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Japanese Vinyl?

I've picked a couple of Japanese imports over the last few weeks. A couple of the reissues are really spectacular pressings of old recordings. One is a Contemporary reissued on Nippon Columbia and the other is a Savoy reissued on King.

On the other hand I picked up an original Toshiba which, while very spacious, has some distortion on the louder passages that kills it.

Which of the Japanese labels are more consistent with their quality? I've seen King/Blue Notes going pretty high on e-bay. Any advise on what I should be looking for? Also, and good sources stateside? Shipping from Tokyo is a bit pricey.
grimace
audiofeil
4,011 posts
 
The Japanese Yes pressings are not better than their US counterparts.

The original US pressings mastered by George Piros, especially "The Yes Album" and "Fragile", smoke the Jap versions.

Sadly, both the UK and US releases of "Close to the Edge" pale in comparison to these 2 albums' sonics.
musicslug
430 posts
 
the japanese version of 'the yes album' actually has a volume change MID-SONG(!) - on one track. unbelievable! (but I do agree that, for jazz, japanese vinyl is almost always a good bet. a lot of the US jazz pressings were really bad.)

the bottom line is that you should try to research individual albums before shelling out the big bucks.
mothra
110 posts
 
i like the victor pressing and king pressings which are a great value for jazz as they are usually clean and can sound great. Other stuff is hit and miss. japanese vinyl usually has quiet surfaces and a decent amount of detail, but the source material has to be questioned on a lot of the presings as they may be using generations down safety masters or digital masters, depending on what they could get.

Like anything, it's hit and miss.
grimace OP
624 posts
 
Well there is no danger of me finding out about the Yes album first hand... just not my bag.

I am buying jazz ablums almost exclusively. The noise floor on these things is amazing, even compared to some more recent 180 or 200g reissues I've got.

Does anyone know of any good sources for this stuff here in the US?
casey33
260 posts
 
I bought a p-vine boxset of Chuck Berry.Compared side by side to my Black Label Chess pressings they are thin and harsh.Yet the p-vine stuff seems to command high prices on eBay.
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