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Tube-mastered records with good sound.

Marty Robbins – Hawaii’s Calling Me

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More Vintage Columbia Pressings 

  • An original copy of Marty’s 1963 release boasting rich, sweet Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it throughout – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • The kind of Tubey Magical, tonally correct, spacious sound on this black text stereo 360 label pressing is nothing less than an audiophile thrill (particularly on side one)
  • The only other Robbins record that can hold a candle to this one is Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs
  • “Robbins performs beautifully, creating a breezy mood that marks one of pop music’s better attempts at the genre.”
  • More records with exceptionally Tubey Magical sound
  • More reviews of our most Tubey Magical demo discs

The Analog sound of this pressing makes a mockery of even the most advanced digital playback systems, including the ones that haven’t been invented yet.

I’d love to play this for Neil Young so he can see what he’s up against. Good Luck, Neil, you’re going to need it.

We’ve been through dozens of Columbia albums from the 60s since we discovered how good the Marty Robbins titles on Columbia can sound. Most of the popular vocal and country albums we play have an overall distorted sound, are swimming in reverb, and come with hard, edgy, smeary vocals to boot.

To find an album with freakishly good sound such as this involves a healthy dose of pure luck. You will need to dig through an awfully big pile of vinyl to uncover a gem of this beauty. (more…)

Lincoln Mayorga – An Audiophile Record with Honest-to-Goodness Real Music

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More Direct-to-Disc Recordings

  • An outstanding pressing with Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This Limited Edition Sheffield Lab Direct Disc recording has some of the better sound we have ever heard for Volume III, clearly the best sounding title in the series
  • Both of these sides have energy and presence that just jumps right out of your speakers – this is but one of the qualities that separates the truly Hot Stampers from the pack
  • Many copies of this album tend to sound a bit thin and somewhat bright – on this copy, the sound is rich, full, and tonally correct from top to bottom
  • If you’re a Lincoln Mayorga fan, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this title from 1974 is clearly one of his best, both musically and sonically
  • The complete list of titles from 1974 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

What do Hot Stampers give you for this album? It’s very simple. Most copies of this album are slightly thin and slightly bright. They give the impression of being very clear and clean, but some of the louder brass passages start to get strained and blarey. This copy is rich and full. The sound is balanced from top to bottom. You can play it all the way through without fatigue.

Trumpets, trombones, tubas, tambourines, big bass drums — everything has the true tonality and the vibrancy of the real thing. The reason this record was such a big hit in its day is because the recording engineers were able to capture that sound better than anybody else around at the time.

That’s also the reason this is a Must Own record today — the sound holds up, and there are not many audiophile recordings you can say that about.

Just listen to the astoundingly powerful brass choir on Oh Lord, I’m On My Way. It just doesn’t get any better than that. If ever there was a Demo Disc, this is one. (more…)

Observations on RCA’s Chamber Recordings

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What do the best copies of this album sound like?

The sound is RICH and TRANSPARENT, and unlike a lot of RCA’s chamber recordings, not dry.

The tonality is Right On The Money.

The performers are present and the transients of their instruments are not in the least bit smeared.

A case of good tube mastering?

On the best pressings, absolutely. More on the subject of tubes in audio here.

Classical Shootouts

RCA is justly famous for its chamber recordings, which tend to be somewhat rare for some reason. Let’s be honest: we did not conduct this shootout with a dozen copies of the album. (It would take us at least twenty-five years to find that many clean pressings.)

What we had were quite a few other Heifetz RCA chamber recordings, as well as some favorites by the Quartetto Italiano and I Musici that we are very fond of and know well.

After thirty two years in business selling vintage vinyl, by now we’ve played scores if not hundreds of good violin recordings. We have no problem recognizing good violin sound (as well as correct violin tone, not exactly the same thing) when we hear it. In the past our top Hot Stamper classical pressings would go directly to our best customers, customers who want classical recordings that actually sound good. not just the kind of Golden Age Recordings that are supposed to. Now that we are able to do classical shootouts on a regular basis, we hope to have enough superb sounding classical recordings for all of our audiophile customers.

I’ve commented often over the years of the benefits to be gained from listening to classical music regularly. Once a week is a good rule of thumb I would say. I love rock and roll, jazz and all the rest of it, but there is something about classical music that restores a certain balance in your musical life that can’t be accomplished by other means. It grounds your listening experience to something perhaps less immediately gratifying but deeper and more enriching over time. Once habituated, the effect on one’s mood is not hard to recognize.

Orchestral Music Is Hard to Record, Master and Press, Apparently

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Hall and Oates – Remembering the Glorious Sound of Tubes

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Our Current Rock & Pop Top 100 List

This record has the sound of TUBES. I’m sure it was recorded with transistors, judging by the fact that it was made after most recording studios had abandoned that “antiquated” technology, but there may be a reason why they were able to achieve such success with the new transistor equipment when, in the decades to come, they would produce nothing but one failure after another.

In other words, I have a theory.

They remember what things sounded like when they had tubes. Modern engineers appear to have forgotten that sound. They seem to have no reference for Tubey Magic. If they use tubes in their mastering chains, they sure don’t sound the way vintage tube-mastered records tend to sound.

Transistor Audio Equipment with Plenty of Tubey Magic

A similar syndrome was then operating with the home audio equipment manufacturers as well. Early transistor gear by the likes of Marantz, McIntosh and Sherwood, just to name three I happen to be familiar with, still retained much of the smooth, rich, natural, sweet, grain-free sound of the better tube equipment of the day.

I once owned a wonderful Sherwood receiver that you would swear had tubes in it. In fact it was simply an unusually well-designed transistor unit. Anyone listening to it would never know that it was solid state. It has none of the “sound” we associate with solid state, thank goodness.

Very low power, 15 watts a channel. No wonder it sounded so good.

Stick with the 4 Digit Originals (SD 7269)

If you’re looking for a big production pop record that jumps out of your speakers, is full of TUBEY MAGIC, and has consistently good music, look no further. Until I picked up one of these nice originals, I had no idea how good this record could sound. For an early ’70s multi-track pop recording, this is about as good as it gets (AGAIG as we like to say). It’s rich, sweet, open, natural, smooth most of the time — in short, it’s got all the stuff we audiophiles LOVE.   

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Peter Frampton / Wind of Change – Glorious Big Speaker Sound

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Peter Frampton Albums We’ve Reviewed

A while back we discussed the kind of sound that Glyn Johns managed to get for the likes of Humble Pie and The Who:

But oh what a glorious sound it is when it’s working. There’s not a trace of anything phony up top, down low or anywhere in-between. This means it has a quality sorely at odds with the vast majority of audiophile pressings, new and old, as well as practically anything recorded in the last twenty years, and it is simply this: The louder you play it, the better it sounds.

This is without a doubt a big speaker record, one that requires the highest-resolution, lowest-distortion components to bring out its best qualities. If you have a system like that you should find much to like here.

I bought my first copy in 1972 when I was still in high school and it quickly became one of my favorite records. All these years later it still is. It’s records like this that shaped my audio purchases and pursuits. It takes a monster system to even begin to play this record right and that’s the kind of stereo I’ve always been drawn to. A stereo that can’t play this record, or The Beatles, or Ambrosia, or Yes, or the hundreds of other amazing recordings we put up on the site every year, is not one I would be very likely to own.

This is Peter Frampton’s Masterpiece as well as a Personal Favorite of yours truly.

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In Person – Friday Night and the Sound of Tubes in 1961

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Allow me to transcribe my notes for a killer copy we played years ago:

Both Sides Are Killer

  • The right sound — big, rich, tubey and real.
  • Transparent. Rich, smooth, balanced.
  • Horn gets huge and loud the right way.
  • Piano is full. Solid bass.
  • No need to pick nits.

The Dog that Didn’t Bark in the Night

Normally our notes for the sound of the records we are shooting out against each other fall into two categories: what the record is doing right and what the record is doing wrong. You’ll note that in this case there was nothing wrong about the sound to write about.

I could have found fault somewhere, but when a specific pressing is so clearly superior to its competition, what’s the point?

Reissues

There are some very good sounding reissues from the ’70s that will eventually make it to the site. Again and again my notes made it clear that on those reissue pressings, the sound could have used some tubes in the chain.

On this record, more than any other, the tubes potentially make all the difference.

Now keep in mind that we are only talking about 1961 tubes, not the stuff that engineers are using today to make “tube-mastered” records. Those modern records barely hint at the Tubey Magical sound of a record like this, if our experience with hundreds of them is any guide.

Unlike so many of the audiophile reviewers of today, we have a very hard time taking any of the new pressings seriously. We think our position is pretty clear in that regard.

If you’ve ever heard a pressing that sounds like this one, you know there hasn’t been a record manufactured in the last forty years or so that has its sound.

Right, wrong or otherwise, this sound is simply not part of the modern world we live in.

If you want to be transported back to San Francisco circa 1961, you will need a record like this to do it.

Thelonious Monk – The Glorious Sound of Tubes (1963 Tubes, That Is)

More of the Music of Thelonious Monk

More on the Subject of Tubes in Audio

On this record, more than most, the tubes potentially make all the difference. 

Keep in mind that we are referring specifically to 1963 tubes, not the stuff that engineers are using today to make “tube-mastered” records.

Today’s modern records barely hint at the Tubey Magical sound of a record like this, if our experience with hundreds of them is any guide. We, unlike so many of the audiophile reviewers of today, have a very hard time taking any of the new pressings seriously. We think our position is pretty clear, and we have yet to hear more than a stray record or two that would make us want to change our minds.

If you’ve ever heard a pressing that sounds as good as this one, you know there hasn’t been a record manufactured in the last forty years that has this kind of sound. Right, wrong or otherwise, this sound is simply not part of the modern world we live in. If you want to be transported back to Philharmonic Hall in New York circa 1963, you will need a record like this to do it. (more…)

Marty Robbins – Hawaii’s Calling Me

More of the Music of Marty Robbins

More Vintage Columbia Pressings 

The Analog sound of this pressing makes a mockery of even the most advanced digital playback systems, including the ones that haven’t been invented yet. I’d love to play this for Neil Young so he can see what he’s up against. Good Luck, Neil, you’re going to need it.

We’ve been through dozens of Columbia albums from the ’60s since we discovered how good the Marty Robbins titles on Columbia can sound. Most of the popular vocal and country albums we play have an overall distorted sound, are swimming in reverb, and come with hard, edgy, smeary vocals to boot.

To find an album with freakishly good sound such as this involves a healthy dose of pure luck. You will need to dig through an awfully big pile of vinyl to uncover a gem of this beauty.

Vocals Are Key

Like any good Elvis or Nat “King” Cole record, the vocal quality that is far and away the most important is that they must be full-bodied, rich and smooth. Without that sound, you might as well be playing a CD. This is precisely what both sides here give you – Tubey Magical Richness in spades.

Note that the heavy reverb not only sounds right for this music and this era but actually sounds great, the very opposite of the hard, sour, metallic digital reverb that replaced it decades later.

Skip the Mono

Stick with stereo on this title; the monos aren’t worth anybody’s time (scratch that: any audiophile’s time). If you see one for a buck at a garage sale, pick it up for the music, and then be on the lookout for a nice stereo original to enjoy for the sound.

Side One

Lovely Hula Hands 
The Sea and Me 
Ka-lu-a 
The Night I Came Ashore 
Echo Island 
Kuu ipo Lani (My Sweetheart, Lani) 
Beyond the Reef

Side Two

The Hawaiian Wedding Song 
Drowsy Waters (Wailana) 
Hawaiian Bells 
My Wonderful One 
Blue Sand 
Hawaii’s Calling Me
The Hawaiian Wedding Song

AMG Review

Marty Robbins clearly felt great affinity for the music of Hawaii, and the 28 tracks on this collection contain some of his finest and most evocative singing. Although the venture wasn’t commercially successful, and the music occasionally suffers the intrusion of schmaltzy Nashville production, Robbins performs beautifully, creating a breezy mood that marks one of pop music’s better attempts at the genre.

The Hi-Lo’s – All Over The Place

Side two is nearly White Hot, with rich, natural vocal reproduction. This is the glorious sound of Columbia’s All Tube chain in 1960. Marty Paich (the genius) is back conducting the orchestra for this set of standards.

Need a refresher course in Tubey Magic after playing too many modern recordings or remasterings? These records are overflowing with it. Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead-on correct tonality — everything that we listen for in a great record is here.

If you’re an audiophile, both the sound and the music are crazy fun. If you want to demonstrate just how good 1960 All Tube Analog sound can be, this is the record that will do it!

Side One

A++, by the second track the highs open up and the sound is superb throughout the rest of the side.

Listen to Autumn in New York for a taste of the huge, rich and natural sound that Columbia was famous for in 1960.

Side Two

A++ to A+++, even better. By track two the voices are breathy and clear with no noticeable tube smear.