Neil Diamond
Stones

*NOTE: There is a mark that plays 5 times lightly about 1/8" into track 1 on side 1.

We can't say for sure that this is the best sounding Neil Diamond album -- we haven't been through all of them yet -- but it's certainly the best sounding album of his that we've critically auditioned in large numbers. Good luck finding another copy of Stones out in the bins that deliver top quality sonics the likes of these -- we went through a ton of copies and only a small number held our interest.

This vintage UNI 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 Stones 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 in 1971
• 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.

Engineering

On the Hot Stamper copies that do have sweet and rich ANALOG sound, credit naturally belongs with Neil's go-to engineer, Armin Steiner. He was one of the engineers on Spirit's first album (a truly phenomenal recording from 1968), assisted on Ram, recorded some of the best sounding, most Tubey Magical Chart-Topping Pop Rock for Bread in the early '70s, and, if that's not enough, has more than a hundred other engineering credits. He's also the reason that Hot August Night is one of the best sounding live albums ever recorded.

When you find his name in the credits there's at least a chance, and probably a pretty good one, that the sound will be excellent. You need the right pressing of course, but the potential for good sound should be your working hypothesis at that point. Now, all it takes is some serious digging in the bins, cleaning, and listening to determine if you've lucked into a "diamond in the rough."

What We're Listening For On Stones

• 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.

Problems to Watch For

Some of the more common problems we ran into during our shootouts were slightly veiled, slightly smeary sound, with not all the top end extension that the best copies have.

You can easily hear that smear on the guitar transients; usually they're a tad blunted and the guitar harmonics don't ring the way they should.

Smeary, veiled, top-end-challenged pressings were regularly produced over the years. They are the rule, not the exception.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus 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

• I Am...I Said
• The Last Thing on My Mind
• Husbands and Wives
• Chelsea Morning
• Crunchy Granola Suite

Side Two

• Stones
• If You Go Away
• Suzanne
• I Think It's Gonna Rain Today
• I Am...I Said (Reprise)

AMG 4 Star Review

Driven by the hit singles "I Am...I Said" and "Crunchy Granola Suite," Stones is a stronger album than most of Neil Diamond's late-'60s records. Instead of padding the album with mediocre originals, Diamond picked several fine covers to fill out the remainder of the album, including Roger Miller's "Husbands and Wives," Joni Mitchell's "Chelsea Morning," Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne," Randy Newman's "I Think It's Gonna Rain," Jacques Brel's "If You Go Away," and Tom Paxton's "The Last Thing on My Mind"... the record remains an engaging collection of mainstream pop.