wrong-country

Jethro Tull – Thick As A Brick

More Jethro Tull

Reviews and Commentaries for Thick as a Brick

  • Thick As A Brick is back on the site for only the second time in sixteen month hiatus, here with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides of this early Reprise pressing
  • We had only one summarizing thought for this amazing side two: “Top detail.”
  • One of the few copies we’ve found lately with this kind of sound, but marks 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
  • A Top 100 title and the best sounding album Jethro Tull ever recorded – allow us to make the case
  • A stunning Demo Disc to rule them all – sure to be the best you’ve ever heard Tull sound if you have the system for it
  • 4 1/2 stars: “A masterpiece in the annals of progressive rock – a dazzling tour de force, at once playful, profound, and challenging, without overwhelming the listener.”

Accuracy

The kind of tonal accuracy you hear on the better copies of this album practically disappeared from records over forty years ago, which explains why so many of the LPs we offer as Hot Stampers were produced in the 70s and before. That’s when many of the highest fidelity recordings were made. In truth this very record is a superlative example of the sound the best producers, engineers, and studios were able to capture on analog tape during that very decade.

Which is a long way of saying that the better copies of Thick As A Brick have pretty much everything that we love about vinyl records here at Better Records.

Furthermore, I can guarantee you there is no CD on the planet that will ever be able to do this recording justice. Our Hot Stamper pressings — even the lowest-graded ones — have a kind of Analog Magic that just can’t be captured on one of them there silvery discs.

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The Beatles – 1967-1970

More of The Beatles 

More Records We Only Sell on Import Vinyl

  • An excellent 2-LP compilation set from 1973 with roughly Double Plus (A++) grades on all FOUR sides
  • Side two was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • Sides two, three and four of these German import pressings are rich, smooth and sweet, with plenty of Tubey Magic and little of the grain and grunge of the Brits, and side one is not far behind in all those areas (and don’t get us started on the domestics)
  • You get clean, clear, full-bodied, lively and musical analog sound from first note to last (particularly on sides two, three and four)
  • Twenty-seven(!) incredible songs, including “Penny Lane,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” “All You Need Is Love” – and that’s just side one
  • 4 1/2 stars: “As a précis of the group’s final 36 months, it’s all mightily impressive…”
  • Not many compilation albums offer top quality sound, but this one does, and here are some others

This is a wonderful sounding early German import 2-LP set. We are on record as finding the British pressings of 1967-1970 too bright; certainly most of them are anyway.

(The original domestic pressings, as anyone who has ever played one can attest, mastered at Sterling no less, are absolutely godawful.)

Like most compilations, some songs sound better than others, but “Don’t Let Me Down” and “Come Together” are two that really stand out here. For those of you out there who have never tried one of our Hot Stamper Beatles records, this may be the best sound you’ve ever heard from them. The CDs — even the new ones — sure don’t sound like this!

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Domestic Pressings of Clear Spot? Forget ’em!

More of the Music of Captain Beefheart

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Captain Beefheart

We did this shootout many years ago, so many years ago that I cannot find a record of it.

I remember we thought the German pressings were perhaps a bit boosted on both ends and not as natural sounding as the domestic pressings.

After a multitude of improvements in our cleaning and playback, we no think the Germans got this one right when they actually did get this one right. What I mean by that is that some German pressings are not particularly good, another piece of the puzzle that fell into place during this shootout, as painful as that turned out to be considering the money wasted on them.

Did we have the bad German stamper pressings last time around? Who knows?

The producer, Ted Templeman, (Doobie Brothers, James Taylor) brought his mainstream talents to bear on this music, and when the Captain’s free-form tendencies smashed into Templeman’s conservatism, the result was this musical supernova — out there, but not too far out there.

(Play Trout Mask Replica sometime if you miss that feeling from your old hippie days of being on acid. With that music, drugs are entirely superfluous.)

I don’t know how many audiophiles like Captain Beefheart, probably not too many, but if you’re ever going to try one of his albums, this is the place to start: his masterpiece.

I’ve been listening to this album for 30 years, all of my adult life. I still have my original copy in the clear plastic sleeve even. [Not any more, now that I know it doesn’t sound good it’s going to Ebay to find a new home.]

It never grows old and it never grows tired. I have the CD in the car and return to it regularly.

I’ll be disappointed if few of you try this one, but probably not too surprised.

Credit also must go to Donn Landee for the full-bodied, rich, smooth, oh-so-analog sound of the best copies of Clear Spot. He’s recorded or assisted on many of our favorite albums here at Better Records.

Checking the Boxes

Clear Spot is an album we’ve been playing since it came out in the early 70s, and we think we know it well,

It checks off a number of key boxes for us here at Better Records:

Seventies Analog

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Brian Eno – Rules Are Made to Be Broken

More of the Music of Brian Eno

Hot Stamper Pressings of Art Rock Recordings Available Now

The domestic pressings of Before And After Science are typically grainy, low-rez and hard sounding — they’re simply not competitive with the smoother British Polydors.

But our best Hot Stamper pressing isn’t an import; it was made right here in the good old US of A.

Say what? Yes, it’s true. We were SHOCKED to find such hot stamper sound lurking in the grooves of a domestic Eno LP. It’s the One and Only.

In thirty plus years of record playing I can’t think of any domestic Eno LP that ever sounded this good.

Now hold on just a minute. The British pressings of Eno’s albums are always the best, aren’t they?

For the first three albums, absolutely. But rules were made to be broken. This pressing has the knockout sound we associate with the best British originals of Eno’s albums, not the flat, cardboardy qualities of the typical domestic reissue.

Kinda Blind Testing

Since the person listening and making notes during the shootouts has no idea what the label or the pressing of the record is that he is evaluating — this is after all a quasi-scientific enterprise, with blind testing being the order of the day — when that domestic later label showed up at the top of the heap, our jaws hit the floor.

Both sides have that rare combination of silky highs and deep low end that make any record magical. Side one, the rock side, strongly relies on its deep punchy bass to make its material come to life and rock (or should we say art rock?). Eno’s vocals are clear and present with virtually no strain. Phil Collins’ drumming (how did these guys get together? We forget that Collins was in the proggy Brand X) is energetic and transparent and perfectly complemented by Percy Jones’ simultaneously acrobatic and hard-driving bass work.

Common Problems

This album typically suffers from a severe case of rolled-off highs, compounding the problems in the midrange, which are easily recognized as veiled and smeary vocals.

The average copy is thick, muddy and congested, lacking the kind of transparency and clarity that makes it possible for the listener to hear into Eno’s dense mixes and make musical sense of them.

Partly this is Eno’s fault. He overloads his recordings. Played The Joshua Tree lately? It has some of the same sonic shortcomings, (exacerbated by Direct Metal Mastering).

Critical Listening Exercise

The test for how good this record can sound when it’s not too dense is the song Energy Fools the Magician. It’s clear and open the way nothing else on side one is. It almost sounds as if there is a room full of musicians (magicians?) playing live.

Take special note of the bell in the left channel; it’s key to the sound of the whole side. If you have a few copies, listen to the bell on each of them (after a good cleaning of course). The presence and harmonics of that bell will never be exactly the same on any two copies. We played many more than that and every time the sound of the bell was clearly different.

A Real Desert Island Disc

This is one of my all time favorite records — a real Desert Island disc. Before and After Science and Taking Tiger Mountain are Must Own albums for those of us who grew up on and still appreciate the best Art Rock of the 70s (Roxy Music, 10cc, Talking Heads, etc.).

Side One has the more uptempo tunes that really rock, while Side Two is very ethereal. “Julie With…” is one of my all-time favorite Eno tracks. It’s one of the most sublimely hypnotic songs I have ever heard in my thirty-plus years of serious record listening. It alone is worth the price of the album. If you like this album, be sure to check out the early Roxy Music pressings and 801 Live, which are also masterpieces.

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Electric Light Orchestra / On the Third Day – The British Imports Are Made from Dubs

More of the Music of The Electric Light Orchestra

More of Our Favorite Art Rock Records

Sonic Grade: F

It’s obvious, or should be, that the Brit vinyl is made from sub-generation copy tapes. The imports sound like someone threw a blanket over your speakers. We know this because we had a bunch of them cleaned up for our shootout many years ago and they all sucked.

We tend to buy Electric Light Orchestra records on import vinyl; those are the ones that often sound the best. Many of the domestic pressings sound as though they were mastered from dub tapes.

But On The Third Day is proof that this is not always the case, just as Siren proves that the best Roxy Music albums are not always British.

This record sounds best this way:

For those who might be interested in finding their own Hot Stamper pressings, we here provide

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Elvis Costello – A Very Bad Porky/Pecko Cutting

Hot Stamper Pressings of Elvis’s Albums Available Now

Letters and Commentaries for My Aim Is True

My notes for the one and only UK pressing I’ve played in many years, the one with Porky is the dead wax, note its many weaknesses:

Really loud and full

Too loud and hot vocal

Strains a lot

You know what the sound of this record reminds me of?

An old 45 RPM 7″ single. Remember those?

It’s not unusual for 45 RPM singles from back in the day to be very loud, very compressed, and they often have much-too-hot vocals designed to jump right into your lap.

Mono mixes sometimes have some of that same lowest-common-denominator sound. This mix is stereo but it sounds like it’s coming right out of a jukebox.

No doubt Mr. Peckham was told to make the record sound that way, and he did his job very well.

But audiophiles looking for good sound should heed this warning and avoid the UK LPs of the album. It’s a joke next to the domestic pressings with the right stampers. (The right stampers are hard to find but you will never hear a good sounding early pressing unless you have a copy with the stampers that sound right, a tautology to be sure but one worth noting.)

Our Previous Hot Stamper Commentary

The British pressings are simply not competitive with the best domestics. No import, from any country, can touch a good Columbia pressing from the states. The most common stampers for the Columbia pressings have never sounded very good to these ears, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some killer copies with different stampers sitting in the bins wearing the generic ’70s Red Columbia label. We’ve heard them. Wish we could find more of them but they are rare and only getting rarer.

Further Reading

This record sounds best to us this way:

For those who might be interested in finding their own Hot Stamper pressings, we here provide

We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a public service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.

You can find this one in our Hall of Shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound. Some of these records may have passable sonics, but we found the music less than compelling.  These are also records you can safely avoid.

We also have an Audiophile Record Hall of Shame for records that were marketed to audiophiles for their putatively superior sound. If you’ve spent any time on this blog at all, you know that these records are some of the worst sounding pressings we have ever had the displeasure to play.

We routinely play them in our Hot Stamper Shootouts against the vintage records that we offer, and are often surprised at just how bad an “audiophile record” can sound and still be considered an “audiophile record.”

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Joni Mitchell – Night Ride Home

More Joni Mitchell

 More Singer-Songwriter Albums

  • This original import copy of Joni’s hard-to-find 1991 release boasts STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Both of these sides are rich, full, and Tubey Magical for days, with exceptional immediacy to the wonderfully breathy, clear vocals
  • ANALOG at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digital sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • “Cutting back on the guest musicians of her previous effort and paring down to a basic small group of musicians helps add immediacy to Night Ride Home. Very involved and a rather tough listen, but well worth the attention….”
  • Our Overview of Joni Mitchell‘s albums can be found here

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Jethro Tull – Aqualung

More Jethro Tull

Reviews and Commentaries for Aqualung

  • An incredible copy of Jethro Tull’s fourth studio album with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides
  • The sound is KILLER from start to finish – big, punchy, present, tubey and bursting with Rock and Roll energy
  • A Better Records Top 100 title that still floors us on the better copies, with sound that will jump right out of your speakers
  • Marks 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: “… one of the most astonishing progressions in rock history… the degree to which Tull upped the ante here is remarkable… Varied but cohesive, Aqualung is widely regarded as Tull’s finest hour.”
  • If you’re a Tull fan, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this title from 1971 is clearly one of their best

Folks, for hard-rockin’, Tubey Magical, 70s Arty Proggy Rock in ANALOG, it just does not get much better than Aqualung. You need the right pressing to bring it to life though, and this one is certainly up to the task.

Aqualung checks off a few of our favorite boxes:

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Fire and Water on a Mythical Pink Island

Important Lessons We Learned from Record Experiments 

Reviews and Commentaries for Island Pressings on the Pink Label

Free’s Third Album on the original British Island pink label — wow!

Found one at a local record store a while back. It was the first one I’d ever seen in nice enough condition to buy. Checking the dead wax was a bit of a shock though. Care to guess where it was mastered? Right here in the good old U S of A. In fact, at one of the worst mastering houses of all time: Bell Sound in New York. [This is not fair. We have found many good pressings mastered at Bell Sound.]

Now what does that tell you about British First Pressings? Are those the ones you’re looking for? Don’t get me wrong; I look for them too. But you had better look before you leap, or you’ll end up with a bad sounding, probably quite expensive pressing.

It’s one more reason why we try to play as many records as we can here at Better Records. You can’t rely on anything but the grooves.

Rules of Thumb

Which brings up another interesting issue. Some audiophiles use the following rule of thumb for rock record collecting.

If it’s an English band, get the import pressing. If it’s an American band, the tapes should be here in this country, so the original domestic pressing should be the best.

As a rule of thumb it’s not bad. It’s just wrong so often (Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens, The Eagles, etc.) that you must be very careful how you apply it.

Same with reissue versus original. Nice rule of thumb but only if you have enough copies of the title to know that you’re not just assuming the original is better. You actually have the data — gathered from the other LPs you have played — to back it up.

Further Reading

The Pretenders – Why Are We Guessing (Again)?

More of the Music of The Pretenders

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Pretenders

German Pressings? Why Not British?

We discovered that only the best German pressings convey the energy and enthusiasm of the band while avoiding the grunge, flatness and hardness that make the typical pressing of this album all but unlistenable at loud volumes.

Isn’t this a British band that just happens to be led by an American? And wasn’t the album produced by the clearly British Chris Thomas and recorded at George Martin’s AIR studios in London? How is it possible that the best German pressings consistently sound better than the best British pressings?

Your guess is as good as mine. And, if you stop to think about it, who in his right mind would think that any answer they might give to such a question is anything other than a guess?

But that’s not the half of it. It’s not simply the fact that the Germans seem to be the only ones able to work their magic on this title. Most German pressings are not nearly as good sounding as this one. It is only this specific German pressing that does everything right. It has won every shootout for the last five years if that tells you anything.

What to Listen For

In the chorus of Time the Avenger, the better copies do not get as harmonically distorted, edgy and hard as most. The best really “bloom,” but they are few and far between.

A Top Pretenders Title

This is where Chrissie Hynde matured into a top class songwriter; every track is good and many are brilliant. With Robbie McIntosh having joined the band, this is first and foremost a guitar rock record; his jangly, grungy riffs drive every song. Great songs and great guitar work — what more do you need in a rock record?

Think of Middle of the Road — everything that’s good about this band on this album is there in that song: it’s uptempo, with a driving beat, a rock solid rhythm section and a beautifully distorted guitar out front and high up in the mix.

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