anthem wrote on 01/31/15 at 22:00:22:

Cool. Interesting session!

Nice Weekend LP...

This LP blew me away....1st time I've listened to it since ZP3 purchase. And ZP3 made it a WOW listen!

Ace-Tone wrote on 02/02/15 at 18:55:46:

Amazing phono preamp, isn't it?

Real ale really hits the back of your neck Lon.  :)
The first good quench and......oh yeah.
Eric will sound better next listen, I know he will. His guitar pans around as well. Sometimes two bass players and if thats Hubert Sumlin then he`s playing second lead or not strumming rythym.
I allways take snapshots first listen. Then theres H. Wolf and listening to him ( for the first time really ) and getting into the atmosphere. The recording is wide, deep and clear and dynamic. More rock/blues than the M. Waters L. Sessions which are kind of laid back.

The SHM-CD

The music on this hasn't gotten any better (I've always felt pretty lukewarm about it) but the sound is really good on this cd. There are piano chord clusters that are undampened and sound very real on this one. And Art Taylor's drums really snap.

I've never gotten the complaints about RVG's piano recording. He used the same piano for decades and all those different pianists sounded individually distinct. . . that's skill right there. And I could always hear what the piano sounded like. To me it sounds a lot like it does when you're at the bench or near the piano, which as someone who likes to play piano is a familiar and nice sound.

Anyway, Red Garland! That Texan had a nice career.

Yes Lon keyboards pop up in abundance Stu Stewart, Stevie Winwood et all.

On another note I been watching an auction go down
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/webuyvintagerecords/m.html?ssPageName=STRK%3Anull%3AME...
First batch has gone and I picked up Sonny Rollings a night at the village vanguard ( mint DMM cut ) for £10.50. You`re probably familiar with all these. I fancied Booker Ervin Space book ? but the price went steep as did his album with the big eye on it.

Syd wrote on 02/02/15 at 23:09:58:

All that is good music, I have all but four of those lps on cd and a few lps. I'm only buying LPs now of material that I don't have already. That has really helped me not spend money on lps!

Well, I have played a lot of stand up pianos. They sound a lot different than the grand piano that RVG used in his studio! The sound of a stand up . . with those strings right level with your head. . . very different than the sound of the big harp lying in front of you on a grand piano.

In my twenties and thirties whenever I could have access to a piano and be alone I fooled around on one. Sometimes these were baby grands, sometimes stand ups, sometimes grand pianos. My grandmother had an excellent old stand up, and the church my Dad had for twenty seven years had a grand piano in a reception room that was a joy to play and fill up that room, and also a nice stand up in the sanctuary. In Austin I used to go to the Music Building at the University of Texas and visit the floor where they had a dozen baby grand pianos in small rehearsal rooms. I had so many interesting hours in those rooms making sounds.

So yeah, RVG's piano doesn't sound at all like a stand up piano to me, but it shouldn't, it isn't one, and they are different than grand pianos in sound and would also be recorded differently. RVG recorded his piano closely for the most part. . . . A more common method is to record a bit further from the piano and catch some of the bloom of the sound. So to me RVG's sound is closer to that one hears at the piano or near it, and this is also how he recorded his horns, so it evens out those key signatures in the recording.

Anyway, it's all a matter of taste. I really do like the sound of pianos by other engineers who capture the sound of the bloom in the room as well, as you would experience as a listener in the audience. But as someone who likes to sit at a piano I like that perspective that I sense from RVG's recording methods. Others may not and that's cool, but it's not to my ears "an unnatural sound" for a grand piano, especially from the bench.

I don't disagree, I like to hear the piano both ways, I just think RVG's pianos do sound like pianos, they don't sound like they do if you're sitting in the middle of the audience I grant you that, but they sound like a piano if you are there on the bench or on the stage. They sound the way real pianos do from my personal experience and usual vantage point.

In general I think that is what RVG does, with a small group he makes the music sound as if you were inside it, as if you were a member of the band or at a table right in front of the stage. As someone who spent a bit of time in those situations in rehearsals and the rare performances and while recording bands I was in, he makes the music speak to me in a way that many other engineers don't. But not everyone has this viewpoint, I certainly know and understand that.

Another killer SACD

Very cool.

Forgot how good this one is.

Interesting music.

Nice.

I was hoping this SHM-CD would be more improved than it is compared to the earlier US cd, but it's still great music.

String tone detail!

Listening to this...

Lon,  I see you're online.  The resistors you use with the HR-1's...are they on the red or black terminals?  Right or left?  Also what watt value is your resistor?  I know it's 20 ohms...what other values did you try?  Mark.