SpencerR is almost as petulant in this thread
forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/craft-recordings-small-batch-one-step.1046074/page-72 as he was in the one about the record dealer that didn't like the Stones RSD ripoff. Seems like a guy I'd love to buy a beer and a shot:
Agree that, for a $100 record, I don’t want to use Media Mail. My copy was shipped exactly two weeks ago and arrived today. I get that there was a polar vortex and a pandemic out there, but I don’t want a $100 record bouncing around the postal system for two weeks. The mailer Craft used to mail this wasn’t the worst I’ve ever seen, but it also wasn’t the best. My copy arrived OK nevertheless.
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The Post Office has been sabotaged by its leadership, and had to deal with a pandemic causing an explosion of online shopping, plus a polar vortex that paralyzed half the country last week. We couldn’t get our car out of our driveway for five days. I’m not surprised the mail got slowed down. I don’t blame the Post Office.
As I said above, had Craft given me an option to order Fed Ex or some other premium shipping service, I would have taken it. Maybe they did, and I just didn’t see that option. But with other recent online orders I’ve made, I’ve paid a little extra to avoid Media Mail.
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Just had a chance to listen to this in its entirety and focus on it uninterrupted. As @jeremy Bunting notes, I wouldn’t say this is an “audiophile spectacular,” but’s that’s because the original recording isn’t necessarily an audiophile spectacular. I don’t have an original Prestige LP of this title, but I do have the Analogue Productions SACDs of this title and Soultrane, and the recent Craft Recordings vinyl reissue of Saxophone Colossus cut by Kevin Gray, and, like all of those Prestige mono recordings, here the bass and the drums, especially the cymbals, are a little bit boxy and distant, and the piano isn’t the best-recorded piano I’ve ever heard. But the lead horn on these sessions, whether Coltrane or Rollins, is very well recorded. I assume the sax player was literally standing closest to the microphone, or the whole session was geared to feature the lead horn, however these sessions were recorded and engineered. That the rhythm section and piano weren’t perfectly recorded to begin with doesn’t mean that this record isn’t the best possible presentation of what’s on the master tape.
And I would say that it is. Without doing a formal A/B comparison, I’d say Coltrane’s sax sounds even more musical and natural here than it does on the Analogue Productions Prestige SACDs I have. Whatever “super vinyl” compound Craft used here lives up to the hype. Over the entire course of the record, I heard two faint, and I mean faint, ticks or pops, on the title track. The rest of the record was dead silent, black backgrounds. Zero surface noise in the lead-in groove, zero surface noise between tracks, only two tiny audible pops or ticks on the entire record. Between the super vinyl and the One Step process, this record is ultra musical, and ultra enjoyable to listen to.
I have to laugh at the assertion that an “OG mono press” is better. Given the choice between paying $400 or $500 for an “OG mono press” of this tile, whose provenance and playing history I have no idea of, or paying $100 for this, I’ll take this every time. Heck, I’d pay $400 or $500 to a flipper for this before paying $400 or $500 for an “OG mono press” that wasn’t pressed on super vinyl, and was played for decades on God knows what equipment at God knows what tracking force and possibly kept in the home of a smoker, etc. etc.
I have quite a few “OG” Coltrane Blue Note, Atlantic, and Impulse! records, but the ones I reach for and play most often are modern reissues like the Analogue Productions 45 rpm Blue Train and the Rhino 45 rpm Master Series of Giant Steps, because I bought them new and I’ve kept them in perfect shape and they’re just more fun to listen to than the snap, crackle, pop “OG presses” I own. If others out there can afford to own stone mint, noise free OG presses, more power to them. That’s not a realistic option for me. I’m thankful for modern audiophile reissues.
That’s not to say this is perfect. As I noted yesterday, the black outer box, while pretty cool looking, is rather cheap. When you take the record out of the outer box, the plastic? sides of the outer box bend and bow inwards. I think there was a recent Keith Richards deluxe LP reissue that came in a wood outer box, and I think this would have been better if the outer box had been made out of wood or metal, instead of cheap bendy plastic. If I ran Craft, I would have issued this as a double 45 rpm on super vinyl in a thick gatefold sleeve with the liner notes “booklet” on the inner gatefold, and priced it at $74.99, like the recent MoFi Dylan Desire Super Vinyl, or the upcoming David Crosby If I Could Only Remember My Name Super Vinyl. Just ditch the hard outer box altogether unless you’re going to go all the way and make it out of wood or metal.
One could still argue that this whole project is overkill. I paid $27.99 for the recent Craft Saxophone Colossus LP mastered by Kevin Gray, and that record is 95% as good as this one. It’s on regular vinyl, and it’s dead silent, too, and sounds pretty much just like this record: Rollins’s sax sounds amazing, and you can hear the limitations and flaws of the recording of the rest of the instruments. As usual in audiophile land, paying four times as much for the One Step super vinyl doesn’t mean that the end product sounds four times better. This record is better than Craft’s stock Saxophone Colossus, but only incrementally better. But, even with the dumb outer box and the only incremental improvement over what Craft has demonstrated they can do with a “regular” Prestige reissue, to me this is a no-brainer to pay $100 get a final lifetime upgrade copy of this album without going down the rabbit hole of chasing a perfect “OG” pressing.
I wouldn’t spend $100 on a Craft One Step of Creedence Clearwater Revival or any rock band whose catalog they own other than R.E.M.. I’d only buy an R.E.M. One Step because I collect R.E.M. But, even with the dumb, useless outer box and the priciness of this product, I’d be in for any further One Steps of the John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Sonny Rollins titles than Craft owns, because, compared to chasing “OG” 1950s jazz pressings, getting this record on One Step super vinyl is a steal at $100.
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Why is it a dick move to flip it on one platform but not another? It’s not as if people here don’t buy records on eBay all of the time. I see other records posted on the classifieds here at what I find to be laughably expensive prices, but I don’t get upset about it. I just close the window and move on to the next listing. If this is bringing $450+ on eBay, no one’s entitled to buy it for $200 here because this is some sort of
socialist utopia or nice guy’s club.
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If a grown up wants to pay a 100% markup for an out of print record, that’s their business. As you note, who are you or I to tell them how to spend their money?