Hi, following my 5 cents worth...
There are stacks of contemporary pop with a lot of these picks as I can see, that's fine, but how about some funked up jazz e.g. Hubert Laws: 'The Rite of Spring' with
Gene Bertoncini, Ron Carter, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Friedman, Bob James, Airto -- and of all things produced by Creed Taylor... (not everyones recommendation I guess)
Interesting here, since we talk about 'well recorded records', if I play this one with a more average type of pick-up it can sound plain weird --- now I heard it with an Orpheus and this particular album is something else completely, since all the tonal-colours come out, that freaky jazzy stuff starts to make sense all of the sudden. It is quite fantastic actually...
This brings up the second point, the quality of the pressings themselves. A mediocre pressing, and even Ricky Lee Jones, so well recorded, can sound just like -- well mediocre.
Last one, and everyone knows it for sure - Dark Side.. P.F.
Listening to a local SA pressing makes me realise why everyone in the early 80s thought CD was so marvellous.
Some of these pressings must have been pressed on stampers that had exceeded their natural life by more then 10x, but it sold anyhow with the lowly standard prevailing at the time. Yet another reason we got CDs up to our eyeballs... lousy LP quality.
Greetings,
Axel