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Some Girls Need (Needs?) Fullness

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

In the commentary for a recent Hot Stamper pressing, we described the sound we were looking for on the Stones’ brilliant 1978 album, Some Girls:

One of the keys to getting this album to sound right is fullness. Many copies lack weight to the bottom end, which robs this funky music of its very foundation. Other copies suffer from lean, thin-sounding vocals — do you think that’s the sound Mick Jagger (or engineer Chris Kimsey) was going for?

Some of the qualities we found in short supply on the average copy were warmth, richness, sweetness and ambience — you know, all that Analog Stuff we know and love.

Most copies are too thin and grainy for serious audiophile listening, but this one is a different story. It’s not easy to find great sound for The Stones, so take this one home for a spin if you want to hear this band bring these songs to life in your very own listening room.

Not many copies have this kind of clarity and transparency, or this kind of big, well-defined bottom end.

The sound of the hi-hat is natural and clear on this pressing, as are the vocals, which means that the tonality in the midrange is correct, and what could be more important than a good midrange? It’s where the music is.

Not only is it hard to find great copies of this album, it ain’t easy to play ’em either, which is why this recording ranks high on our difficulty of reproduction scale.

You’re going to need a hi-res, super low distortion front end with careful adjustment of your arm in every area — VTA, tracking weight, azimuth and anti-skate — in order to play this album properly.

If you’ve got the goods, you’re gonna love the way our Hot Stamper pressings sound.

Play it with a budget cart/table/arm and you’re likely to hear much less magic than we did.

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The Rolling Stones – Some Girls

More Rolling Stones

More Top 100 Titles

  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, we guarantee you’ve never heard Some Girls sound this good
  • It’s got weight, punch, energy and fullness – qualities key to the better sounding pressings
  • A Top 100 title, with a surplus of great songs – “Miss You,” “Beast of Burden” and “Shattered,” all sounding shockingly good, thanks to the engineering skills of Chris Kimsey
  • 5 stars: “Opening with the disco-blues thump of ‘Miss You,’ Some Girls is a tough, focused, and exciting record, full of more hooks and energy than any Stones record since Exile on Main St. Even Their rockers sound harder and nastier than they have in years.”

This is the Stones’ last truly great album. All Music Guide gives it the same 5 star rating that they awarded Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, and Sticky Fingers. With hits like “Miss You,” “Shattered,” and “Beast Of Burden,” it’s easy to see why.

Most copies are too thin and grainy for serious audiophile listening, but this one is a different story. It’s not easy to find great sound for The Stones, so take this one home for a spin if you want to hear this band bring these songs to life in your very own listening room.

Not many copies have this kind of clarity and transparency, or this kind of big, well-defined bottom end. The sound of the hi-hat is natural and clear on this pressing, as are the vocals, which means that the tonality in the midrange is correct, and what could be more important than a good midrange? It’s where the music is.

(more…)

Letter of the Week – “It is a raucous chaos of undigestible noise.”

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones

Reviews and Commentaries for Some Girls

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased a while back:

  Hey Tom, 

I have recently purchased from you great copies of Aftermath, Beggars Banquet and Sticky Fingers, so I think is have some idea of how Stones records should sound when they are great. This copy of SOME GIRLS is virtually unlistenable. It is harsh, hard-sound, unmusical. It is a raucous chaos of undigestible noise. I don’t know if you personally play graded it, but someone in your group seriously missed the boat. I am returning it. 

Dear Sir,

I played that Triple Plus Shootout Winning copy myself. I like to think I know the album well, and I had never heard it sound so good in my life. It was really quite shocking to hear it sound open and free from distortion, literally for the first time. Obviously we were hearing it differently.

But it is a very different recording from the three Stones albums you mention.

This entry from Wikipedia may be helpful for those trying to better understand the sound that Chris Kimsey and the Stones wanted this time around.

Writing and Recording Some Girls

Especially this part:

Kimsey’s direct method of recording, together with the entrance of the then state-of-the-art Mesa/Boogie Mark I amps instead of the Ampeg SVT line of amps, yielded a bright, direct and aggressive guitar sound.

The record is supposed to sound the way our copy sounded — when played back on our system anyway. I can’t know what it sounds like on yours. (Which is why it’s never a problem to get a refund any time you have an issue with one of our records.)

How do we know what Some Girls is supposed to sound like? The most obvious answer is that we’ve played them by the score, probably a hundred copies or more by now. We’ve learned to recognize what the best copies do well that the average ones do not do as well. (more…)