{"product_id":"creamwheel_2605","title":"Cream - Wheels of Fire - Super Hot Stamper","description":"\u003cp\u003eIt’s exceptionally difficult to find even decent sounding copies of this album. We’ve played scores of original domestic copies, original imports, and all kinds of reissues over the years, and it's very rare to find a copy that sounds this good on all four sides.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese vintage RSO pressings have 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, these are the records for you. It's what vintage all analog recordings are known for -- \u003ci\u003ethis sound\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat The Best Sides Of Wheels of Fire Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe most Tubey Magic, without which you have \u003ci\u003ealmost\u003c\/i\u003e nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%221968%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1968\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNatural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTransparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. \u003ci\u003ePlaying these records is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above,\u003c\/i\u003e and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find pressings that sound as good as these two do.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhere’s the Bass?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst of all, most early pressings you find these days are thrashed beyond belief. We’ve been picking up every clean Plum \u0026amp; Gold label copy we’ve seen for years. Unfortunately, the Cream magic seems to be missing from the early domestic pressings. The problem is simple: a glaring lack of bass.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet’s think about that. Cream is a power trio. The music \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ci\u003eabsolutely demands\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e a solid bottom end. Sacrifice the bass, and the sound is just too lean to work. We can sum up the sound of the whomp-less copies in a word: fatiguing. Some copies sounded better than others, but none gave us the kind of bass that we were hoping for.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eAnd Then There Was Whomp...\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe had pretty much given up hope on ever hearing this album sounding better than decent -- until we dropped the needle on this bad boy. From the moment the needle hit the grooves, we heard bottom-end information that was completely lost on the other copies we played. There was \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ci\u003eactual deep bass\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e -- but that wasn’t all. The drums were punchier, with dramatically more power. The guitar was tubey magical beyond belief, yet still clear and crisp. Here was the Wheels Of Fire sound we had been looking for.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat We're Listening For On Wheels of Fire\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eEnergy\u003c\/strong\u003e for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThen: \u003cstrong\u003epresence and immediacy\u003c\/strong\u003e. 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.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe Big Sound\u003c\/strong\u003e comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThen \u003cstrong\u003etransient information\u003c\/strong\u003e -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eTight punchy bass\u003c\/strong\u003e -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNext: \u003cstrong\u003etransparency\u003c\/strong\u003e -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eExtend the top and bottom\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003ci\u003evoila\u003c\/i\u003e, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003ePower Trio Magic!\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen you get an amazing copy like this one, this music is \u003cu\u003eawesome\u003c\/u\u003e! For 60s power trio hard rock, you just can’t do much better than the studio material. \"White Room,\" \"Sitting On Top Of The World,\" \"Politician,\" \"Born Under A Bad Sign\" -- this is the very essence of bluesy classic rock. Unfortunately, the typical copy barely hints at the magic of this recording, and the audiophile pressings are even worse. If you want to hear this album sound amazing, a Hot Stamper pressing like this one is the only way to go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eVinyl Condition\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMint 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.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThose 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eA Must Own Rock Record\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWheels of Fire is a recording that should be part of any serious rock collection. Others that belong in that category can be found \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%22core-rock-collection%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ehere\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Cream","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51867361050920,"sku":"creamwheel","price":349.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0257\/3415\/2295\/files\/IMG_4173_68838a26-acdb-4d54-82b0-6378fb293204.jpg?v=1689963779","url":"https:\/\/better-records.com\/products\/creamwheel_2605","provider":"Better Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}