rollistick-aphile

Sticky Fingers – Worst Version Ever!

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

Mastered by Robert Ludwig. (Scroll down to find links to more of Robert Ludwig’s work.)

Digitally remastered using UV22 Super CD encoding by Apogee Electronics, Santa Monica, California.

This RTI 180g copy (with the zipper cover) is one of a series of five titles Bob Ludwig cut in the 90s. According to the man, after cutting the record he chanced upon a consumer copy and was shocked to hear how bad it sounded.   

It sounded, according to him, nothing like the record he had cut. Somehow they had botched the pressings and ruined the sound. How this could happen I can’t imagine.

Bob says that’s what they did and we’ll take him at his word, out of respect for one of the all-time great mastering engineers, RL himself. He promptly sold off all his analog mastering equipment and got out of the game.

Can you blame him? According to him they put his name all over a record the sound of which they had ruined. Guess I would stop making records too if that were the case.

By the way, the sound was dismal on every title from that series we played except for Heart’s, which was okay, certainly better than the average pressing out there, but no Hot Stamper by any stretch of the imagination. 

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Sticky Fingers on Mobile Fidelity – Can It Get Any Worse?

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

The MoFi pressing of this album is a joke. It’s so compressed, lifeless, and lacking in bottom end punch that it would hardly interfere with even the most polite conversation at a wine tasting.

I consider it one of the worst sounding versions of the album ever made.

It’s an “Audiophile” record in the worst sense of the word.

Truly a hall of shame pressing and a Half-Speed mastered disaster if there ever was one.

A well-known reviewer actually — I kid you not — was still defending the sound of the MoFi as late as 2010.

2010!

In one of his reviews earlier in 2008 he had used it to test a piece of equipment he was evaluating. I’m not kidding. In 2010 he wrote this:

Mo-Fi’s half-speed mastered edition (MFSL 1-060) was controversial when issued in 1980, with its jacked up lower bass, icy top end, sucked out midrange and low overall level. I’ll tell you though, as my system has improved, the more I’ve come to appreciate it. It offers outstanding focus and clarity and its portrayal of inner detail and transient snap is unsurpassed. Admittedly the sound is not for everybody.

It’s not for me, that’s for damn sure.

And “unsurpassed” simply means you have never had the experience of hearing a good sounding copy of Sticky Fingers.

Which is sad, don’t you think? Especially if you fancy yourself a “record expert.”

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Sticky Fingers Is a MoFi Disaster to Beat Them All – Now With Video

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones

If you click on the video you can read some of the silly comments people are making about this awful pressing, which happens to be one of the worst sounding versions of Sticky Fingers ever committed to vinyl.

When you stop to consider how awful most pressings are compared to the only version that has ever sounded good to us, the right original domestic LP,  that’s really saying something.

The MoFi pressing of this album is a joke. It’s so compressed, lifeless, and lacking in low end weight and power that it would hardly interfere with even the most polite conversation at a wine tasting. I consider it one of the worst sounding versions ot the album ever made.