The vinyl is a tad noisier than we would have liked -- Mint Minus Minus to Mint Minus with noisy edges -- so we've lowered the price a fair amount to compensate for it.
It's been a while since we last tried to find Hot Stamper copies of this album -- with over 75 sets of stamper numbers for each side, and that's just the originals cut by Ken Perry, it's an extremely taxing project -- even for us! We know some of the better stampers and have been acquiring them since then in preparation for this shootout.
The best copies exhibited the kind of presence, bass, dynamics and energy found only on the kind of Super Demo Discs we rave about here endlessly: the BS&Ts, Stardusts, Zumas and the like. When you get a good copy of this record, it is a Demo Disc. Who knew? Who even suspected? The grooves don't lie, and these grooves have got a lot to say.
Side Two
It doesn't get any better than this A+++ side one folks, it's full of Tubey Analog magic! The sound is open, spacious and transparent with a huge three-dimensional soundfield. Christine McVie's vocals are perfection, they have lots of body and presence. The bass sounds excellent and the banjo is harmonically Right On The Money. The sound is richer, sweeter and warmer here than on any other copy we played.
Of special interest to those of us who like to rock is the fact that this side had tremendous weight -- it's got the WHOMP factor that lets the energy of the recording (and the music) burst out of the soundfield.
Side One
Side one is also very strong with a Super Hot grade of A++. It made it to the final round but lost to a side one that sounds pretty much like this amazing side two. It's full-bodied, dynamic and lively with excellent bass and lots of presence. It's also open and transparent with a nice bottom end and smooth, sweet vocals.
Stampers Galore!
You would have to go through at least 25 or more copies of this record to even hope to find one in a league with our best pressings. That's a lot of record hunting, record cleaning and record playing! (If you know anything about this record, you know that the average domestic pressing of this album is quite average sounding; the good ones are few and far between.)
And the stampers, as we've come to learn, aren't the whole story. For one thing, there are at least 75 different side ones and 75 different side twos, all cut by Ken Perry at Capitol on the same three cutters from the same tapes -- but they all sound different! (Ken also cut the original English and Japanese pressings; his KP is in the dead wax for all to see. The two import KP copies that I heard were quite good, by the way. Not the best, but very good. He only cut the originals though, so practically every import copy you can find will be a reissue made from a dub, ugh.)
How 'Bout Them Surfaces?
A typical problem with this album is slightly noisy surfaces. It's rare to find copies that play as quiet as Mint Minus. After using all the various tricks at our disposal and quite a bit of elbow grease, we were able to get most of the copies to play between Mint Minus and Mint Minus Minus. The edges are almost always slightly noisy, particularly on side two.
This copy is a bit worse than that described above.
Track Commentary
The Track Listing tab above will take you to an extensive song by song breakdown for each side, with plenty of What to Listen for advice.
