wrong-label

Here we examine the logic of collectors who mistakenly prefer certain labels over others — most often the original versus the reissue, or the import versus the domestic — on the titles linked below.

Years Ago We Badly Misjudged the Recording Quality of Tull’s Debut

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

A clear case of live and learn.

We listed a White Hot copy of This Was in 2008 on the Island pink label and noted at the time:

Be forewarned: this ain’t Stand Up or Aqualung. I don’t think you’ll be using any copy of This Was to demo your stereo, because the recording has its share of problems. That said, this record sounds wonderful from start to finish and will make any fan of this music a VERY happy person. We guarantee you’ve never heard this album sound better, or your money back.

Now we know a couple of things that we didn’t back in 2008.

1). This album is a lot better sounding than we gave it credit for years ago. It’s not perfect by any means but it is much better than the above comments might lead you to believe.

We chanced upon an exceptional sounding copy of the album in 2017 or so, and that taught us something new about the record:

2). The Pink Label pressings are not the best way to go on this album.

Once we heard the exceptional copy alluded to above, we played it against our best Pink Label copies and it was simply no contest.

In 2008 we still had a lot to learn. We needed to do more research and development, which of course we are doing regularly with Classic Rock records, our bread and butter and the heart of our business.

We do them as often as is practical, considering how difficult it is to find copies with audiophile quality playing surfaces.

Nine years later, we felt we finally had a proper understanding on the various pressings of This Was. It goes like this:

The Pink Label original British pressings can be good, but they will never win a shootout up against copies with these stampers (assuming you have more than one copy — any record can have the right stampers and the wrong sound, we hear it all the time. Beware of small sample sizes).

(more…)

Letter of the Week – “I have been listening to a first pressing Decca, but your copy made it sound egregiously insipid.”

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

This LET IT BLEED is a gorgeous monster. Everything just jumps off the page, so to speak. I have been listening to a first pressing Decca, which I have owned for years, but your copy made it sound egregiously insipid. As I kept turning up the volume, the room seemed to be nodding its head and egging me on to keep increasing it. I never reached the point where too much was too much. Great copy.

The Mahavishnu EMERALD was brilliant. It brought out all the exciting dimensions of my system. The exquisite strings floated above the musical melee which tattooed its obligato deliriously across its raucous underbelly. The sound reached out like tongues of flame making the speakers completely disappear in their rocking wake.

This is an amazing record that projects and dances the music in every direction and then some. Everything is alive. So completely alive. A real treat. A great recording that tells me my system is completely responsive.

Phil

Phil,

We’ve known for a very long time — since roughly 2005 — what an awful pressing the original mono Decca is of the album.

When we last heard one, it did not evn pass the laugh test, and we never bought another.

Even the original Decca stereo pressings of the album are not that good, and at the prices being charged these days, a very poor choice if you want the best sound.

(more…)

Silky Sound? Everybody Knows That’s Impossible

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

This early pressing of EKTIN IS an amazing find, the kind of record the thrillseekers who work here at Better Records live for.

As I was reading the notes, I saw a word there that I had never associated with the sound of the album: “silky.” Since when does Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere have silky vocals?

But there it was, describing the first track on side one (Cinnamon Girl) as well as both the third track on side two (Cowgirl in the Sand) and track one (Losing End (When You’re On)).

We don’t have a tag for silky sound. About the closest we could come would be “glossy sound,” the kind of sound you might find on a Toto album, or Gauch0, or Mirage, or Gorilla, or Abbey Road. Starting in the mid-70s, anything produced by Ted Templeman and engineered by Donn Landee would be sure to have glossy sound.

But this album is from 1969. Silky vocals are not easy to find on recordings from that year, Abbey Road being the obvious exception.

And they’re not easy to find on the vast majority of copies we have played over the years. I doubt that the other copies in the shootout have notes mentioning silky vocals.

But if your equipment is good enough, and you know how to clean your records right, and you dial in your setup to a T, with a big enough stack of copies you may be able to find an Everybody Knows… with silky vocals. Twenty years ago I wrote a commentary about diminishing returns in audio being a myth. Now, finding this amazing pressing of Everybody Knows, is just one more piece of evidence to support just how precient that idea was.

Hey, want to find your own top quality copy?

(more…)

Before and After Science – Rules Are Made to Be Broken

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.

(more…)

The UK Imports of On the Third Day Are Made from Dubs

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Electric Light Orchestra Available Now

It’s obvious, or should be, that the British vinyl pressings are made from sub-generation copy tapes.

The imports make it sound as if 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 have proven themselves to have the best sound.

Most of the domestic pressings of their albums 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.

(more…)

A Very Bad Porky/Pecko Cutting of My Aim Is True

Hot Stamper Pressings of Elvis’s Albums Available Now

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.)

(more…)

Is The Pink Label The Hot Ticket for Jethro Tull’s Brilliant Stand Up Album?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

Well, it certainly can be, but sometimes it isn’t, and failing to appreciate that possibility is a classic case of misunderstanding a crucially important fact or two about records. Audiophile analog devotees would do well to keep these facts in mind, especially considering the prices original British pressings are fetching these days.

Simply put: Since no two records sound alike, it follow that the right label doesn’t guarantee the right sound.

A shootout years ago illustrated both of these truths.

We had a number of Pink Island British pressings to play — if you hit enough record stores often enough, in this town anyway, even the rarest pressings are bound to show up in clean condition from time to time — along with Sunrays (aka Pink Rims), later Brits, early Two Tone domestics and plain Brown Label Reprise reissues. All of them can sound good. (We do not waste time with German and Japanese pressings, or any of the later Chrysalis label LPs. Never heard an especially good one.)

What surprised the hell out of us was how bad one of the Pink Label sides sounded. It was shockingly thin and hard, practically unlistenable.

Keep in mind that during our shootouts the listener has no idea which pressing is being played, so imagine hearing such poor reproduction on vinyl and then finding out that such bad sound was coming from a copy that should have been competitive with the best, on the legendary Pink Island label no less. (Of course the other Pinks were all over the map, their sides ranging from good to great.)

Hearing one sound this bad was completely unexpected, but hearing the unexpected is what we do for a living, so I suppose it shouldn’t have been. Having dubious looking reissues and the “wrong” pressings beat the originals and the so-called “right” pressings from the “right” countries is all in a day’s work here at Better Records.

The audiophiles who collect records by label are asking for trouble with Stand Up.

Assuming they want the best sound, that is.

(more…)

Balancing the Vocal, Strings and Rhythm on Lady in Satin

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Billie Holiday Available Now

The better copies reproduce clearly the three most important elements in the recording — strings, rhythm, and vocal — and, more importantly, they are properly balanced with one another. 

The monos, as you might expect, balance the three elements well enough, but the problem with mono is that the vocals and instruments are jammed together in the center of the soundfield, layered atop one another.

Real clarity, the kind that live music has in abundance, is difficult if not impossible under those circumstances.

Only the stereo pressings provide the space that each of the players needs in order to be heard.

Naturally the vocals have to be the main focus on a Billie Holiday record. They should be rich and tubey, yet clear, breathy and transparent.

To qualify as a Hot Stamper, the pressings we offer must be highly resolving. You will hear everything, all of it surrounded by the natural space of the legendary Columbia 30th Street Studio in which the recording was made.  (more…)

Oliver Nelson’s Masterpiece – So Much Better Sounding on the (Right) Reissue

Hot Stamper Pressings that Sound Their Best on the Right Reissue

For those of you who still cling to the idea that the originals are better, this Hot Stamper pressing of the album should be just the ticket to set you straight.

Yes, we can all agree that Rudy Van Gelder recorded it, brilliantly as a matter of fact. Shouldn’t he be the most natural choice to transfer the tape to disc, knowing, as we must assume he does, exactly what to fix and what to leave alone in the mix?

Maybe he should be; it’s a point worth arguing.

But ideas such as this are only of value once they have been tested empirically and found to be true.

(more…)

Atlantic Crossing – Thick, Dull and Dubby on British Vinyl

Another Well Recorded Album that Should Be More Popular with Audiophiles

The copies we liked best were the biggest and richest, the least thin and dry. Many of the brighter copies also had sibilance problems which the richer and tubier ones did not.

On some of the Rod Stewart albums that we happen to know well, the British pressings are clearly superior; the first two Rod Stewart albums come immediately to mind. After that, strange as it may seem, all the best pressings are domestic. This album is certainly no exception.

I remember bringing back a few Brit copies from England many years ago and being surprised that they were so thick, dull and dubby sounding. Of course, they were; the album was recorded right here in the good old US of A. The master tapes are here. The Brit pressings sound dubby because they are made from copy tapes.

If there is any doubt, the following is a list of the studios in which Atlantic Crossing was recorded.

  • A&R, NY
  • Criteria, Miami, FL
  • Wally Heider, Los Angeles, CA
  • Hi Recording and
  • Muscle Shoals Sound, AL

(more…)