Japanese Vinyl?

I have bought alot of Japanese Vinyl with mixed results. The benefit is that the vinyl itself is better, lower noise floor, pressing quality is high. But the rest depends on the master tape, is it 2nd generation, mastering process, amps, etc. If you are talking about Jazz, almost all the 1950's/60's Verve or blue notes sound pretty good and an improvement to me (case in point Stan Getz). Classical I couldn't tell you, Pop/rock: sometimes better, sometimes less soundstage/"air" spacial detail and more inner groove distortion. Example (don't laugh if you hate Yes): the Yes recordings "Fragile", "Relayer", "Going for the One" all sound worse in regards to above on Japanese Vinyl; all sound best on original 1st pressings from U.K. But I would say the Jap. pressings are perhaps better than U.S. The above is true for almost all U.K. progressive/art rock bands: Camel, King Crimson, ELP, etc.

The Japanese Yes pressings are not better than their US counterparts.

The original US pressings mastered by George Piros, especially "The Yes Album" and "Fragile", smoke the Jap versions.

Sadly, both the UK and US releases of "Close to the Edge" pale in comparison to these 2 albums' sonics.

the japanese version of 'the yes album' actually has a volume change MID-SONG(!) - on one track. unbelievable! (but I do agree that, for jazz, japanese vinyl is almost always a good bet. a lot of the US jazz pressings were really bad.)

the bottom line is that you should try to research individual albums before shelling out the big bucks.

i like the victor pressing and king pressings which are a great value for jazz as they are usually clean and can sound great. Other stuff is hit and miss. japanese vinyl usually has quiet surfaces and a decent amount of detail, but the source material has to be questioned on a lot of the presings as they may be using generations down safety masters or digital masters, depending on what they could get.

Like anything, it's hit and miss.

Well there is no danger of me finding out about the Yes album first hand... just not my bag.

I am buying jazz ablums almost exclusively. The noise floor on these things is amazing, even compared to some more recent 180 or 200g reissues I've got.

Does anyone know of any good sources for this stuff here in the US?