When we hear a truly great rock & roll record played back with the massive power and thrilling energy only such a record can deliver, what else can we do but turn the darn thing up! In my view, this is the litmus test for most records, and nearly every rock record. If we’re not inclined to want to hear it even bigger and louder, then I can’t help think, why bother?
And the fact is, some records need to be played loud for us to dive deeper into the mix and fully grasp the size and scale of the recording. That is, if we can find a copy that will let us in in the first place.
It can get pretty crowded in a recording studio, or at least it can sound that way on records. What with all the guitar effects, growling vocals, cymbal crashes and studio reverb, sometimes the very things that make rock music so fun to listen to are the same things that can make it challenging to play.
Louder volumes mean more grit and grunge, but can also mean congestion, brightness and sometimes sound that gets so darn noisy that we can’t help but do the unthinkable: turn the volume down!
But when we do have the right copy of a record that’s well recorded and well mastered, and we’ve built and tweaked our stereo and room to be up to the task of playing it, turning the knob a bit further can indeed make a great rock record a thing to behold. We can find ourselves not just seeing into the recording, but even feeling like we’re in it ourselves.
In my recent article on anti-skate I discussed how, even when you think this and other settings on your turntable are right, you may eventually play a record that will show you otherwise. In my case, I could tell something wasn’t right with my system, but I wasn’t really sure what it was until I played a record that should have sounded fantastic but didn’t. That’s when I realized, for reasons I explain in the article, that it was time to readjust my anti-skate.
When I got the anti-skate set right, or at least a lot righter than it had been, I decided to take another look at my azimuth setting. Fortunately this is a fairly easy one to adjust on my Triplanar arm with just a couple of set screws to loosen using an Allen screwdriver, and an insert for the screwdriver to rotate the arm one way or the other. But which direction to go?
It hadn’t been all that long since I last adjusted my azimuth and at that time, the adjustment had improved the sound substantially. So what do do now? After some consideration I made a guess. I took out my screwdriver and rotated it the tiniest little bit to the right.
I think it’s important to mention here that I only attempt making adjustments such as this when my system is fully warmed up and “Talismaned”, and when I can get my ears and my brain on the same page. It’s only when I can dive in deep with listening and be fully “in the zone” that I can do this sort of fine tuning.
On this occasion, I was diving deep into an A++/ A++ copy of Sticky Fingers on loan from my friends at Better Records, a record with a mix as gritty, grungy and as satisfyingly big and bold as they come. Before playing this loaner copy, I’d had several over the years and I had consistently wondered why Tom Port has put this album at the top of the heap when it comes to Stones recordings. I had always found Let It Bleed easier to get great sound for, and Sticky Fingers an album that sounded consistently more veiled and congested.
Now I had a vetted copy to work with, a rare opportunity with this title as Hot Stamper copies appear infrequently on the Better Records site, and when they do, sell quickly for eye popping prices. This was my chance to find out what Sticky Fingers was all about.
Except, I was having some trouble getting there. I played the HS and could hear that, relative to the copies I currently own, which were the best of the ones I’d played before, this HS had more bottom end. And while a bigger bottom end is certainly a good thing when it comes to a rock record, what about top end and midrange? What about clarity and transparency? I was struggling to hear these things on this copy.
I put on the best of my copies and it seemed to have all of the clarity and transparency that this one had, but without as much bass. Was that all there was to a HS of Sticky Fingers? More bass? I had expected more.
After I adjusted my anti-skate, I circled back to this record and realized that now I was getting somewhere. Now there was a lot less distortion and my system was revealing this record’s strengths in ways that were not previously apparent. That’s when it occurred to me that this might be the perfect time to adjust my azimuth, and this might be the perfect record to do it with.
I played the song “Sister Morphine,” and then made that slight turn of the tonearm and played it again. Then I heard it. That little slap of hand on the wood body of the acoustic guitar that opens the song. I realized I hadn’t really heard it before. Then I noticed the palpability of the guitar and the space around it, and that the vocal presence had improved, as well as the clarity of the electric guitar. And I was better able to make out the studio space with all the instruments in it. And that bass!
By the time the drums kicked in I was pushing the volume up and going ever deeper into the mix. It was a whole new world in there! Now I could appreciate what separated this copy from others I’d heard, and there was a lot more going on than just more bass.
As I made my way back through the album, I was clearly hearing the music in a different way. The 3 acoustic guitars on “Wild Horses” were now more harmonically distinct. The electric guitar the opens the “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” jumped right out at me! It was gritty, raunchy and right there in my listening room.
Meanwhile the drums had just that much more kick, the bass went even deeper and the horns had more clarity and presence. I found myself diving ever deeper into the album, musically and sonically. I was finally discovering just how good an album Sticky Fingers was. This special copy painted a clear picture for me of a fully fleshed 3 dimensional view of the performance.
As I played more of my records, I started to realize that, with one tiny little turn of the tonearm tube, I had literally transformed the sound of my entire system, and every record I played on it. Jazz records sounded more alive, their transient edges cleaner and more precise. Classical records sounded bigger, clearer and with more of the hall and everything in it living and breathing in a more convincing way.
It was yet another example for me of how a great copy of a great record can lead to a small but exceedingly important step forward. As I highlighted in my anti-skate article, small things matter, and with the right record and the right change, we can reap some very big rewards.