More of the Music of QueenOur customer Michel wrote to tell us how much he likes the sound 0f his recently purchase Super Hot Stamper pressing of A Night at the Opera.
Hi Tom,
I should title this one “MFSL, Now You Can Kiss My Ass Goodbye” from the song, you know.
A Night at the Opera and Sheer Heart Attack are my two all time favorite Queen LPs. I’ve listened to so many copies of each and decades ago found happiness for sure, like when I got the MFSL.
But later in life, listening more critically, I was never happy… so much going on… always some sort of mish-mash of sound. Turning these LPs up to max volume and jamming out was no longer pleasurable, so I found myself not playing them anymore. [Ouch.]
Recently I purchased A Night at the Opera from BR, a SHS.
When the needle hit the record, the room suddenly expanded by two quadrants. So wonderfully wide and big, the room was just filled with sound…..warmth abundant sound sans mish-mash.
The difference is truly dramatic. The depth is also there… you can feel the sound coming out of the shadows towards you in places. Absolutely stunning sound.
You have cracked the code on this one. This is an analog delight for sure. Many thanks.
Take Care,
Michel
Michel,
Thanks for your letter. I’m not sure how big two quadrants are, but I know a mish-mash when I hear one, and that is indeed the sound found on most pressings of the album, even the UK ones. I might describe it as a combination of congestion and vague imaging, a cloud of instruments, all mashed together.
A lot of records have that problem, especially if they haven’t been cleaned properly.
Later in life it seems you were rather less impressed with your MoFi than when you first bought it.
As I have said again and again on this very blog, it’s axiomatic with us here at Better Records that the better your stereo is at playing records, and the more critically you are able to listen, the worse their records will sound. There is no way their junk half-speed mastered vinyl can sound right on good equipment.
Now you know just how good A Night at the Opera can sound.
We didn’t until about seven years ago. That’s how long it took us to crack the code, but I tell you this with confidence, having played practically every version of the UK pressings ever made: the right stampers are mindboggingly good and there is nothing like them. We wrote about the subject here:
As is sometimes the case, there is one and only one set of stamper numbers that consistently wins our Night at the Opera shootouts. We stumbled upon an out-of-this-world copy of the right pressing many years ago, a copy took the recording to a level we had no idea could even be possible. (We were going to give it Four Pluses, and probably should have, but cooler heads prevailed.)
Since then we have had many copies come in, but none that could compete with the Magic Stamper pressings. And the best part of this story is that, no, the best stampers are not 1, or 2, or even 3.
In other words they are far from the stampers found on the earliest pressings.
That’s one reason it took us so long to discover them, because they are much less commonly found than pressings with the earlier stampers. By the time these later pressings were mastered, pressed and released, the album’s biggest selling days were over.
Why is that, you ask?
Who knows? Who cares? What difference does it make?
Well, it does serve to make a point near and dear to our hearts: that the idea (and operational premise of most record collectors) that the Original Is Always Better is just a load of bunk. It might be and it might not be. If you want better sounding records, you had better open your mind to the idea that some reissues have the potential to sound better than even the best original pressing of the album.
Of course this is nothing but bad news for the average audiophile collector, who simply does not have the time or money to go through the hassle of buying, cleaning and playing every damn pressing he can get his hands on.
But good news for us, because we do.
To see more albums with one set of stampers that consistently win shootouts, click here.
Thanks for your letter!
Best, TP
