For a long time now I’ve been meaning to write something about Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s seminal debut. Originally I intended to focus on the fact that, while vintage copies of this record are available in abundance, not every version is mastered well. The two U.S. pressings I’ve heard, one pressed at Monarch and the other at Presswell, sound very different from one another, with just one of them managing to convey the SCALE of this recording in a satisfying way.
My plan was to buy a few more copies of different versions of E, L & P and then discuss how, with SO many copies of the record out there in the marketplace (currently 92 OG Monarchs ALONE for sale on Discogs), we can go about finding one that will sound good. Unfortunately, I kind of dropped the ball on that project.
At least I can tell you this – if you’re looking for a cheap copy of E,L, & P that will get your rocks off for very little money, there definitely are good domestic pressings out there. And after all, a good sounding copy of this record is a sonic BOMB! that any self respecting analog audiophile should own. Yesterday I pulled out that US Monarch I mentioned and put it on to see if it sounded as good as I remember. It did, almost.
E, L & P is a recording with HUGE dynamic swings, and getting it to sound right must be an enormous challenge for the mastering engineer. The piano, a feature on several tracks, sounds ENORMOUS! And when the mastering isn’t right it can sound both enormous and enormously terrible at the same time.
So like I said, I pulled out my Cotillion Monarch pressing the other day and I played side one and for the first few minutes I was thinking this was a VERY good copy! Perhaps even a copy that would be . . . hard to beat? I also wondered if, maybe, the piano sounds like that on every copy? Then I reached for, wait for it . . . the WHITE HOT STAMPER! I had, just, sitting around you know, and I put it on to see how IT compared to the Monarch. FYI – the piano doesn’t sound like THAT on every copy. Not by a long shot!
Look I get it. It’s hard to wrap your head around spending $500 on a record that you can easily find at your local record store for $5. A 100x markup is hard to swallow, even for those of us who have not just been drinking the kool -aid but downright drowning in the stuff as we can barely help tripping over all of the AMAZING sounding records we’ve spent our children’s inheritance on, laughing at the suckers who still haven’t realized that Tom Port and his staff are practically national treasures. But I digress…
It’s worth pointing out that this white hot stamper of E,L & P is on the Island label and pressed in the UK. So much for picking one up at your local record store. The good news is this does narrow down your options a bit, if you’d like to take a crack at finding your own copy.
And certainly this is a record WORTH finding a great sounding copy of, one way or another. Emerson, Lake & Palmer will show you WHY hot stampers exist in the first place. The white hot wasn’t just better than my Monarch, it was A LOT better! A big part of that is just finding the copies with the right mastering, which, I’m willing to bet, eliminates an AWFUL lot of them, likely most of them.
The MASSIVE organs on “The Barbarian,” for instance, build into such a HEAVY durge that the sound feels ready, at any moment, to descend into chaos. But the white hot stamper holds it all together.
During the jig on “Take A Pebble” those big, tubey acoustic guitars seem to fill up the ENTIRE sound stage, and just when you’d think no other sound could possibly fit, the clapping starts, which is SO big that it feels like the room might break into pieces at any moment and . . . once again, the white hot stamper pulls this off, conveying the hand claps as the giant, human hand claps they are and not some overblown clap-trap.
And that baseline intro to “Knife Edge”? I can die now!!! MAN that sounds good on the white hot! And that’s the A++ side! Don’t even get me started on the A+++ side 2!
You just don’t get a record to sound like this white hot of E,L & P unless you can clean the bejesus out of the thing. That very pricey record cleaning machine they have down there in Thousand Oaks, CA? It does a HECK of a job. I’ve gotten rather good at cleaning records myself, if I don’t say so, but I can’t get them as clean as they do. And who has the time anyway? My system is sounding so good these days I’d rather be playing the already clean records I have on hand than spend more hours tediously hunched over my RCM. Oh the life of an analog audiophile!
But I wouldn’t spend those hours if I wasn’t completely enamored with this hobby, and I wouldn’t be doing this website either. To be honest, I seriously doubt I’d be doing either one if it weren’t for Better Records. It’s their hot stampers that have shown me the way forward for me in analog audio.
I’ve just recently had my first reader basically accuse me of being a shill for Better Records, so I think it might be time for me to mention that I don’t get any kick-backs from them for recommending their records, even though I wish I did, as I’d wholeheartedly accept! In fact, I’d be happy to wear that role as a badge of honor, although I hate the word “shill.” Maybe we could call me a . . . zealot? Hmmm, not good either. How about an enthusiast? Maybe an advocate.
Heck, just call me an EXTREMELY satisfied customer! I say Tom and his crew at Better Records sell some damn good records, and I mean SERIOUSLY GOOD! So if you’re an analog audiophile still sitting on the fence. . . well, not good for them and absolutely TERRIBLE for YOU but great for those of us who buy hot stampers. If too may of you see the light then we’ll ALL have have to start paying higher prices!
In the end, do you really NEED a white hot stamper of E, L, & P or for that matter really, ANY great record? Of course not. Just like you don’t really NEED a $10k turntable or great pair of speakers. If this hobby were about need it wouldn’t exist in the first place.