Funny you should ask, we had an informal meeting of the Portland Audiofoos club last night and I had loaned my UHQR of "Crime" to one of the members, as well as the UHQR "I Robot". Since we had them there, we put on "School" and cranked it. Everyone's head shook with surprise at the dynamics and the 3D textures. All were shocked, myself included, as I do not play this but once every few years. Candidly, this is not my type of music, so I have never done a comparison with the A&M LP, the original Brit pressing or the standard MoFi. So, for all I know, they could all be better. I can say that I am happy with my pressing though. Maybe someone with more experience can weigh in on this. I did have a Sweet Thunder half speed of one of the other Tramp albums at one time. They were made in Canada. I can't remember the album and the sonics were nothing special so it moved on to a new owner with a greater appreciation of the music.
The MoFis are a crap shoot. Pretty much anything mastered by Gary Giorgi has the smiley face EQ. He had a well documented hearing issue which lead to some strange sounding albums. Compare the horrible MoFi Aja to a nice Bob Ludwig mastered copy. The MoFi sounds like crap, but many like it for the quiet surfaces and thumping bass. The original releases, mastered by Stan Ricker, fare much better, though there are good and bad here as well. Dark Side is just not what it should be and is inferior to both my Brit and German pressings, as well as the Japanese Pro Use half-speed. Too bad really. But there are some stellar records in this group, the "Close to the Edge", the Poco, the Doors, the Band, really, there are a lot of great ones that are the best release of the material. Notice that, broadly, MoFi did better with groups recorded in the US, than Brit groups. The Stones and Beatles stuff is just terrible. The thrashing done to "Sticky Fingers" really hurts.
