Mono Recordings

roberjerman sez ...

• "Mono jazz recordings from the Fifties have some of the best sonics! Partly due to an all-tube recording chain without multi-tracking and noise-reduction."

No doubt and I agree totally. I’ve been collecting jazz records since high school way back when mono was all you could get. Many of these all-tube recordings have you thinking ... who needs stereo?

Here’s a couple to try out that are excellent:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Jazz-Impressions-of-the-USA-Dave-Brubeck-Quartet-LP-Columbia-CL-984-Paul-Desmond/153073246032?hash=item23a3e05f50:g:JSgAAOSwC19bJDlo

https://www.ebay.com/itm/JUTTA-HIPP-with-ZOOT-SIMS-Ed-Thigpen-Ahmed-Abdul-Malik-180-gram-vinyl-SEALED-LP/253724250161?hash=item3b1324d031:g:3cMAAOSwhDVbOU5C

I can’t vouch for the reissues, but the originals sound fantastic.

Frank
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I just got the Duke Ellington Masterpieces disc and I have to admit that as long as I stay off axis it sounds great. I'm going to check out some of the older Miles stuff. I also have a lot of old Art Tatum recordings but they are on CD. I have not seen any of his stuff re released on vinyl but I have not checked.

I don't think there is an attraction to Mono. At least I don't prefer mono to stereo, stereo is always preferred. But so-called fake stereo is not stereo. This may seem contradictory, but, there are albums I do prefer the mono mix over the stereo mixes. One album is Hendrix's Axis: Bold As Love. The panning of the instruments is all over the place. Guitars and vocal are panned over reasons that don't don't make a lot of sense. It's just not natural sounding. Most of the Beatles are preferred in Mono because the instruments are just lazily hard panned in stereo. If you are listening on an old console where the speakers have little separation, this probably worked fine. But it doesn't work if you speakers are 6 or 8 feet apart. It just sounds like Ringo is playing in a different room. Other mixes have the recorded tracks overlayed on top of each other in stereo, an example of this Big Brother and the Holding Company's Cheap Thrills. Cheap Thrills oddly had more separation in depth of the sound stage, while the stereo version has vocals smeared over guitar tracks. The point is some recordings were mixed better in Mono and those are the ones I want. I don't want Mono because it's Mono.

One album is Hendrix’s Axis: Bold As Love. The panning of the instruments is all over the place. Guitars and vocal are panned over reasons that don’t don’t make a lot of sense.

You got that one wrong. Jimi personally spent many hours at the mixing desk with Eddie Kramer to get all the panning and phasing just the way he wanted it, or as close as he could get with the technology available at the time. Jimi was all about psychedelic exploration at this point and he wanted this album to blow your little mind, in the vernacular of the day. You may prefer the mono at this point, but if you bought it in 1967, all that panning made perfect sense.

I enjoy mono recordings especially if I'm in my listening perch between both speakers. Everything is between the Speakers and if its recorded right it's like an audio photograph. Dont be afraid of mono.