And of course Classic Records who have classical,Blue Note re-isssues (heard their new Mono 200 gr. is AWESOME!)and pop stuff.Most of it is mastered by Stan Rickman and wonder man Bernie Grundman.I love their jazz stuff above all other re-issuer's out there as the standards are the very best whe they go after tape and stampers.One of the better sounding labels of the 50's/60's was Epic and whem you here the Classic re-issue of say Charlie Rouse's "YEAH!" it amazigly sounds better than a $200 mint or unplayed original.That's one to look for if you want straight ahead jazz by Monk's last and longest serving sax man.Classic even re-leases some stuff you couldn't find even if you wanted to spend $500-1000 on the original of Red Rodney's "1957" on the hopelessly rare Signal label.These guys are the antithesis of the worst jazz Lp's those made by OJC/Fantasy which aren't worth the $10 even on the first play and get trashed after one or two passes.Too bad 'cuz they have the largest catalogue out there and pressed thousands of hundreds of titles.Imagine if Classic re-pressed them all?!?Lastly if you eve see the Jap import Venus Lp's which feature some of the best Sax and Piano leaders of true quality jazz well the Lp's are pressed from digital tapes ( they call it 24-bit Hyper Magnum Sound!)which will show you stunning LP's can come from digital sources just fine-it all depends on the quality of the tapes not the "pure" anologue source qothodoxy you here about.Take a quality analogue tape convert it to digital to make a CD and then use that tape to make re-issue LP's?Well yes that can suck.But look for Venus wax.I think Venus and Mappleshade are the best sounding CD's out there for new material (XRCD's are great in the CD re-issue arena).There you have it Chazzbo spoken
