Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin Available Now
We love the way RCA recorded Heifetz back in the day, the day in this case being 1960. We usually have a good supply of vintage Heifetz titles on the site at all times. They often have our favorite performances, and the best copies, as the notes for the one below make clear, can have absolutely amazing sound.
As you can see from the notes, side one of a recent shootout winning copy was doing everything right.
However, we had a side two that was slightly better than the side two you see here. When we played the two best copies back to back, this side one came out on top, earning a grade of 3+, but the side two of another copy showed us there was even more three-dimensionality to be discovered in the recording than we thought. Consequently this side two was dropped a half grade to 2.5+.
This is exactly why we do shootouts. If you really want to be able to recognize subtle (and not so subtle!) differences between pressings, you must learn to do them too.