{"product_id":"mendefoolo_2508_1x__","title":"Mendes, Sergio and Brasil 66 - Fool on the Hill (Mixed Polarity) - Super Hot Stamper","description":"\u003cp\u003eTwo songs in particular make this a Must Own album: \u003cstrong\u003eScarborough Fair\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003cstrong\u003eThe Fool On The Hill\u003c\/strong\u003e. Both of them are given wonderfully original treatments. These songs hold their own against the originals, and that's saying something.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSergio took on many of the heavyweights of his day, and most of the time he succeeded in producing a uniquely satisfying version of well-known material. Superb original tracks by The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Buffalo Springfield, Joni Mitchell and others were given the Sergio Mendes latin pop treatment and came out much the better for it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis vintage A\u0026amp;M 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 -- \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 Fool on the Hill 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 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\u003eFinding The Best Sound\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe average copy of this record is thin, aggressive, and irritating. What separates the better copies like this one from those typical bad-sounding copies is more extension on the top end to balance out the upper midrange and lower highs, and more weight on the bottom end, to correct the overall tonal balance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are at all familiar with this record, it's easy to spot the good ones: as soon as you drop the needle on side one, you can hear that the tape hiss sounds correct. The high-frequency content of the tape hiss is intact. On the bad ones, the tape hiss sounds dull, which means that the extended highs are missing, leaving only the painfully edgy lower highs.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis album may not be up there with Sergio's best sonically (not many albums are!), but it can still sound very good when you get the right stamper. The balance may take some getting used to. We weren't sure what to make of it at first. If you put your system in Mono you will hear the sound dead in the center. After putting it back in stereo you will find more of the sound in the left channel than the right. It took us a while to understand that that was just a choice they made for the mix.\u003c\/p\u003e \n\u003ch3\u003eWhat We're Listening For On Fool on the Hill\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 -- Henry Lewy and Larry Levine in this case -- 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\u003eFamously Bass Shy\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe next thing you want to check for is that there is enough bass. Most copies are quite thin-sounding. Even the best copies aren't rich and full-bodied the way some of his other albums are, but the goal here is to find the best-sounding pressing, not to find the perfect pressing because there isn't one in my experience. The bass on this copy is ahead of the curve with note-like tone and texture.\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 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  \u003ch3\u003eThe CD Sucks!\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThose of you who have purchased some of their CDs may have noted that they do not sound particularly good, as though little are or effort was expended in their mastering, which is no doubt the case. Almost any good original brown label A\u0026amp;M pressing will be dramatically better.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eA Tough Record to Play\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFool on the Hill (like all Sergio Mendes albums) is a \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%22difficulty-of-reproduction%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003edifficult record to reproduce\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e. Do not attempt to play it using anything other than the highest quality equipment.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnless your system is firing on all cylinders, even our hottest Hot Stamper copies -- the Super Hot and White Hot pressings with the biggest, most dynamic, clearest, and least distorted sound -- can have problems. Your system should be thoroughly warmed up, your electricity should be clean and cooking, you've got to be using the right room treatments, and we also highly recommend using a demagnetizer such as the Walker Talisman on the record, your cables (power, interconnect and speaker) as well as the individual drivers of your speakers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a record that's going to demand a lot from the listener, and we want to make sure that you feel you're up to the challenge. If you don't mind putting in a little hard work, here's a record that will reward your time and effort many times over, and probably teach you a thing or two about tweaking your gear in the process (especially your VTA adjustment, just to pick an obvious area many audiophiles neglect).\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"Mendes, Sergio and Brasil ’66","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50469082464552,"sku":"mendefoolo","price":74.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0257\/3415\/2295\/files\/R-5620693-1398188803-1515_214c63bb-66b6-48fa-b529-3a2dcdd6550b.jpg?v=1711122570","url":"https:\/\/better-records.com\/products\/mendefoolo_2508_1x__","provider":"Better Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}