Hot Stamper Pressings of Top Quality Jazz Recordings Available Now
Brilliant corners on the 2013 OJC pressing is not a bad record. At $20, roughly the price they sell for on Discogs, you are getting a decent LP for your money, which is not the case with a lot of what’s produced these days, the worst of which can be found here.
The sound is nice and meaty, which is all to the good, but where this pressing falls apart is in the area of transparency, as in, it doesn’t have much.
In simple language, it is opaque. (Other pressings with a opacity problem can be found here.)
This is a very common shortcoming of the new OJC pressings. When they manage to get the tonality right — which is about half the time — they still come across as crude and underwhelming. They require too much effort from the listener to become involved and stay that way.
If you see this OJC pressing in your local record store, and you don’t have a good CD player (a dirty little secret: the standard CD is likely to be better sounding). buy it for cheap, but don’t pay much money for it. You may find that, after a spin or two, playing it is more trouble than it’s worth.