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The Reiner Sound – Reviewed in 2010

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now

This former TAS List record really surprised us on two counts.

First, you will not believe how DYNAMIC the recording is. Of all the classical recordings we’ve played lately I would have to say this is THE MOST DYNAMIC of them all.

I really don’t have the wattage to handle the explosively loud sections of these wonderful works, with their huge orchestral effects, dynamic contrasts that are clearly part of the composer’s intentions but ones that rarely make it from the concert hall to vinyl disc the way they do here.

Second, there is simply an amazing amount of TOP END on this record. Rarely do I hear Golden Age recordings with this kind of ENERGY and extension up top. Again, it has to be some of the best I have heard recently. (This is of course one of the reasons the Classic reissue is such a disaster. With all that top end energy, Bernie’s gritty cutting system and penchant for boosted upper midrange frequencies, positively guarantees that the Classic Reiner Sound will be all but unplayable on a proper system. Boosting the bass and highs and adding transistory harshness is the last thing in the world that The Reiner Sound needs.)

Condition Issues

The vinyl is not the best in the world, this is of course RCA in 1958 and not Decca or DG. There is constant light surface noise behind the music, and some vinyl stitches in places to deal with. But to find a copy that plays LOUD and CLEAN with none of the top end not shaved off by five or ten grams of tracking force is very unusual.

And no real Inner Groove Distortion to speak of either. There may be quieter copies out there but they sure haven’t made it to my turntable in the last decade or so, and I doubt I will find many more like this in the next ten years either.

This LP contains two works by Ravel: Rapsodie Espagnole and Pavan for a Dead Princess, as well as Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead.

Seven Steps to Heaven – Reviewed in 2006

More of the Music of Miles Davis

This Original Miles Davis record has DEMO DISC QUALITY SOUND! Columbia jazz records from this period are some of the best sounding jazz records ever made, and this is a perfect example of what is right with their recordings. The sound is rich, full, sweet, tonally right on the money, and lively as can be.

This is an interesting album because half of it is recorded in Hollywood and half of it in New York, with the songs in each location interspersed on the sides. Victor Feldman handles the piano duties in California; Herbie Hancock in New York. I actually prefer Victor Feldman’s playing on this record. We don’t get to hear his piano work often — he’s really quite good. (Cal Tjader started out on the drums but it’s tough to find records with him drumming.)

Anyway, one of the thoughts that occurred to me when I was playing this record is this: Why is there no audiophile reissue on any label that sounds like this? There’s something about the sound of these old records, these original pressings, that’s impossible to recapture with modern equipment. It may not be impossible, but until somebody manages to do it, it might as well be.

When you drop the needle at the beginning of side one and hear Miles’ muted trumpet come jumping out of your speakers, I guarantee you will be amazed or your money back!

This is an Older Jazz 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 developed in the early 2000s and have since turned into a fine art.

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.

Not just a good sounding record. A record that was played in a shootout and did well.

The result of our labor is the scores of jazz 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.

Love Is The Thing – The Breakthrough We Were Waiting For

Hot Stamper Pressings of Our Favorite Vocal Albums Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Nat “King” Cole

Love Is The Thing has long been one of the best sounding Nat “King” Cole recordings we had auditioned over the years. With a large variety of copies to play, including some interesting “finds” among them, we now know it actually is The Best. We have never heard the man sound better than he does on the hottest copies of this very album.

Of course we’re always on the lookout for Nat King Cole albums with good sound. In our experience that is not nearly as easy as one might expect. Far too many of his recordings are drenched in bad reverb and can’t be taken seriously. At least one we know of has his voice out of phase with the orchestra on most of the copies we played, putting a quick end to that shootout.

If anything the sound on his albums gets even worse in the ’60s. Many of Nat’s albums from that decade are over-produced, bright, thin and shrill.

We assume most audiophiles got turned on to his music from the records that Steve Hoffman remixed and remastered for DCC back in the mid-’90s, For those of you who were customers of ours back then, you know that I count myself among that group. I even went so far as to nominate the DCC of Nat’s Greatest Hits as the best album DCC ever made. (I know now, as I expect you do, that that’s really not saying much, but at the time I thought it was a pretty bold statement.)

Devoting the Resources

Naturally, having long ago given up on Heavy Vinyl LPs by DCC and others of their persuasion, these days we are in a much better position to devote our resources to playing every Nat King Cole album on every pressing we can get our hands on, trying to figure out what are the copies — from what era, on what label, with what stampers, cut by whom, stereo or mono, import or domestic — that potentially have the Hot Stamper sound, the very Raison d’être of our business.

What we discovered with the more than dozen copies we’d pulled together for our shootout was that different pressings from different eras on different labels can all have the right sound. In fact, while listening to one copy after another, all without the benefit of knowing anything about the specific record on the table, it was simply impossible to predict from the sound alone which label the record was printed on.

Some of the earliest pressings were rich and tubey, but so were some of the later ones. Same with copies that were lean, hard or transistory — they could be on a label from any era with that sound.

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The Germans Won Our Proto-Shootout for The Blue Album Back in 2010

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

UPDATE 2020

We had forgotten how good these pressings were. Apparently we were way ahead of the curve in 2010. The German pressings with the right stampers win the shootouts we’ve been doing recently. A number of old listings from this era don’t hold up, but I’m glad to see that this one does.

This is a WONDERFUL SOUNDING early German Import 2 LP set — pressed on fairly quiet vinyl to boot! We are on record as finding the British pressings of 1967-1970 too bright; certainly most of them are anyway.

This German set has much more natural sound to my ear — it’s RICH, SMOOTH and SWEET, with plenty of tubey magic and little of the grain and grunge of the Brits.

The original domestic pressings, as anyone who has ever played one can attest, mastered at Sterling no less, are absolutely godawful.

Like most compilations, some songs sound better than others, but Don’t Let Me Down and Come Together are two that really stand out here. For some of you out there who have never tried one of our Hot Stamper Beatles records, this may be the best sound you’ve ever heard from them. The CDs — even the new ones — sure don’t sound like this!