[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [ARSCLIST] My response to--Re: [78-l] Viva vinyl
Well, you'd find out when you tried to return your $30 POS reissue that
customer service is very poor. The worst offender is Classic Records. The
sound is usually worse than the original (bright enough to strip paint) and
I've seen multiple pressing defects (warps, scratches, bubbles, etc..).
That's not to say that all the audiofool, oops, I mean audiophile pressings
are crap. Anything mastered by Stan Ricker or Steve Hoffman will be as good
or usually much better than the original. Steve has a museum like
collection of tape decks and other equipment to get the right sound on every
reissue. If it was recorded on Ampex, it's played back on Ampex. If it was
recorded with tube or transistor, he can duplicate that on playback too.
His mastering is like a period recreation on steroids. After the mastering
engineer, it's a crapshoot as to whether or not you'll get a good pressing.
The guys out in Nashville (is that right?) do a great job pressing good flat
centered vinyl. For all the bologna, RTI is iffy sometimes. I did have
very good results from the 220 gram reissues from Mobile Fidelity. I can't
remember any that were off center, warped or bad vinyl. Now, the very best
pressings ever done were JVC. Those were the guys who pressed the first
Mobile Fidelity productions, and did many great jazz reissues from the '80s.
Perfect pressings in my opinion. Flat, durable, translucent virgin vinyl.
They were 140 or 160 grams, but are the best I've ever seen. Some other
Japanese plants were nearly as good. Trio/Kenwood were killer. Sony was so
much better than the Columbia pressings as to be preposterous. It's a shame
that Robert and Wilma Fine didn't have all their stuff issued in Japan as
well (although Piros was probably better than his Japanese counterpart).
OH, I shouldn't forget guys like Nimbus in England.
Phillip
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Fine" <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, June 09, 2006 6:17 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] My response to--Re: [78-l] Viva vinyl
Guys, are you talking about old/out of print off-center records or new
purchases? I'd damn well demand a refund for that $30 "audiophile virgin
200g pressing" if it were off-center! As for old records, better to not
obsess and look for another copy in the stacks. Most reputable plants back
in the day pressed most records OK. Some smaller labels had constant
quality issues, but then I'd call most of those records a lost cause
anyway due to one or more of the following: