Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Sonny Rollins Available Now
It is — or can be — but that’s only possible — as far as we know — on the early stereo pressings. On the mono pressings, the ones originally pressed in 1965 on the black dynagroove label, and never pressed again, not so much. They’re not awful, but they’re not very good either.
Which means that as a general rule, audiophiles should stick to the stereo pressings of this album, in the same way that they should almost always stick to stereo pressings of stereo recordings.
This is a Core Insight we only arrived at after playing hundreds of mono pressings made from tapes originally recorded in stereo. [1] Rarely do the mono pressings of such titles sound remotely as good as the stereo pressings.
Here is how we described a killer stereo copy of The Standard Sonny Rollins we encountered during the course of a shootout in 2025:
The Standard Sonny Rollins is back on the site for only the second time in over four years, here with outstanding sound throughout this original stereo pressing.
Once again the brilliant engineering of Ray Hall for RCA conveys the vitality of live music for these sessions (which were undoubtedly recorded live). Includes superstars like Herbie Hancock, Jim Hall, and Bob Cranshaw, who’ve lent their talents to some of the greatest jazz recordings of all time.
Here is the stamper sheet showing how the mono pressing fared. In the past we’ve had similar luck with the mono pressings of Living Stereo recordings, but this one was cheap and we figured why not?
Collectors often say that the mono pressings of jazz albums are often the best sounding. Well, why not put that proposition to the test? That is after all the business we are in, testing whether something is true or not to the best of our ability.
