Rolling Stones Mono Box Set (lp or cd)

Ian Stewart was the 6th Stone. The pianist on a lot of British invasion records is Nicky Hopkins, heard on albums by The Kinks, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Jeff Beck Group (I saw him live with Beck on the first U.S. tour), The Stones (Satanic Majesty’s Request, Beggars Banquet), and even The Beatles ("Revolution"). In the 70’s he moved to the States and worked with The Quicksilver Messenger Service and The Jerry Garcia Band. He made three solo albums, and died in 1994.

Steve Hoffman has posted pictures of Abbey Road studios in which the recording equipment is visible, pointing out the tube limiters the studio used. Steve claims those limiters are known to be not very good sounding, and may very well be responsible for the less-than-great sound of The Beatles albums.

Halleluiah! Tostado, I am so weary of The Stones continuing to be held up as The Greatest blah blah blah long after they started sucking. Which was a long, long time ago. Why they weren’t written off after they put out a disco album is an absolute mystery to me.

I don’t expect 1960’s Pop or Rock albums to sound very good. As Pete Townshend said, they were made to sound "good" (whatever that means) on car radios. About the worst sounding are The Who albums prior to Tommy. So thin and brittle, nothing like they sounded live, which was extremely punchy (thanks to Keith Moon and John Entwistle, who sounded SO awesome!), like a direct-to-disc LP and the Decca/London cartridge.

drsteve, you are so right about semi-pro (or even amateur) recordings being better sounding than many commercially produced ones. I recorded the Jump Blues/Swing band I was playing in with a pair of omni condenser mics straight into a Revox A77 at a live gig, and it sounds much more "alive" (in sound quality) than most of my LP's and CD's/SACD's. I used the same mics into a Teac 4-channel 2340 in a home studio on a singer/songwriter recording gig, and it too sounds great. Very transparent, with great transient "snap" and dynamics (not as good as a Direct-to-Disc LP played with a Decca/London pickup though), and quite lifelike instrumental (acoustic piano, acoustic guitar, electric guitar & bass---plugged straight in without an amp amp, and drumset) and vocal timbres.

Almost all commercial recordings are very heavily processed, the mic signal travelling through all kinds of outboard gear (mixing boards, mic pre-amps, compressors, limiters, equalizers,, electronic reverb and echo simulators, etc), to make it sound "better" (whatever that means). The mastering process used to turn recordings into playable formats involves the use of many of those same pieces of outboard gear again!

I use my tapes in evaluating reproduction gear. Everyone, if possible, should!