dylanblood

Letter of the Week – “I love Blood On The Tracks, I have 6 copies of it and none of them come near yours”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bob Dylan Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

Received the LP a few days ago, and thank you. I love Blood On The Tracks. I have 6 copies of it and none of them come near yours. I can stop looking now. Thank you.

Arun,

We love it when our customers take the time and make the effort to do their own shootouts, especially when we win, which is what happens about 98-99% of the time.

It is not the least bit unusual for our customers to take another listen and thereby become convinced of the superior sound of the Hot Stamper pressing we sent them.

Seems our copy of Blood on the Tracks was clearly so much better there was no need to listen further.

When a customer says we lost the shootout he conducted, we promptly refund the buyer’s money and wish him or her a nice day.

What do we do with the record, assuming the customer had no problem with its playing condition?

We put it right back up on the site to sell to the next person who wants it. In only two or three cases that I can recall did it ever come back to us again. Two or three out of thousands and thousands of Hot Stampers sold. Not bad.

Further Reading

Bob Dylan – Blood on the Tracks

More Bob Dylan

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on both sides, this is an outstanding Blood on the Tracks from start to finish
  • For tonally-correct, un-hyped acoustic guitars and vocals, the sound of this album is tough to beat in Dylan’s catalog
  • The better copies are rich, warm, tubey and full-bodied – in other words, they are exactly what’s good about the vintage analog pressings we offer to the discriminating audiophiles who appreciates the difference
  • 5 stars: “…it’s an affecting, unbearably poignant record, not because it’s a glimpse into his soul, but because the songs are remarkably clear-eyed and sentimental, lovely and melancholy at once. Dylan made albums more influential than this, but he never made one better.”

This is an outstanding recording but it takes a special pressing to bring it to life. It’s nice when the copy in hand has all the transparency, space, layered depth and three-dimensionality that makes listening to records such a fundamentally different experience than listening to digitally-sourced material, but it’s not nearly as important as having a rich, relaxed quality. A touch of smear and a slight lack of resolution is not the end of the world on this album. Brightness, along with too much grain and grit, can be.

This was a “comeback” album for Dylan, one that completely reinvigorated his following in the mid-’70s. No recording of his with which we are familiar since then can compare to this one. Recording technology has gone backward at full speed, and, to be charitable, his voice has not exactly improved with time either. Drenching his voice in reverb on albums like Time Out of Mind makes his raspy croak sound worse, not better. (more…)

Blood on the Tracks – What To Listen For

More of the Music of Bob Dylan

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Bob Dylan

Many copies have no bass, while other copies are bright, a combination which ruins the sound of the acoustic guitars that dominate the album. On the better Hot Stamper pressings, the bass will be deep and well-defined and the tonal balance will be correct.

The copies that fared the best in our shootouts were rich, warm, tubey and full-bodied — in other words, analog sounding. 

What To Listen For

It’s nice when the copy in hand has all the transparency, space, layered depth and three-dimensionality that makes listening to records such a fundamentally different experience than listening to digitally-sourced material, but it’s not nearly as important as having that rich, relaxed tonal balance.

A little smear and a lack of resolution is not the end of the world on this album. Brightness, along with too much grain and grit, can be. 

What To Listen For — Side Two

The harmonica on the second track is devilishly difficult to get right. If there is any aggressiveness or grit in the sound of your copy, you will have no trouble recognizing it when that harmonica starts to play. (more…)