There are a lot of albums that I come back to from time to time, but only a handful that I feel compelled to revisit with regularity. Blood, Sweat & Tears self-titled second album is solidly in the latter category. The album’s remarkable combination of stellar songwriting, varied and brilliantly realized cover tracks and stunning musicianship are all delivered with one of the best rock studio recordings, if not the best, ever put onto vinyl.

Throw in the fact that the hits on this record are some of the most enduring of the era and you’ve got a record that’s not only a must own for any audiophile, but one that’s relatively easy to come by. B, S & T’s sold millions of copies, and judging from the frequency at which I see them in record stores and the sheer number of them available online, it also belongs on a shrinking list of titles that offer so much and can cost so little. You’d have a hard time finding an early pressing that won’t sound at least good, and that will cost you more than 10 bucks.

And just about every early pressing of B, S & T’s I’ve played has sounded good to me on every iteration of my system. In some ways, it’s an easy record to get good sound from. In some ways, it isn’t. The flutes that open the album, for instance, can sound dreadful if your system doesn’t resolve well, or if you have a copy that doesn’t, or both. And the organ, like the organ on just about every record I’ve ever heard with an organ, is a bear to get right, even on a pretty tweaked system.

Meanwhile, if you just ignore those tracks and stick with the big hits, you’ll probably be pretty happy with just about any early pressing in decent shape. “Spinning Wheel,” for instance, will almost always get your blood pumping, if your system can play reasonably loud.

And if you want the entire album to sound good, adding a Townshend Seismic Platform under both your turntable and your amp will help, not to mention using a Walker Talisman (currently unavailable / contact me for suggestions) on your speaker drivers and wires and plugging your amp and phono preamp into a Ventus Grounding Box. In fact, there are countless things you can do with your system that myself and others have done that can get you from just some of a record sounding pretty good to all of it sounding better than you ever imagined it could.

And if you’ve made at least some of the right system improvements and you have a copy that resolves well from top to bottom, is highly transparent, and has enough at the bottom end to balance it all out, then your system will elevate B, S, & T’s from a good or very good sounding record to a get on the phone immediately and call your friends to get their asses over to hear this damn thing sounding record.

So when a friend of mine offered to loan me his Mobile Fidelity Special Edition 2 x 45 rpm UltraDisc One-Step Numbered Limited Edition remastered and reissued on 180g transparent SuperVinyl, well. . . how could I say no? After all, these are still available at the original retail price of $125, a price that has yet to climb into the stratosphere in the used market the way MoFi’s One-Step of Abraxas and a few others have. IOW, if I really liked it, I could get my very own copy and all of its myriad special qualities for far less than I’ve paid for most of my Hot Stampers.

I got my system warmed up, cleaned my stylus, used my Walker Talisman on the speaker drivers, wires and cables, fiddled with the arm height for both my vintage copy and the MoFi and was soon ready to put the MoFi head to head with my best vintage pressing of B, S & T’s. I was feeling both excitement and trepidation. The prospect of spending some quality time with B, S & T’s held a lot of appeal for me, but I worried about what Mobile Fidelity might have done with one of my favorite albums.

When I put on side 1 (of 4!) of the MoFi, I must admit, I struggled at first to find any fault. Clearly they’d had access to a good tape as the playback was clear as a bell with excellent top end resolution. It also seemed they’d taken a fairly light touch with the mastering process. The acoustic guitar on Eric Satie’s “Variations On A Theme” sounded pretty right to me, as did the flutes. Had MoFi actually done a bang up job on this remaster? I certainly had reason for optimism.

As “Smiling Faces” opened, I was still feeling optimistic. The vocals sounded pretty right, and the horns were clear, tonally accurate and with clean transient edges. The sound of the MoFi was also muscular and big, with a HUGE presentation. It was an extremely promising start.

But as the record played on, I started to feel a bit overwhelmed. Yes, the sound was big, and clear, but was it musical? Did it make me want to keep listening? I put on my best vintage copy and right away I could appreciate some important differences.

I’ll spare you the track by track commentary that I’ve prepared and cut right to the chase. Ultimately, the MoFi is cut LOUDER than the original. Its size and forcefulness are a product of pushing the levels up and pushing just about everything in the mix closer to the front of the soundstage. It’s BIGGER. It’s LOUDER. It’s MORE up front.

Meanwhile my vintage copy has all of the clarity, all of the power and all of the SIZE, but it’s also more relaxed, more natural and more musical. The instruments and vocals sit further back in the soundstage. They have more space around them, and that space, the all important studio space, makes a significant contribution to the overall size of the presentation.

Instead of everything in the soundstage being BIGGER as it is on the MoFi, everything is sized in a more lifelike way, with the space around it giving it a more natural and convincing presentation. In other words, the vintage copy has plenty of size, but that size is made up more of air and space, rather than simply bigger sounding instruments.

And then there’s the bass… If this record and MoFi’s recut of Abraxas are any indication, mastering engineer Krieg Wunderlich seems intent on making these One-Step’s as big and with as much bass as he can cram onto 4 sides of a record. The biggest bass track on this recording might be “Sometimes In Winter,” and the bass on the MoFi is GIANT. But the bass on the MoFi doesn’t seem to have any real impact to it. Where is the bottom? I’m all for big bass, but personally, I like to hear my bass notes actually land somewhere.

Not only that, but whatever Mr. Wunderlich does to give us that bottomless bass affects the sound of other parts of the recording. Again, on “Sometimes…,” the big bass comes with a piano that sounds tonally off, drums that sound too thin, cymbals that lack decay and vocals that are too dry. In my view, even if you have a system that can find the bottom of the bass on this MoFi, at what cost do you find it? I’d say at a rather high one.

A track that illustrates the essential differences in sound between this MoFi and my vintage pressing perhaps better than any other is “And When I Die.” In my preparation for this review, I kept coming back to the vocals, on this and every other song on the record. On my vintage copy, the vocals are wonderfully full and natural, especially on “…I Die”. The harmonica as well has lovely space around it and sounds achingly sweet and, well, natural. Hearing that harmonica on my vintage copy was so thoroughly engrossing, I never wanted it to stop.

But on the MoFi, with everything in the soundstage pushed closer to the front, that wonderful, natural, relaxed quality to the vocals and the harmonica were replaced with a sound that was somehow rushed. It’s a sound that, if you have a high powered amp, you may not even notice it because you hear every record you play that way.

To my ears, high-powered amps tend to make everything on a record sound a bit rushed, a bit pushed. So maybe the differences that I hear in the MoFi, relative to my vintage copy, would matter less on a system with a more powerful amp? Certainly such a system would at least find the bottom of those bass notes, would it not?

To test this theory, I took both these copies of B, S & T’s over to a friend’s place. He has a 250 WPC Ayre amp and a pair of Wilson Alexia’s. He also uses the same EAR 324 phono preamp and Dynavector 17dx cartridge that I use. His system is built for power and deep bass with plenty of headroom in the watts department. My system, with its puny 30 wpc amp, is built to show off the many wonderful attributes of a great vintage record. Surly on his system, I thought, the MoFi would show its strengths better that on mine.

Much to my surprise, even though his system did handle the bass better, the differences in the sound of the two copies was even more stark. The MoFi sounded just plain bad on his system, while my vintage copy sounded as good as any record does played with a tube preamp and a 250 watt solid state amp playing in a room with less than 2 feet behind some rather large speakers and as much as 12 ft between them.

In fact, the sound of my vintage copy was just as big and as powerful on this system. My friend, who immediately agreed with my own assessment of the two records, put it this way. On the vintage copy, “we hear not just the instruments and vocals in the soundstage, but also the empty spaces in between them.” He astutely pointed out that those spaces “ought to be there” and were almost entirely missing from the MoFi.

I must admit, as MoFi’s go, I like this one of B, S & T’s better than most others I’ve heard. Given that these are still available at the original price of $125, I don’t think anyone who buys one is getting a terrible record for the money. But is it better than a good vintage copy? I’d say it’s no, but I suppose it might depend on the system playing it.

On my system, this MoFi had some things to recommend it. On my friend’s system, it was a disaster. Which makes me wonder. What is the playback system like that MoFi uses to evaluate the sound of their own records? Are they going for a sound that suits their system well? Are they bothering to find and play any good vintage copies of the album to see what they’re competing against? Could it be that they don’t even play their own records?

In the absence of answers to these questions, I’ll just say this. I expect on most reasonably good systems a good vintage copy of B, S & T’s will sound better than this MoFi, and therefore I recommend forgoing the One-Step and buying a vintage copy. In fact, while you’re at it, buy 3 or 4! Clean them up, do your own shootout and who knows? You might end up with a copy that’s not just better than this MoFi, but one that gives you a whole new appreciation for this wonderful album. You’ll also save yourself about a hundred bucks!