I wouldn’t assume that the ’original pressing’ is necessarily the best sounding copy either. On the early Elton John records, I found that the early DJMs from the UK sounded better than the US pressings from the same period. But among those, there are differences in sound, e.g. Tumbleweed has several iterations, with different stamper numbers and each sounds different, and that’s just among the UK pressings from a limited period of time.
@inna-- it’s more time than money in some cases-- but yes, even buying half a dozen different copies of a common record could add up. I’ve sort of backed into it many times, where I had some vaunted audiophile copy and compared it to a more common old record and preferred the latter. Not always though. As to anybody better than Miles or McLaughlin? I’m not sure that’s the point for me. I listen to a lot of different stuff.
The fun to me is finding records that are sleepers, musically and sonically, where you don’t have to pay a king’s ransom for something you enjoy. On the other hand, I have spent money on certain records, a subject we discussed at some point here, I think.
What’s also interesting to me is that a lot of the lore about different pressings really came after the fact, from collectors and bin divers and sound hounds. Many of the record companies back in the day just had ’em made and done- it was a commodity. Nobody was sitting there at the time saying "man, I really think the last pressing run we did was a killer."
I think there are deep narrow pockets of knowledge across the spectrum- some folks know Deccas, or EMIs from the period in classical, or Blue Notes in jazz. Me, I’m a dilettante -- I’ll find something interesting, do some research, buy some copies and see what I think. I also listen to a lot of early hard rock, folk, some prog, and each of those has its own following and knowledge base.
If I were just starting out, I’d probably look for Warner US pressings, typically the earlier the better, from the green label onward; UK Islands- , pink label, onwards; not that I shop by label, but both had good catalogs and pretty good sound. Plus, there’s a fair amount of anecdotal information on pressing variations on the web that is fairly easy to extract.
It’s a subject that is a full time job for collectors- but the collector thing is different than seeking out the best sounding pressing. You bang against collectors sometimes though, because the better sounding copy may also be rare or desirable. The cost of some of these can get nuts (and condition is always an issue, something I’m not sure the collector market is quite as focused on-- visuals and completeness are important, but noise free grooves? Good luck). That’s where the reissues can be a good alternative.
