spitty

Waiting For Columbus Gets the Bernie Treatment Care of Rhino Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Little Feat Available Now

A Hot Stamper pressing of this amazing sounding album, a title we regret to say we have in stock only rarely, might be described this way:

Some of the best sounding live rock and roll sound you will ever hear outside of a concert venue. If you want to understand the unique appeal of the band, there’s no better place to start than right here.

It’s one of our all-time favorite live recordings and their single best release – a true Masterpiece.

I have lately been listening to this album in its entirety at the gym (playing the standard cassette over headphones) and enjoying the hell out of it. As good as their best studio albums are, and I count myself as big a fan of the band as there is, Waiting for Columbus is surely the pinnacle of their recorded output. It is as close to perfect as any live album I know.

(The Last Record Album is my personal favorite of their studio albums, but since nobody seems to want to buy it at the prices we charge, I regret to say we had to stop doing shootouts for it years ago. We were losing too much money that way.)

But Bernie Grundman’s version is just another one in a very long line of disastrous recuts, the kind of crap he has been churning out for the last thirty years. It’s all but unplayable on modern high quality equipment. (If it’s not on your system, you might consideer the idea that you still have plenty of work left to do, audio-wise.)

As you can see from the notes below, record one may be passable, but record two is NFG. How is it possible to turn such a wonderful recording into such a ridiculously bad sounding pressing? Even Mobile Fidelity did a better job with the album, and they’re one of the most incompetent remastering outfits that the audiophile world has even known.

We’re frankly at a loss to understand any of it.Bernie Grundman used to make good sounding records. We know that for a fact, having played them by the hundreds. Apparently those days are gone, and, based on this album and plenty of others, there is very little chance of them returning.

Notes on the Sound

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How Is It that the Earliest Pressings from the Tube Era Often Lack the Sound of Tubes?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Music on Island Records Available Now

Please note that the album you see pictured on the left is not the one we are discussing here.

It has been our experience going back many years that the earliest pressings for many records on the Island label are not very good.

To be fair, this one — again, not Mr. Fantasy — is not a bad sounding pressing.

With grades of 1.5+ on both sides, it fits comfortably in our section for good, not great sounding LPs. But the right reissues are a big step up in class sonically. They’re the ones that win shootouts, not these Pink Label LPs.

It’s big and clear but dry and spitty and badly needs tubes — or the sound of tubes — in the cutting chain.

That’s not supposed to happen, the early pressings are supposed to be the most Tubey Magical ones, with the reissues being less Tubey Magical — but in the world of records, when has that rule of thumb ever counted for anything?

Been There, Done That

We’ve run into so many sonically-flawed Pink Label Islands by now that hearing one sound lackluster if not actually awful doesn’t phase us in the least. Some of the other Pink Labels that never win shootouts can be found here.

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These Pink Label Pressings Can Sound Good, But Great? Not a Chance

Hot Stamper Pressings of Music on Island Records Available Now

Below you will see the bottom part of the stamper sheet for a shootout we did recently.

Please note that the album you see pictured is not the one we are discussing here.

It very well could have been been a Jethro Tull album, but all we can say for sure is that it was definitely an album on Island, which just happens to be one of our favorite labels, for sound and music.

The earliest pressings for many records on the Island label are not very good. This one — again, not for This Was, for some other record — is not a bad sounding pressing.

With grades of 1.5+ on both sides, it fits comfortably in our section for good, not great sounding LPs — but the right reissues from the 70s are a big step up in class sonically. They’re the ones that win shootouts, not these Pink Label LPs.

It’s big and clear but dry and spitty and badly needs tubes in the cutting chain.

Do the record collectors who prize the Pink Label pressings above all others notice these things?

Do the audiophiles who play them?

Been There, Done That

We’ve run into so many sonically-flawed Pink Label Islands by now that hearing one sound lackluster if not actually awful doesn’t phase us in the least. Some of the other Pink Labels that never win shootouts can be found here.

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So at 45 RPM – One Side Bad, Another Awful, What’s a Mother to Do?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Peter Gabriel Available Now

In 2016 a version of So came out using this currently popular vinyl format:

2 180g discs / 45 RPM / Deluxe, Numbered, Limited Edition /Half Speed mastered

As of this writing, there are 15 copies on Discogs, the cheapest of them starting at $139.77.

Sounds like it must be pretty good for that kind of money!

This So release was mastered by a fellow named Matt Colton, who has been doing this kind of work for a very long time, judging by the fact that he has 3,775 technical credits under his name on Discogs.

That did not stop this particular 2 LP set from being one of the worst sounding albums we have played in quite a while.

Let’s take a closer look at the specifics. We played sides one and four of the two-disc, four-sided album. That was more than enough to evaluate the sound quality.

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