Kevin Bresnahan

I'm very lucky to live near Stereo Jack's in Cambridge. Jack keeps his prices very reasonable. If I didn't have that store, I'd probably have to pay a lot more myself and this conversation might have shifted in a different direction.

They seem to have a treble boost. It brings out the horns, which may be why they did it, but on the few I heard, I didn't think it made them better, just different. And don't get me wrong, they sound fine. But if I have the choice between a $15-20 mid-70s RVG stereo pressing or a $25-30 Classic Records mono pressing, I'll choose the stereo RVG every time. And they were the best sounding Blue Note reissue series in quite a few years. They are miles ahead of these new Rainbo pressings, that's for sure. And BTW - Classic Records version of Brubeck's "Time Out" is my play copy. I kept it over many other pressings, including an original mono.

Guigal Cotes du Rhone is almost always a best buy. Great wine for not a lot of money.

Of the few Classic pressings I've listened to, I thought that there was a bit of a high end boost. They sell for close to $25 in my area and I don't think they're worth that, I also think their fetish with mono is a bit foolish. If there is a nice stereo tape, it should be used, especially if the mono master tape is a fold down. That's what the mono button does.

I like the King reissues but I don't generally pay the extra money for a Toshiba cut. I'd rather a 70's era Van Gelder from UA for the same money. I am actually thinking about buying a King LP of "Soul Station" just to hear it but the Music Matters LP sounds pretty phenomenal and the XRCD is great. How many different versions does one need?

Freddie Hubbard's "Open Sesame" is pretty bad. It almost looks like a bootleg.

I'm spinning "Introducing Kenny Burrell" right now and it is indeed a very nice sounding LP. The mono is so good, I had to check to make sure I didn't have my center channel speaker playing! Almost an inch of dead wax on both sides though, which looks weird. Makes me wonder if this could have been even more dynamic if cut with more space between the grooves. BTW - before anyone gets on my case about this, I wrote an experienced LP cutter about this a few weeks back and he said he liked to keep the dead wax area as small as possible because the further apart you made the grooves, the less of chance of a skip.

So I've picked up a few of these "BN80" LPs (Hubbard's "Open Sesame", Gordon's "Doin' Alright" & "Introducing Johnny Griffin") that have been coming out these past few months and they are a great bang for the buck but I think "audiophile" is a bit of a stretch. First off. they are cut at Kevin Gray's Cohearant Audio (good) but I still have to wonder if Gray hasn't gotten the hang of cutting LPs as many of these have very large dead wax area which is not optimal. I haven't seen dead wax this large since the dark days of the mid-70's, when any Joe Blow was sat down in front of a cutting lathe. Secondly, they are pressed at Optimal in Germany (good) but they 're slid into paper sleeves that you have to tear off of the record to get it out cleanly. I almost wonder if they're sliding them in when they're still hot because they're stuck in there so tightly. This sucks. Also, the covers are pretty poor. Yes, they are a budget line, but these covers are often washed out and oddly shaded to the point where they look cheap. Then there's the music. I have a lot of these on old (but not original) LPs, mostly cut by Van Gelder and I'm not hearing huge differences between the two pressings. A bit more bass maybe but not "wow" levels. Of course, it could be me. Maybe at my age with my aging ears i should just stop buying these things?

BTW - I am only managing my parent's health from 200 miles away. It's still hard.

I have the Tone Poet and a 70's era UA Van Gelder LP of this. I haven't gotten around to comparing the two.

My mom finally decided she needed to be someplace with other people so she is moving into a retirement community on Sept. 3rd. I am very relieved as she has been falling more & more and I worry about her being alone in that house. Now she'll be where there is an on site nurse with fall monitors. Like you, I am going through through the gut-wrenching task of preparing to sell the house I grew up in. Unlike you, it's in decent shape and not nearly as old. I am getting sick just talking about it. So many memories going away... well, a lot went away when my dad died but this feels more "final".

"Minor Move" is coming out in the Tone Poet series in October.

I sent Michael Cuscuna the links to the sound samples. His response? "The piano is a well-tempered instrument. Not even Monk could bend notes or use vibrato."

I still hate vinyl as a medium. I remember all the bad things about it. They are all still there. The worst thing about it is that a simple act of failing to lift the stylus safely can permanently ruin your music playback. I hate that more than anything. You scratch that record, there's no fixing it. You have to buy it all over again. I got back into vinyl about 10 years ago mainly because there were still things on LP that have never made it to CD. My problem with all music media is storage. I moved into a much smaller space and I have LPs and CDs piled all over the place. I have autographed CDs and pictures that I can't hang. It's one of the only drawbacks to downsizing.

I've never stuck a thermometer up there but i can say that on the few summer days that I had to venture up there, I needed a change of clothing afterward. I can attest that most records stored up there will warp. I've been given several attic collections over the years and it's usually a 50/50 chance that a record is warped. We're kinda screwed in New England. Store records in the attic and they'll probably warp. Store them in the basement and they'll probably mold. It makes used record shopping so fun. Basement records are easy as they almost all smell. Attic records are trickier since warped records are not always obvious until you play them.

I don't know if lofts (attics) in the UK get as hot as they do here in the Northeastern US, but if they do, any LPs up there are gonna wobble when you play them.

That's still 20 years from his recording debut and on smaller European labels as well. I suppose it could just have been a sign of the times but it seems weird to me that he didn't get any dates after his time with Miles in 63/64 followed up by his work on Hancock's "Maiden Voyage". I would've thought that got him some attention.

Does anybody know why George led so few leader dates throughout his career? It just seems weird to me that such a great player, with sideman dates going back to his appearance on Lee Morgan's 1957 Blue Note recording "City Lights", has so few dates as a leader. His first date as a leader was in 1979 , "Amsterdam After Dark". Did George just not want to take on any leader dates?

I take it that means that you didn't hear anything weird in those sound samples?

Ha ha ha ha ha... yes, this would be true. There are a lot of people hearing this. BTW - both of those sound sample links I sent were from two different people with the same Tone Poet LP. I think the first one sounds much worse, both with regards to the warble as well as the sound.

Thanks. Ordered.

There's a near consensus that the Tone Poet LP of "Introducing Kenny Burrell" is fantastic. I have yet to pick one up. My favorite so far is (surprisingly) "Mr. Shing-a Ling".

Andrew Hill's piano style is unique and from what I hear on both of my LP pressings as well as on my CD version, there is certainly some dissonant sounds on there. In my hearing, it's intentional. Whether it's from a slightly out of tune piano or something Hill is doing I don't know. I do know that on the Tone Poet LP, there are some sustained piano notes that sound a bit more out of tune/pitch than they do on the other versions of this, especially for the tunes on Side 2. Is this a deal breaker for me? Hell no. This is one of my favorite Hill records. That's why I bought the Tone Poet. But what the comparison showed me was that I liked the sound of the old Van Gelder cut more. My ears, my money, my decision. I just don't think chiming in with my thoughts on this on that Hoffman thread would help, especially once Joe Harley got involved. People are posting audio from the Tone Poet LP. Here is a clip from one the tracks on Side 2 that seems to have a little oddness to it... more so than my old pressing. https://clyp.it/tuiufg5j Is "warble" the right word for this? And here's a second clip from a different Tone Poet LP just so you know it's not likely an off center pressing, which can often cause weird pitch fluctuations like that. https://clyp.it/inqpw5vr

Boy, has the discussion over the distortion on the Tone Poet LP of Andrew Hill's "Black Fire" gone off the rails over on the Hoffman forums. There is clearly some weirdness on my pressing but once reissue producer Joe Harley came into the thread and stated that it sounded fine to him, I knew it would go downhill fast and it has. Now you have the defenders telling the complainers that their audio system sucks, their cartridge sucks, their ears suck and the complainers fighting back. It's sad to watch. Personally, I stay out of that stuff over there. It's only a matter of time before they scrub that thread of all references to "Black Fire" and ban anyone who mentions it again. All it's going to take is for Hoffman to chime in and all hell will break loose. BTW - if anyone wants to hear what the fuss is all about on the Tone Poet of "Black Fire", I'll sell you my copy for $20 plus shipping.

I always felt that food and water would be better if stuck on desert island than a record that you can't even play.