Compared Tone Poet to Mosaic

No, not RVG, he used two machines, one mono and one stereo.  There is no slight of hand here, two masters were made.  What amazed me is that there is no difference, repeat NO DIFFERENCE, in the sound quality between my extremely expensive vinyl setup and my CD player.  The tonality, the clarity - identical.  The Tone Poet records sound great too.  That also says a lot about the later Mosaic CDs which are in fact excellent.  And of course the Luxman D-10X is very good as well, but in terms of dollars invested it cost a mere fraction as much as the TT + cartridrige + SUT + phonostage + the extra wires.  Tens of thousands less altogether.  Then consider the cost of the CD compared to the cost of that minty vinyl record that @tablejockey found on discogs.  And I'll bet you a bottle of your favorite beverage that there is no difference in sound quality based on my experiment here.  Although that minty vinyl record would probably not sound as good as either of the modern options because RVG said he always cut the bass on the lacquers to prevent the crappy arms of the day from jumping out of the record grooves. There really is a limit and here is an example.

Detailed breakdown of early Blue Note recordings.

Insightful read

The Blue Note Record Sound | Music Matters Jazz | Jazz Vinyl

@billstevenson 

I read somewhere that:

During the early days of Stereo, Rudy watched the big studios pay the band or orchestra and recording studio to perform twice: once for the existing experienced Mono recording team with their equipment and setup; and then repeat the performance for the new Stereo recording team with their separate equipment and setup.

he decided he could not afford to do that, so ....

Rudy decided to make one Stereo Recording of the one preferred take, and subsequently make a MONO Version from his single stereo master.

Is is possible he sometimes made two simultaneous recordings as you described, and other times a single Stereo recording and subsequently created a Mono version as I described?

@tablejockey 

thanks for the link above, it seems Rudy did as Bill described, and later as I remembered

excerpt:

"The mono vs. stereo question confronts anyone dealing with reissues of Rudy Van Gelder’s Blue Note masters.

If the goal is getting to the essence of the music, we discovered that you cannot take a dogmatic view of this issue. Rudy Van Gelder first began recording Blue Note sessions in stereo in March of 1957. From then until an October 30, 1958 Art Blakey session, Rudy simultaneously ran both mono and stereo session tapes. After that session, Rudy abandoned the practice of running both mono and stereo session tapes and recorded strictly in stereo. The evidence is there for anyone to see who examines the original master tapes. When Kevin Gray, Ron Rambach and I began our first mastering session with our first six Blue Note masters we couldn’t help noticing the clearly marked (by Alfred Lion) notations indicating "monaural masters made 50/50 from stereo master" on the master tape boxes."

Another fascinating part of the Blue Note legacy was revealed by Don Was in an interview that is in the Qobuz Magazine.  He has been the leader of the brand now according to the article for almost 15 years.  He said that he interviewed RBG early on and asked him how to best preserve the sound and legacy of Rudy's work for the label.  Rudy told him among other things that the sound of the lacquer changed within four days of being cut.  So Rudy told Don to forget about trying to preserve the original sound of Blue Note records.  He said just do the best job possible to capture what exists on the tape.  Which of course is what Kevin Gray and Joe Harley do, first for Music Matters and now for the Tone Poet series.  Interestingly enough even the recent Classic Series Blue Notes sound exceptional.