{"product_id":"doorsselft_2609xx","title":"Doors, The - Self-Titled - Super Hot Stamper (With Issues)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e*NOTE:\u003c\/strong\u003e On side 1, the edge and first 30 seconds (approx.) of track 1, \"Break on Through (To the Other Side),\" play Mint Minus Minus to EX++. On side 2, the edge and first 15 seconds (approx.) of track 1, \"Back Door Man,\" also play Mint Minus Minus to EX++. There is a discoloration in the vinyl that plays as intermittent stitches at a Mint Minus Minus to EX++ level for the last 1\/4 of the last track, \"The End.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSuperb sound on this copy of the Doors self-titled classic! You won't believe how good the sound is here -- big and rich with plenty of bottom end and an energy level that's really something to hear! Thanks, Bruce Botnick, you da man!\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHonestly, we must return or reject 80% of the copies that come through the door, which should go a long way towards explaining why they hit the site with such irregularity. We know what the best stampers are and have for quite a while. What we have a devil of a time doing is finding anyone selling the album who knows how to grade it properly, especially when it comes to the kind of groove damage that's common to records played on turntables that lack anti-skate.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis Elektra stereo pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely even 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 -- \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 The Doors 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:%221967%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1967\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 the record 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 a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eRaw Power\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis a Must-Own Record, a 1966 (!) recording with unbelievable \u003cu\u003eraw\u003c\/u\u003e \u003cu\u003epower\u003c\/u\u003e! Most audiophiles likely have no idea how well recorded this album is, simply because most pressings don't do a very good job of encoding the energy and life of the master tape onto the vinyl of the day. This one certainly does that!\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first Doors album is without a doubt the punchiest, liveliest, most \u003cu\u003epowerful\u003c\/u\u003e recording in the entire Doors catalog.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHuh? I'm guessing this statement does not comport well with your own experience of the album, and there's a good reason for that: not many copies of the album provide strong evidence for \u003ci\u003eany\u003c\/i\u003e of the above qualities. Most pressings are opaque, flat, thin, veiled, compressed, lifeless and sound exactly the way so many old rock records sound: like an old rock record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Butterfly and Small Red E labels are so contemptibly thin and harsh they are not worth the vinyl they're pressed on. You would be much better off with the DCC Gold CD than any of the reissue vinyl we've ever heard. Good digital beats bad analog anyday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eRhino Vinyl (From 2009)\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat a mess. Imagine listening to this album with a two inch thick velvet curtain placed over your speakers -- that's the sound of the remastered record! How bad does a stereo have to be in order to disguise the fact that this is one of the worst Classic Rock reissues in the history of the world? I don't know and I sure don't want to find out.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRhino Records has really made a mockery of the analog medium. Rhino bills their releases as pressed on \"180 gram High Performance Vinyl.\" However, if they are using performance to refer to sound quality, we have found the performance of their vinyl to be quite low, lower than the average copy one might stumble upon in the used record bins.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat We're Listening For On The Doors\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\u003eBotnick Knocks It Out of the Park\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut this album is engineered by \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%22bruce-botnick%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBruce Botnick\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e. The right pressings give you the kind of low-end punch and midrange presence you hear on Love's first album (when you play the right gold label originals). Botnick engineered them both, and what's even more amazing is that The Doors first is an even better recording than Love's!\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll tube from start to finish, the energy captured on these Hot Stampers has to be heard to be believed. Not to mention the fact that the live-in-the-studio musicians are swimming in natural ambience, with instruments leaking from one mic to another, and most of them bouncing back and forth off the studio walls to boot.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut the thing that caught us most by surprise is how much \u003cu\u003elife\u003c\/u\u003e there is in the performances you can hear on the best of these Hot Stamper copies. Morrison pulled out all the stops for his vocals on songs like \"Backdoor Man\" and \"Break On Through\"; unless you have a very special pressing there is almost no chance you have ever heard him perform with this kind of raw power.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's nothing short of amazing to hear that first testosterone-fueled yell at the start of \"Backdoor Man\" on side two. It's also the best-sounding cut on the album. We were hard-pressed to think of any other rock album recorded in 1966 (released in 67) that can compete with it, not for energy and live-in-your-listening-room presence anyway.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http:\/\/www.better-records.com\/pages\/top-100\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 100\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e? You better believe it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eMoFi and DCC\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Doors first album was yet another obvious example of MoFi's predilection for sucked-out mids. Scooping out the middle of the midrange has the effect of creating an artificial sense of depth where none belongs. Play any original Bruce Botnick-engineered album by Love or The Doors and you will notice immediately that the vocals are front and center.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen the DCC Doors first album was released on vinyl we noted that the vocals were finally back where they belonged: after having lived with the MoFi for so many years we'd almost forgotten. And now of course we can't tolerate the smear and opacity of the DCC. We like to think we're simply setting higher standards these days. We expect that you are too or you wouldn't be on our site reading all this.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe midrange suckout effect is easily reproducible in your very own listening room. Pull your speakers farther out into the room and farther apart and you can get that MoFi sound on every record you play. I've been hearing it in the various audiophile systems I've been exposed to for more than 4 years.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNowadays I would place it under the general heading of My-Fi, not Hi-Fi. Our one goal for every tweak and upgrade we make is to increase the latter and reduce the former.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAnd note also that when you play your records too softly it results in an exaggerated, artificial sense of depth.\u003c\/b\u003e That's one of the main reasons we play them loud; we want to hear the pressings with real presence and immediacy because they're the ones that are most likely to win our shootouts. If you have any of our killer Hot stampers you surely know what I'm talking about.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eVinyl Condition\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMint 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.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThose of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of later 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 originals.\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\u003eThis Demo Disc quality recording 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":"Doors, The","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52411022541096,"sku":"doorsselft","price":499.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0257\/3415\/2295\/products\/doorsdooea_ced23343-c3da-489c-9aa3-a418b758393a.jpg?v=1679080960","url":"https:\/\/better-records.com\/products\/doorsselft_2609xx","provider":"Better Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}