santabest

Santana – Santana (III)

More of the Music of Santana

  • Excellent sound throughout this vintage Columbia pressing, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • Remarkable transparency – you hear into the huge, deep soundfield with almost nothing between you and the musicians
  • Surprising amounts of Tubey Magic – some of the best sound this very well-recorded band achieved in the studio
  • Three big hits that sound great here: “No One To Depend On,” “Everybody’s Everything” and “Everything’s Coming Our Way”
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 1/2 stars: “. . . an album that has aged extremely well due to its spare production (by Carlos and the band) and its live sound. This is essential Santana, a record that deserves to be reconsidered in light of its lasting abundance and vision.”

This is another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you turn up your volume.

If you want to bring the funky sound of Latin percussion to life in your living room, this is the ticket. This is one of the most Tubey Magical Santana recording we have ever heard, and at its best it is competitive with Abraxas for the title of Greatest Santana Recording.

Both sides here absolutely destroy the typical pressing, with the kind of huge, wide soundfield and stunning clarity and detail that really bring this music to life!

This pressing is open and spacious, which gives all of the drums and guitars their own space. Santana records live and die by the sonic quality of the drums and percussion, and on this copy they are killer.

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Santana – Moonflower

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More Records That Sound Better Loud

  • With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on sides two and three, and superb Double Plus (A++) sound on sides one and four, this copy of Santana’s 2-LP live album will be very hard to beat – exceptionally quiet vinyl
  • These sides are rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical with a big punchy bottom end
  • Turn it up and you will hear sound that is incredibly powerful and natural with remarkable presence, energy and weight down low
  • “Santana, which was renowned for its concert work dating back to Woodstock, did not release a live album in the U.S. until this one… Moonflower went Top Ten and sold a million copies, the first new Santana album to do that since 1972 and the last until Supernatural in 1999.”

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Santana – Abraxas

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More Top 100 Rock and Pop Albums

 

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides of this vintage Columbia pressing
  • The sound is rich, full-bodied and musical with punchy drums and guitar solos that really get loud
  • 5 stars on Allmusic, and a Top 100 title for its blistering solos that soar into space
  • “America was never the same after Carlos Santana discovered the smoldering Afro-Cuban magic of Tito Puente. A sinuous cha cha cha that sounds as if it had been waiting for Santana’s soulful guitar licks to reinvent it, the Puente-penned “Oye Como Va” became the pillar of U.S. Latin rock.” – Rolling Stone

This copy is smooth, sweet, rich, full-bodied, and super dynamic. The vocals are shockingly present and clear, with breath and body like nothing you have ever heard. Just listen to all that room around the drums!

The sound is transparent, open, and spacious, with life and rhythmic energy to spare. The bass is deep, tight, and note-like, exactly what this music needs to really rock.

Both sides have an exceptionally big soundfield, which opens up and allows you to appreciate all of the players’ contributions. That’s a big deal for this music. For me, a big speaker guy with a penchant for giving the old volume knob an extra click or two, it just doesn’t get any better than Abraxas.

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Santana – Welcome

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  • You’ll find outstanding sound throughout this vintage pressing of Santana’s 1973 release
  • Both of these sides are big and rich, yet still wonderfully clean, clear and open with fantastic energy – you will not believe all the space and ambience here
  • An ambitious follow-up to Caravanserai, Welcome continued Carlos Santana’s foray into jazz-rock fusion with music that remains powerful and intriguing even today
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 stars: “Welcome was merely ahead of its time as a musical journey and is one of the more enduring recordings the band ever made. This is a record that pushes the envelope even today and is one of the most inspired recordings in the voluminous Santana oeuvre.”

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Santana’s Debut Is a Masterpiece

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More Debut Albums of Interest

  • A superb Columbia 360 Label pressing of Santana’s debut album with Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides
  • The drums have real snap to them – fast, clean percussion is critical to the energy and drive of Santana’s music and this copy has the top end and the speed to bring it all together
  • A Must Own album, clearly their masterpiece, and one of the truly groundbreaking debuts in rock history
  • It’s also a personal favorite that knocked me out when I first heard it back in high school – over the decades it has become even more impressive, especially these days with the revolutions in cleaning and playback quality letting it sound as big and bold as it does
  • “Santana combined Latin rhythms with jazz-inspired improvisation, hard-rock guitar and lyrical, B.B. King-style blues – and even had a hit single, “Evil Ways. The combination of rock guitar and funk percussion was undeniable.” – Rolling Stone
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” but with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Santana’s first album is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but should.

Santana’s first album came out of nowhere and rocked in a way that few music lovers (especially those who knew nothing about Tito Puente) had heard before.

In one sense it had something in common with Led Zeppelin’s debut from early in 1969. Zep’s first album took the blues and added heavy metal guitars. Santana took African and Latin rhythms and added his own style of heavy guitar.

Each is a landmark recording in its own right. It’s hard to imagine any collection of popular music that would be without both.

Folks, you owe it to yourself to hear what a great band Santana were back in the day. Hot Stampers of any of the first three records will do the trick. If you’ve got the stereo that can play loud rock and roll, we’ve got the records that sound like Santana playing live in your listening room. Take it from someone who likes to listen to his music at fairly loud levels, Santana’s first album is truly a thrill. (more…)

Santana – Inner Secrets

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More of Our Hardest Rockin’ Records

  • A big, bold, exciting and hard-rocking pressing with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish -exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Power and energy are what make this album a true Demo Disc in the world of rock, and this copy has both
  • A sleeper in the Santana canon that boasts some of the best sound the band ever put to vinyl
  • As a matter of fact, the notes for this copy mentioned that it was one of the best sounding rock records we have ever played – and who plays more amazing sounding rock records than we do?
  • Top tracks here include three of their biggest barnburners: “Dealer” (Traffic), “Stormy” and “Well…All Right” (Blind Faith)

I know exactly the kind of sound I like on this album. When the background vocals come in, on the Tubey Magical copies they are wall to wall and sweet as honey, with no trace of grain or edge. Big as life too. The guitars have plenty of bite, but no matter how loud they get, they never seem to strain. The louder they get the more I like it. That’s the ticket as far as I’m concerned.

Turn It Up

Like Abraxas, when you play a Hot Stamper copy good and loud, you find yourself marvelling at the musicianship of the group — because the Hot Stamper pressings, communicating all the energy and clarity the recording has to offer, let you hear what a great band they were.

If you’ve got the the big room, big speakers, and the kind of power it takes to drive them, you can have a live rock and roll concert in your very own house.

When Santana lets loose with some of those legendary monster power chords — which incidentally do get good and loud in the mix, unlike most rock records which suffer from compression and “safe” mixes — I like to say that there is no stereo system on the planet that can play loud enough for me. (Horns maybe, but I don’t like the sound of horns, so there you go.) Here are some other records that have especially dynamic guitar solos.

What makes it possible to play this record so loud and still enjoy it? Simple. When the sound is smooth and sweet, completely free of aggressive mids and highs, records get better as they get louder. (This, of course, assumes low distortion and all the rest, but the main factor is correct tonality from top to bottom, and this record has it.)

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Santana – Viva Santana!

More Santana

  • Santana’s MONSTER triple album compilation finally makes its Hot Stamper return here with Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on all SIX sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • These vintage Columbia pressings are guaranteed to rock like no other copy you’ve ever played
  • Full of mostly-live, previously unreleased versions of favorites, mixed with a number of new works, this collection is a must-have for Santana fans
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Released in 1988, Viva Santana! is a generous 30-track overview of Santana’s first 20 years of recording… both Carlos Santana and his supporting musicians were on fire.”

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Carlos Santana, John McLauglin and The Mahavishnu Orchestra – Love Devotion Surrender

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More of The Mahavishnu Orchestra

  • This stellar collaboration finally makes its Hot Stamper debut here with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound throughout
  • The sound is huge, spacious, lively, transparent and punchy – this is jazz fusion that really rocks
  • A superb collection “inspired by the teachings of Sri Chinmoy and intended as a tribute to John Coltrane”
  • 4 1/2 stars: “To hear this recording in the context of not only Carlos Santana’s development as a guitarist, but as the logical extension of the music of John Coltrane and Miles Davis influencing rock musicians — McLaughlin, of course, was a former Davis sideman — this extension makes perfect sense in the post-Sonic Youth, post-rock era.”

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Santana – Borboletta

Top players include Stanley Clarke, Airto, Flora Purim and Michael Shrieve. 

This is definitely not an album of “hits,” nor is it trying to be one. The lengthy review in Rolling Stone explains it all, and is certainly worth a read if jazz-rock fusion is your thing.

This is an Older 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.

The result of our labor is the hundreds of 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.

Further Reading

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