What are your go to LP's for evaluating new gear or new tubes?

Here are a few that I like to test my system with whenever I make changes:

Radiohead – In Rainbows 

Roger Waters – Amused to Death

Jack Johnson - In Between the Dreams

Bruce Cockburn - Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws (True North pressing) 

@bdp24 

This is incredibly fascinating!

I am very familiar with  Dolby A, B, and SR.  And the headaches involved with having to deal with tapes that have been dubbed with the wrong settings. Sometimes multiple times. Virtually rendering it to garbage. I would use Dolby SR when recording with my Studer 2" 24 track. It was a godsend. But not if it was not decoded.

Incorrect encoding and decoding of Dolby A  was an issue in the audio/video  world for years. I say video, because the 1" helical scan video machines were also equipped with Dolby A encoding and decoding.

I am also familiar with Ovation guitars since I am a guitarist myself.

I am not sure, however, that I am following the chain of events correctly. Exactly which pressings were pressed with Dolby decode incorrectly engaged? Are the original pink inside label Island pressings correct? Or were they pressed with incorrectly mastered plates also? And if I am understanding you correctly. The Analog Productions pressings were mastered correctly without Dolby A decode incorrectly applied? I just want to make sure that I have this sequence straight. So that I will purchase a correctly mastered  pressing. There is nothing worse than a Dolby A encoded tape which has not been decoded. Other than a tape without  Dolby A encoding, with Dolby A decoding incorrectly applied.

And thank you for the information about this. This is truly an amazing revelation. And one enormous f**k up on many levels.

A good question to ask @flash56, as I don’t think @billpete fully absorbed the somewhat complicated and confusing chain of events. Before I answer you, let me correct one mistake I inadvertently made in my long post above: In the next to the last paragraph (the one starting with "Kassem gave Fremer a call"), in the next to the last sentence I wrote ".....and another splitting the difference in about half (between flat and Dolby boosted)." The part in parenthesis should have read "between flat and Dolby engaged." With the Dolby circuitry engaged during playback, the high frequencies would have been reduced, not boosted. In comparison to the tape played back with the Dolby engaged, the tape played without the Dolby engaged sounds brighter. In spite of that, the tape played without Dolby---since it wasn’t recorded with it---is "flat".

I learned all these details in a few videos all the involved parties made and posted on YouTube a few years ago. According to them, ALL LP’s pressed prior to Grundman’s discovery of Dolby A noise reduction being used in the making of the production master tape (from which the lacquers were cut)---including the pink label Island, the sunray Island, in fact all Island pressings, as well as those on A & M---all were incorrectly mastered and lacquers cut with a tape in which the Dolby playback circuitry was engaged, thereby robbing the recordings of a lot of their mid-to high frequencies. That’s why the cymbals and Cat’s guitar don’t sound right, amongst other sonic problems.

The Analogue Productions pressing of Tea For The Tillerman is the first version mastered and produced without the Dolby circuitry engaged, and sounds dramatically better than the sunray label Island I had (it’s long gone). But of course as always everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I can understand not "liking" the true sound of Cat’s Ovation guitar; lots of players of Martin guitars don’t either.

For those who want to know what a tape made without Dolby n/r but played back with the Dolby circuit engaged sounds like, make a cassette tape yourself duplicating that process. I’m pretty sure you will NOT like how it sounds. Unless your loudspeakers themselves are very, very bright. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Tea For The Tillerman was mastered using Yamaha NS10’s. Oy!

The obvious question that follows is: after Grundman’s discovery, did everyone else also make new production master tapes from which to cut their lacquers and then press their LP's, without Dolby used in playback? I don’t know.

One re-master definitely worth listening to is Steve Hoffman’s version of Joni Mitchell’s Blue. Lovely!

@billpete

- The Crosby track is good because it has that great Bill Weir bass to test the bottom, Jerry Garcia’s pedal steel for the high end, Steven Stills and Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash and Paul Kantner in the chorus to test separation, and Crosby out front, with a large acoustical space.

- I personally look for original or second press in NM or SS condition over remasters. With the exception of Rino, I find almost reissues and remasters to be inferior, sometimes decidedly so. I was particularly disappointed with the MoFi 45rpm remasters if Fleeteood Mac and the Airplane’s Volunteers.