What are your go to LP's for evaluating new gear or new tubes?

Starwarrior

Are those vinyl? Totally understand the fingers and frets. Good vinyl does that. Tori Amos, Under the Pink on pink vinyl is an excellent recording. The piano sounds very real. One song is a very beat up out of tune old piano. You can hear the pedals going up and down. Another song uses the full depth of cellos. Lots of acoustic and strings. It is really a good piece of vinyl but it took me 3 copies to find one without surface noise. Maybe the pink vinyl was too soft? Don't know. Usually colored vinyl is good as it is usually virgin vinyl. I have a black copy of under the pink and the pressing is not nearly as well done as the pink versions.

In addition to some listed . . .

Supertramp “Crime of the Century “

Inna

I'll have to check Oregon out. Not familiar to me.

Wondering why you choose some that you say were not good recordings but use them as references. Seems an odd choice. 

As to brass, I have no jazz music in my collection. I have a lot of orchestra, a couple Canadian brass D2D that are really good and Fresh Aire uses a fair amount of brass as well. 

dmuso

I have many of what you list. I also have some very old RCA recordings that are pretty good. Van Cliburn and V Horowitz piano stuff. They can be surprisingly good right back into the 50's. I have a couple that are still sealed too. Kind of fun, don't know whether to break them out or not. 

As to DSOTM, I don't care for it as much as Meddle or Wish You Were Here, which I have both on Island. I think I have at least 4 or 5 copies of DSOTM but I kind of burned out on it back in the old days. 

bdgregory

Supertramp recordings are very good. I have several of them.

Last night, I rolled in some old tubes that I'd never tried before, some Webcor 12AU7A's. They were OK, not great. I listened to Pat Benatar Tropico on Chrysalis. It is a damn fine recording with some really great dynamics. It's quite a demonstration of a beautiful voice, some very deep bass and some of the most dynamic drumming and percussion that you will hear on a pop album.