fix-up

Mozart / Eine Kleine Nachtmusik / Walter – A Very Good Columbia Pressing

This Odyssey budget pressing has long been favorite of ours here at Better Records. It’s too bad that most of them don’t sound very good, with the shrill, hard string tone we’ve come to expect from Columbia in the ’60s. Fortunately this pressing does not have that problem! We played a number of these recently, and this copy was the best of them all on BOTH sides!

Side one is really rich and warm with lovely, smooth strings that don’t get shrill. It’s very hard to believe that there’s a much better sounding copy out there. Side one of course has the complete Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.    (more…)

Holst / The Planets / Boult

More of the Music of Gustav Holst

This 1967 recording of the work has one very special quality that’s not often heard on classical vinyl — THE FEEL OF LIVE MUSIC. This is also something you will not often hear us say about EMI recordings from the late ’60s and ’70s.

Unlike HP and most audiophiles in the ’70s, we find that EMI’s recordings leave a lot to be desired, lacking in warmth, with a thin, sour, overly clear presentation. Great for muddy equipment but bad news on higher resolution modern rigs.

Super Hot Stampers on both sides means this Planets can take on any pressing you have of the piece and show you what you’ve been missing out on all these years.

There are a LOT of bad Planets out there. With its monstrously large orchestra and chorus, it’s not an easy work to capture on tape. (more…)

Brahms / Variations And Fugue On A Theme By Handel / Katchen

Near Mint copy with excellent sound! Superb piano tone for these solo pieces and very quiet vinyl add up to a wonderful listening experience. This surprisingly quiet British vinyl is going to be hard to beat by other Golden Age labels. (Finding solo piano recordings on RCA or Mercury from this era that play quietly is practically impossible.)

Side one is super TRANSPARENT — the piano is so clear! It lacks a bit of weight on the first side; perhaps that’s the way it is actually supposed to sound, who can say? On side two it sounds a little better to my ear, big and dark and very solid. It’s pretty amazing in its own way. And Katchen’s performance is of course superb. All in all a very find piano recording.

This lovely album also includes Variations on a Theme by Paganini. (more…)

Barber, Bartok, Britten, Respighi / I Musici

More of the music of Bela Bartok (1881-1945)

More Classical ‘Sleeper” Recordings with Demo Disc Sound

This Philips Festivo reissue LP (not as pictured by the way, that’s an original) plays Mint Minus or better and sounds GREAT! This is a wonderful record — I Musici is one of my favorite groups. They play with tremendous energy, enthusiasm and feeling, taking works that have been recorded poorly by too many others and performing them with gusto.

The ‘Ancient Dances and Airs’ is superb here, one of the best on record. Britten’s ‘Simple Symphony’ is one of the best I’ve ever heard as well. Barber’s ‘Adagio For Strings’ is good but you can find better if you look hard enough. Highest recommendation for music.

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Haydn / Cello Concertos / Rostropovitch – Reviewed in 2010

This is a Minty 1976 EMI British Import LP with very good sound and ENCHANTING music.

Haydn’s cello concertos are engaging and relaxing at the same time. The sound is quite good for EMI — it seems to fit this music perfectly (although more top end would have been nice). The tone of the cello is exquisite. 

Beethoven / Piano Sonatas / Backhaus – Reviewed in 2008

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Imports on Decca & London

Reviews and Commentaries for Recordings by Decca

CS 6535. This is the best sounding Backhaus LP I’ve ever heard.

The piano is natural and full-bodied, with solid weight, as would be expected from the Decca engineers of the day.

Decca was still making good records in 1967, long after RCA had gone Dynagroove.

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Our First Shootout for Sgt. Pepper’s – 2005

Hot Stamper Pressings of Sgt. Peppers… Available Now

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:

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Mozart / Complete Wind Music Volume 2 – Reviewed in 2004

This record plays NM and sounds superb! A great London title. 

This record includes Serenade in E Flat, Divertimento in E Flat and Divertimento in F and K.

This is an Older Classical/Orchestral Review

Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we started developing in the early 2000s and have since turned into a veritable science.

We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the Sonic Grades and Vinyl Playgrades are listed separately.)

We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.

Currently, 99% (or more!) of the records we sell are cleaned, then auditioned under rigorously controlled conditions, up against a number of other pressings. We award them sonic grades, and then condition check them for surface noise.

As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which is why we currently have a highly trained staff of about ten. No individual or business without the aid of such a committed group could possibly dig as deep into the sound of records as we have, and it is unlikely that anyone besides us could ever come along to do the kind of work we do.

The term “Hot Stampers” gets thrown around a lot these days, but to us it means only one thing: a record that has been through the shootout process and found to be of exceptionally high quality.

The result of our labor is the hundreds of titles seen here, every one of which is unique and guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard or you get your money back.

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Elgar / Enigma Variations / Monteux / LSO

More of the Music of Elgar

This famous Shaded Dog, LSC 2418, containing two superb performances by Monteux and the LSO, has many of the Golden Age strengths and weaknesses we know well here at Better Records, having played literally hundreds upon hundreds of these vintage pressings over the last twenty years or so. 

Both sides earned sonic grades of at least A+ to A++ (with side one being just a bit better than that but maybe not quite A++). The sound is rich and sweet and full of Living Stereo Magic!  

The wonderful sounding tube compressors that were used back in the day result in quieter passages that are positively swimming in ambience and low-level orchestral detail. 

Tube compression is, in large part, what we mean when we use the term Tubey Magic. (If you want to know what Zero Tubey Magic sounds like, play some Telarcs or Reference Recordings from the ’70s. Or a modern digital recording on CD.)

But all that sweet and rich Tubey Magic comes at a price when it’s time for the orchestra to get loud. It either can’t, or the louder passages simply distort from compressor overload. Fortunately on this copy the orchestra does not distort, it simply never gets as loud as it would have in a real concert hall, clearly the lesser and more preferable of the two evils. (more…)