Dvorak Symphony No. 2 Classic records excellent

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.

good to know...thanks..

SBrown, very thorough, I appreciate that. Thanks and I will keep that in mind regarding the Mercurys

I really would like to see someone redo the Mercurys and get the most from them. For the most part, they are truly excellent recordings.