jack-law

Shootout Winning Stampers for Rhythms of the South Revealed

Hot Stamper Pressings of Exotica and Bachelor Pad Recordings Available Now

There are some records that, no matter how amazing the sound, and how good the music is, simply will not find favor with our customers. This is one of them. I happen to like the music, and the sound is shockingly good, a true Demo Disc for those of you with big speakers pulled well out from the back wall in a spacious, heavily treated room like the one you see below.

We are most likely not going to be doing shootouts for this title in the future, so we thought we would share with everyone what we know about the record, which boils down to which stampers have the potential to do well and which do not.

As you can see, Stan Goodall did a much better job mastering the early Blueback London pressings for Decca than Jack Law.

What information can you rely on when trying to find the best sounding pressings?

The originals all have the same Blueback cover.

In this case, the stamper numbers are the only way to separate the potential winners from the sure losers.

11/2023 Ros, Edmundo Rhythms of the South (PS 114 London) early Blueback 3 3 1E 1E other copies: 2.5/2, 2/2.5
11/2023 Ros, Edmundo Rhythms of the South (PS 114 London) early Blueback 1.5 1 2D 2D s1 dry, flat, trashy. s2 smeary, messy, boring
RE ABOVE: I FOUND THIS IN A BOX. THOUGHT IT SOUNDED REALLY GREAT, ESP. T1, S1

Jack Law’s cutting for side one was

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Why are the First Pressings of this Title the Worst Sounding?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Decca Available Now

The record you see pictured is not the record we are discussing in this posting. The stamper numbers you see below belong to a different album.

We’ve lately been giving out much more stamper information than we used to, but for now we are keeping this title close to the vest.

We happen to know the best stampers for this album, but somehow a copy with the “bad” stampers ended up in our shootout. It did about as badly as they usually do.

Of course, the person sitting in the listening chair had no idea that a copy with the worst stampers was playing. The jackets and labels of this pressing are identical to the copies with the good stampers.

He simply heard what the recording actually sounds like when it’s mastered badly and registered his complaints.

Side One

  • Dull and crude. Old school.
  • 1+

Side Two

  • So metallic and crude and lo-fi. Nasty!
  • NFG

Apparently Mr. D, real name: Jack Law, did a piss-poor job mastering this album. Another engineer would come along sooner or later and master the record right, so right that it became one of our favorite Demo Discs for sound and performance.

How did this pig’s ear eventually manage to become a silk purse?

Simple. It was always a great recording, it just needed to be mastered right, and whoever got the job to remaster it knocked it out of the park the first time through.

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