rca-best

Gilbert and Sullivan – Overtures / Ward

More Recordings in Living Stereo

  • You’ll find INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this vintage Shaded Dog pressing of Gilbert and Sullivan’s music
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • Rich and sweet Living Stereo sound from the first note to the last – who can resist these sublime orchestral arrangements?
  • The Overtures are played to perfection – for music and sound, this one is hard to fault, a Top Title in every way and one that belongs in every right-thinking audiophile’s collection
  • This pressing is clearly a Demo Disc for orchestral size and space

The hall is HUGE: spacious and open as any you will hear, but not at the expense of richness or fullness. The orchestra is solid and full-bodied, yet the woodwinds and flutes soar above the other sections, so breathy and clear.

How did the Decca (recording) and RCA (mastering) engineers succeed so brilliantly where so many others have failed, failed right up to this very day?

Who knows? It’s still a mystery that has yet to be explained, to our satisfaction anyway.

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Dick Schory – Music for Bang, Baaroom and Harp

Living Stereo Titles Available Now

  • Stunning Living Stereo sound through this original pressing, with both sides earning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades, just shy of our Shootout Winner – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • It’s a real treat to hear such a crazy assortment of percussion instruments with this kind of amazingly clear, high-resolution sound!
  • This copy was just plain bigger, richer and clearer than practically all others in our recent shootout
  • It also helps that both of these sides are in correct polarity, a subject you can read about on the blog if you would like to know more
  • If you’re a fan of percussion extravaganzas, this Living Stereo from 1958 is about as good as it gets

The hottest stamper pressings of this album are Demo Discs for three important qualities we listen for in our record auditions. Each of the links below will take you to other recordings we have found to be potentially superior in these areas of reproduction.

  1. Size and space,
  2. Correct timbre and
  3. Tubey Magic.

Harry Pearson put this record on his TAS List of Super Discs, and rightfully so. It certainly can be a Super Disc, but only when you have the right pressing. This is one of the Demo Discs on the TAS List which truly deserves its status when, and only when, you have the right copy. (The typical copy is quite good, but it sure doesn’t sound like this.) Nothing else in our shootout could touch it. And it’s IN PHASE. Many copies are not.

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Ballet Music From The Opera – Yet Another Reissue that Trounces the Original

More of the Music of Saint-Saens

More of the Music of Mussorgsky

  • You will find superb sound throughout this vintage Victrola 60s reissue, one of the best in the entire series
  • Both of these sides are big, lively, and dynamic, with the lovely bells and other percussive elements benefitting immensely from the wonderfully extended top
  • The sonics here have the power to transport you completely, with solid imaging and a real sense of space, qualities that allow us to forget we are in our listening rooms and not in the concert hall

Pay attention to the brass — yes, it may have some tubey smear, but listen to how huge and powerful it is.

Drop the needle and watch (or listen) as the sound comes jumping out of your speakers.

Modern remastered records never do that.

These Decca-derived recordings are highly sought after, and with good reason. It’s hard to imagine a more wonderful audiophile disc, both in terms of the program and the quality of the sound.

This is the precisely the kind of big, bold, lifelike sound Decca engineers were able to capture on tape, and RCA mastering engineers were able to master from that analog tape, 60+ years ago.

The original RCA (LSC 2400) sells for many, many hundreds of dollars in clean condition and may not have especially good sound, if our experience is any guide. Some of the ones we’ve played have been quite shrill. In other words, you could easily spend a ton of money on one and end up with a bad sounding collector piece destined to sit on your shelf for years between playings.

Or you could buy the Classic 180g reissue and end up with one of the biggest disasters in the history of remastering. More about that later.

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Henry Mancini – Charade

More of the Music of Henry Mancini

  • With KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) Living Stereo sound from first note to last, this early RCA pressing could not be beat
  • This copy is super spacious, sweet and positively dripping with ambience — talk about Tubey Magic, the liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny
  • If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good 1963 All Tube Analog sound can be, this superb copy may be just the record for you
  • This is as quiet as we can find them, and with Triple Plus grades on both sides, this is as good a copy as we have ever heard
  • 4 1/2 stars: “A great Mancini recording made during the same fruitful, early-60s period that produced two other fine soundtracks of his, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Pink Panther.”

This vintage Living Stereo pressing gives you a healthy dose of the Tubey Magic we love here at Better Records. An added bonus: the last track on side 2, “Charade (Carousel),” has absolutely no IGD on the glockenspiel or Calliope. Few copies will not be groove damaged on that track — we speak from experience here.

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Chet Atkins – Chet Atkins in Hollywood (1961)

More of the Music of Chet Atkins

  • Both sides of this vintage RCA pressing were giving us the big and bold Living Stereo sound we were looking for, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades
  • What we are offering here is the superior sounding re-recording from 1961, produced by Dick Peirce
  • Chet took the orchestra tapes back to his home studio in 1961 and re-recorded his parts over them, and we think he managed to do a much better job the second time around
  • This TAS list recording will have you asking why so few Living Stereo pressings actually do what this one does. The more critical listeners among you will recognize that this is a very special copy indeed. Everyone else will just enjoy the hell out of it.
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings, but once you hear just how superb sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • 4 1/2 stars: “If the cover of At Home evokes the 1950s, the music on In Hollywood IS the 1950s: a warm, cozy, sophisticated album of mood music in the best sense.”

You can feel the cool air of the studio the minute the needle hits the groove on this one!

I suppose we owe a debt of gratitude to Harry Pearson for pointing out to us with his TAS List what a great record this is, although I’m pretty sure anybody playing this album would have no trouble telling after a minute or two that this copy is very special indeed.

Sorry, Harry

The pressing that Harry seems to have preferred — it’s the one recommended on his list, along with the Classic Records repress — is the inferior-sounding original recording, the one with the cover showing a guitar superimposed over the cityscape.

Leave it to us, the guys who actually play lots of records and listen to them critically, to recognize how much better the 1961 version is compared to the original from 1959. (For those of you who prefer the arrangements on the original, we offer those from time to time as well.)

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Beethoven / “Kreutzer” & Spring Sonatas / Rubinstein

More of the Music of Beethoven

  • This original Shaded Dog pressing of Rubinstein and Szeryng’s extraordinary performances of Beethoven’s sonatas for violin and piano (LSC 2377) boasts solid Double Plus (A++) Living Stereo sound from first note to last
  • Both of these sides are Tubey Magical, lively and clear, with the kind of three-dimensionality that will fill your listening room from wall to wall that only the best vintage vinyl can offer
  • The immediacy of Szeryng’s violin is simply in a league of its own, with some of the sweetest, richest, most “rosiny” violin tone we’ve had the good fortune to hear
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings, but once you hear just how superb sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music

RCA is famous for its chamber recordings, which tend to be quite rare for some reason. Let’s be honest: we did not conduct this shootout with a dozen copies of the album. It would take us years to find that many clean pressings.

However, that said, we’ve played dozens and dozens of good violin recordings, and we have no problem recognizing good violin sound when we hear it. Don’t be fooled by the lack of Hot Stamper classical listings on the site. The vast majority of killer classical records never make it to the site; they go directly to our best customers, customers who want classical recordings that actually sound good. Not just the kind of Golden Age Recordings that are supposed to.

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Beethoven, Bach, Schubert / Heifetz, Primrose, Piatigorsky

More of the Music of Beethoven

  • An original Shaded Dog pressing of this wonderful recording of string trios and sinfonias, here with two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides
  • It’s also fairly quiet at the high end of Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • Beethoven’s Trio in D, Op 9, No. 2 takes up all of this Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) side one, and is practically as good as we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner
  • Remarkably spacious, rich and smooth – only vintage analog seems capable of reproducing all three of these qualities without sacrificing resolution, staging, imaging or presence
  • This copy showed us the balance of clarity and sweetness we were looking for in the violin, viola and cello – not many recordings from this era can do that as well as this one does
  • Heifetz is a fiery player – he is front and center, with every movement of his bow clearly audible without being hyped-up in the least

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Brahms / Piano Concerto No. 2 / Cliburn / Reiner

More of the Music of Johannes Brahms

  • Van Cliburn’s exceptional performance of Brahm’s Piano Concerto No. 2, here with solid Double Plus (A++) Living Stereo sound or close to it throughout this early Shaded Dog pressing
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • This side one is big, full-bodied, clean and clear, with a wonderfully present and solid piano, and plenty of 3D space around it, and side two is not far behind in all those areas
  • One of the best of the Cliburn recordings – most are not very good, the worst of them being LSC 2252 and the best of them being, probably, LSC 2507 with this one right up there with it
  • We’ve liked LSC 2296 with Rubinstein and Krips in the past, but after doing this shootout we have to say that Cliburn and Reiner set a higher standard for a recording of the work
  • On the right shaded dog pressing, LSC 2581 is yet another Must Own orchestral recording from 1962

Our main listening guy made some notes about the sound of the best pressings he heard. Here is what he wrote:

This LP might be tough for some customers to reproduce. The big peak at the end of track one on side one can have some tube/compressor distortion. Only the fullest, richest copies can properly reproduce this section without the piano and low end getting lost.

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Paul Desmond / Take Ten – Living Stereo Tubey Magical Sound from 1963

More Living Stereo Titles

  • Paul Desmond’s 1963 Cool Jazz Classic returns to the site for the first time in years, here with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish
  • These are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “fully extended from top to bottom”…”big and rich and 3D”…”very full and rich sax”…”jumping out of the speakers”…”3D and lively guitar and snare”…”texture and space all there!” (side two)
  • The brilliant Ray Hall engineered – anyone hearing this copy will understand exactly why we love to find his fabulous 60s recordings here at Better Records
  • Desmond joins forces here with Jim Hall, whose guitar stylings perfectly complement Paul’s velvety sax tone
  • This is a lot of money for a somewhat noisy copy, but the sound is so awesome and quiet pressings of the album so hard to come by that we hope someone will take a chance on it and get the thrill we did from hearing it sound right for once
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Everyone wanted Desmond to come up with a sequel to the monster hit Take Five; and so he did, reworking the tune and playfully designating the meter as 10/8. Hence Take Ten, a worthy sequel… There is not a single track here that isn’t loaded with ingeniously worked out, always melodic ideas.”

For us audiophiles both the sound and the music here are enchanting. If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good 1963 All Tube Analog sound can be, this killer copy will do the trick.

This vintage pressing is spacious, sweet and positively dripping with ambience. Talk about Tubey Magic, the liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny. This is vintage analog at its best, so full-bodied and relaxed you’ll wonder how it ever came to be that anyone seriously contemplated trying to improve it. (more…)

Sonny Rollins – What’s New?

More of the Music of Sonny Rollins

  • What’s New? returns to the site for only the second time in over five years, here with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them from top to bottom
  • This is vintage 1962 Living Stereo sound at its best – big, rich, relaxed, tonally correct and full of Tubey Magic – thanks, Ray Hall!
  • Damn quiet for a Black Label stereo original – it plays Mint Minus Minus and has no audible marks of any kind
  • 4 1/2 Stars: “Rollins’ characteristically huge tone, relentless harmonic and rhythmic inventiveness, and fierce solos were consistently impressive. Not only did he state the melody clearly and superbly, but his ideas and pacing were remarkable; no solo rambled and his phrases were lean, thick and furious.”

For us audiophiles, both the sound and the music here are wonderful. If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good 1962 All Tube Analog sound can be, this killer copy will do the trick.

This pressing is super spacious, sweet and positively dripping with ambience. Talk about Tubey Magic, the liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny. This is vintage analog at its best, so full-bodied and relaxed you’ll wonder how it ever came to be that anyone seriously contemplated trying to improve it.

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