The three of them would obviously take their sound much farther in that direction with the Grammy-winning Bridge Over Troubled Water from 1970. Not the most “natural” sounding record he ever made, but that’s clearly not what he or the duo were going for. The supremely talented Roy Halee handled the engineering duties. Expensive does not always mean better since painstaking and exacting set up is so essential to proper playback. $3000 cartridges can usually deal with this kind of complex information better than $300 ones.īut not always. Those of you with properly set up high-dollar front ends should have less of a problem than some. The bigger production songs on this album have a tendency to get congested on even the best pressings, which is not uncommon for Four Track recordings from the ’60s. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does. No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space.Natural tonality in the midrange - with all the instruments having the correct timbre.Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low.Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1968 The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing.The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space.What The Best Sides of Bookends Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear Old records have it - not often, and certainly not always - but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds. If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for - this sound. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. This vintage Columbia 360 Stereo pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. There’s plenty of studio ambience on most tracks, especially the simpler, more folky ones.ĭo you know how hard it is to find a clean copy of this record? I’ll bet we look at 50 every year and probably buy no more than a few, which, after cleaning and going into a shootout may or may not sound good or have audiophile quality surfaces. This album has exceptional bass as well as lovely midrange magic on the guitars and voices. If you’re looking for the Ultimate Audiophile Simon & Garfunkel record, you just can’t do better than a killer Hot Stamper pressing of either title. The best copies of Bookends and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme are a sonic step up in class from anything else these two guys ever released. The complete list of titles from 1968 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.If you’re a fan of this phenomenal folk duo, this early domestic pressing of their 1968 classic belongs in your collection.Robinson, A Hazy Shade of Winter and At the Zoo Top 100, 5 stars – side two alone has four all time classics: Fakin’ It, Mrs.An album that has become much tougher to come by, especially copies that play as well as this one does.Our hottest copies have lovely midrange magic on the guitars and voices as well as plenty of studio ambience on most tracks, especially the simpler, more folky ones.More Simon and Garfunkel Reviews and Commentaries for Bookends
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