vin-misc-w

Based on the specific pressings we played, we judged these vintage records to fall short of the best.

We can’t say that other pressings of these albums don’t sound better than the ones we played. If you have an exceptional sounding pressing of any of these titles in your collection, please let us know.

Skip the Mono on Big Band and Quartet

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Thelonious Monk Available Now

Stick with stereo on this title; the mono we played was a disaster and not worth anybody’s time (scratch that: any audiophile’s time).

If you see one for a buck at a garage sale, pick it up for the music, and then be on the lookout for a nice stereo original to enjoy for the sound.

Skip This One Too

The Thelonious Monk Orchestra at Town Hall on Riverside (1959). Never heard a good one. Same arranger, Hal Overton, but much poorer sound.

Notes from a Long Ago Shootout

An amazingly well-recorded Big Band Concert from 1963, and these White Hot sides make the case like nothing you have ever heard. Our early pressing here is so rich, Tubey Magical, spacious and lively we simply could not fault the sound. Monk alternates between a 10 piece Big Band and his standard quartet, with magical results. 

Normally our notes for the sound of the records we are comparing in our shootout fall into two categories: what the record is doing right and what the record is doing wrong. In this case there was nothing wrong about the sound to write about.

I could have tried to pick some nits, but when a record is so clearly superior to its competition, what’s the point?

Side One

The right sound — HUGE, rich, tubey and clear. No need to pick nits. This side is so HTF – Hard To Fault – that we simply have to call it MTS – Master Tape Sound.

Side Two

Transparent. Rich, smooth, balanced. Spacious and open and yet so Tubey Magical.

Tubes

On this record, more than most, the tubes potentially make all the difference.

(more…)

Iron Butterfly – Dubby Da-Vida

More of the Music of Iron Butterfly

The craziest thing we learned in our shootout from many years ago is that something close to half of all the yellow label, authentic, non-record-club Atco copies we played had clearly been mastered from a dub tape on side two, the side with In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.

We’re guessing that at some point after 1968, when it came time to recut the record, the cutting master for side two was either damaged or couldn’t be found.

Not a problem the label says to itself, we have a safety tape we can copy and use for side two.

Problem solved, except for the fact that on those copies In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida sounds like a cassette playing on a machine with clogged heads. The sound is smeary, veiled, small and recessed — all but unlistenable.

That was a shock, but the other shock we experienced was much more to our liking: hearing that the sound of the best copies is actually surprisingly good.

The tonal balance is right on the money, but of course, because this is a compilation, it is made from copies of master tapes, not real master tapes themselves, so it will always have that blurry, smeary, recessed, flat, opaque, airless, sub-generation-tape sound. In short, it’s dubby.

(more…)

We Give Up on Chicago III, For Now Anyway

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chicago Available Now

Don’t hold your breath for a Hot copy of this album — we just attempted a shootout and came up empty-handed. I doubt we’ll ever find a copy that does what we want it to.

UPDATE 2023

We finally did manage to do a shootout, and this is the copy that ended up on the site on a Hot Stamper pressing. As the response was underwhelming, Chicago 3 has been tagged as a never again title, a record you, dear reader, will have to find for yourself.

(more…)