Dvorak Symphony No. 2 Classic records excellent

I agree with you on Mercury Living Presence. If you want to hear what really good reissues sound like, check out the Speakers Corner Mercurys. These are absolutely stunning.

I have been leery of speakers corners reissues. I got the Clemencic Conosrt reissue and it is not even close to the Harmonia Mundi original. I never bought another one after that. It is encouraging to hear this as I will try one. Which one do you like the best? How is the Respighi?

I was referring to the Dvorak when I was speaking about the lack of hardness. I am comparing other Classic reissues like the Reiner Sound and Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with Heifetz. I like the Chesky Reiner Sound a lot better than the Classic. Scheherazade on Chesky is also better to my ears than the Classic. I have the 200 gram of Scheherazade. Maybe the 180 gram is better.

I wrote this thread because I have been quite critical of Classic in the past but this one just sounded better than any of the other 200 gram reissues I have heard.

As far as the older Living Stereo's I have purchased at the Flea Market, Ebay and the like are concerned about 95% of them sit on the shelves because they are not in good condition even though they can look like they have never been played. I have only found a handful good enough to listen to on a regular basis. I have had very bad luck with them. I have had better luck with the Londons. The Mercurys are always shot. I have one that I listen to and it is great, no doubt about it. I also had about fifty that I threw out or sit in the rack, they are just beat.

The Classics, although they sound different, for the most part are not terrible. I do get frustrated when I get records that skip the first time I play them and are noisier than they should be for $34.00. They need to get better at that. I guess the thing that frustrates most of us is that we know they could have been better. The potential is definitely there, we know it, we just cannot figure out why the engineers cannot figure it out. It will probably never happen unfortunately.

I'm going to pull out a few mentioned and have a listen...

to Kennyb...would you compare the Classic's LSC 1934 Reiner to the same's LSC 2374 RCA Bartok--Music for Strings,Percussion and Celesta/ Reiner?

and to all, yes, the London orange labels can be found cheap and sound lovely...yes, the yellow ones are bad

and to Tzh21y, EVERY Speakers Corner I've heard has
been fabulous....wonderful label...

and yes, the Mercury's are great, the originals, that is...their cheap series were pretty bad...you can tell an original if the color front wraps around partly to the back.

and yes, Tzh21y, many many many of those RCA's you mention are just trashed or sound horrible and not always the best buys when buying used...

...you can tell an original if the color front wraps around partly to the back....

Not always so. The Merc's are the most pressing dependent label I know and early tends to be better but is not always. You have to learn to look at stampers if you want to find the best pressings of these. One example is the Birds SR90153. The RFR1 is the later pressing but looks like a nice early issue with it's deep maroon label. It's not. The eary issue is the FR1 and is much better sounding.

An example where the early edition is not prefered is the SR90300 - Prokofiev's PC #3. They sold a bunch of these and there are many stampers out there. The prefered stamper is the RFR8. The other odd thing with this disc is the RFR8 cover is a bit different on the back than other stampers. On the RFR8, there are three small pictures near the bottom of the cover. On other stampers, there are only two pictures. There isn't a color back edition of this either.

A couple of other generalizations on the Merc's. The Columbia record club editions stink. These have CBRFR or CTRFR stampers. The vendor labeled disc also tend to be substandard when compared to the non-vendor label. Just to make things more difficult, some disc's are extremely hard to find in a non-vendor issue.