The copy we are selling is similar to the one pictured above.
Sonic Grade
Side One:
Side Two:
Vinyl Grade
Side One: Mint Minus Minus
Side Two: Mint Minus Minus
- Outstanding sonics throughout this vintage Elektra pressing, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades
- Key to the sound is richness and Tubey Magic, along with strong midrange presence, and on this pressing you get all three
- We remembered this as a good recording and were still surprised with how good the better copies sounded
- 4 stars: "...far superior to most of 1988’s uninspired R&B releases. Instead of tampering with Rapture’s consistently romantic and mellow soul/pop approach, Elektra brought back that album’s producer, Michael J. Powell, and kept [Baker] at the top of the charts with such sleek yet earthy fare as 'Just Because,' 'Priceless,' the haunting 'Good Love,' and the title song."
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We had a ton of copies for our recent shootout and can report that the typical pressings tend to be veiled, grainy, and lifeless. Most of them lacked richness, but a few of them had surprising analog qualities that gave the music a smoother, fuller sound.
This vintage Elektra pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to "see" the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It's what vintage all analog recordings are known for -- this sound.
If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.
What the Best Sides of Giving You The Best That I Got Have to Offer Is Not Hard to Hear
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes even as late as 1988
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space
No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
Standard Operating Procedures
What are sonic qualities by which a record -- any record -- should be judged? Pretty much the ones we discuss in most of our Hot Stamper listings: energy, vocal presence, frequency extension (on both ends), transparency, spaciousness, harmonic textures (freedom from smear is key), rhythmic drive, tonal correctness, fullness, richness, three-dimensionality, and on and on down the list.
When we can get a number of these qualities to come together on the side we’re playing, we provisionally give it a ballpark Hot Stamper grade, a grade that is often revised during the shootout as we hear what the other copies are doing, both good and bad.
Once we’ve been through all the side ones, we play the best of the best against each other and arrive at a winner for that side. Other copies from earlier in the shootout will frequently have their grades raised or lowered based on how they sounded compared to the eventual shootout winner. If we’re not sure about any pressing, perhaps because we played it early on in the shootout before we had learned what to listen for, we take the time to play it again.
Repeat the process for side two and the shootout is officially over. All that’s left is to see how the sides of each pressing match up.
It may not be rocket science, but it’s a science of a kind, one with strict protocols that we’ve developed over the course of many years to insure that the results we arrive at are as accurate as we can make them.
The result of all our work speaks for itself, on this very record in fact. We guarantee you have never heard this music sound better than it does on our Hot Stamper pressing -- or your money back.
What We're Listening For On Giving You The Best That I Got
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren't "back there" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
- The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
- Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
- Tight punchy bass -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
- Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
Vinyl Condition
Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)
Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.
If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.
Side One
- Priceless
- Lead Me Into Love
- Giving You the Best That I Got
- Good Love
Side Two
- Rules
- Good Enough
- Just Because
- You Belong to Me
AMG 4 Star Review
The sizeable following that Anita Baker acquired with Rapture proved quite receptive [to] Giving You the Best That I Got — an album that’s quite similar to its predecessors. Though not quite on a par with The Songstress or Rapture, Best is far superior to most of 1988’s uninspired R&B releases. Instead of tampering with Rapture’s consistently romantic and mellow soul/pop approach, Elektra brought back that album’s producer, Michael J. Powell, and kept her at the top of the charts with such sleek yet earthy fare as “Just Because” (whose harmonies bring to mind producers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, but lack the hip-hop elements they’re quick to employ), “Priceless,” the haunting “Good Love,” and the title song.
Much of Baker’s music has contained jazz overtones, but on the Brazilian-influenced, slightly bossa nova-ish “Good Enough,” Sarah Vaughan’s influence becomes even more apparent...