — don’t all records sound different? Is it really fair to paint his version with such a broad brush on the basis of having played only one copy?

Of course not. Perhaps other copies sound better. It wouldn’t be the first time. (Maybe they sound worse. Think about that.)

So here’s our offer to you, dear customer: We absolutely guarantee our Hot Stamper copies will handily beat the DCC pressing or your money back. We’ll even pay the return domestic shipping if for some reason you are not 100% satisfied with the sound of our Hot Stamper. Now there’s an offer you can’t refuse, for any one of you who love the album and have a wad of money burning a hole in your pocket.

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Listening in Depth to Waiting For The Sun

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Doors Available Now

Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Waiting For The Sun.

Here are some albums on our site you can buy with similar track by track breakdowns. 

My favorite of the first three Doors album, this one is imbued with more mystery and lyricism than previous efforts. The album shows them maturing as a band, having smoked large amounts of pot and preparing themselves for the wild ride of their next opus, the ambitious Soft Parade.

Actually, as I listen to this album it reminds me more and more of that one. Now that it sounds as good as The Soft Parade, I find I’ve gained a new respect for Waiting for the Sun.

Side One

Hello, I Love You
Love Street
Not To Touch The Earth

Listen to the hard rockin’ duel between the keyboards (left channel) and the guitar (right channel) in the middle of the song. Morrison is screaming is head off and Densmore is really slamming the drums. There’s a HUGE amount of information in the grooves there, and only the best copies will be open and spacious enough to not get a bit congested.

Summer’s Almost Gone

On a Hot Stamper pressing, this song is Tubey Magical analog at its best — warm, sweet, rich, and full-bodied.

Wintertime Love
The Unknown Soldier

Side Two

Spanish Caravan
My Wild Love
We Could Be So Good Together

This song is a bit midrangy on every last copy we’ve played. On a Hot Stamper copy, it can still sound quite wonderful, just a little boosted in the midrange.

Yes, The River Knows

This song is the best test for transparency and bass definition on side two. You should be able to hear the bassist really pulling on the strings and sliding his fingers up and down the fretboard.

Five to One

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