Agree here. Whenever I am trying to find what the best sounding pressing of something is, I usually search the album title and "hoffman" because I can at least narrow it down to a few pressings. Or I come here and ask people
The “smiley face” eq trope for early MoFi‘s might be the most over-discussed underwhelming issue in audiophiledom. What mastering choices that are there are relatively minimal and nearly all the early MoFi’s sound good to great, if not definitive. I highly recommend people listening to different cuts and finding their favorites, but the MoFi issue is completely overblown due to the Hoffman making an off-hand comment about selling off his entire MoFi collection at one point and the cult of personality that is the SHF latched on and suddenly early MoFi’s were vinyl non grata. Some of us took advantage to pick up some titles very cheap...
I have only 5 early MoFis that I got for fairly cheap (The Band- Music From Big Pink, Ziggy Stardust, REM murmur, Grateful Dead - American Beauty and Miles - Someday My Prince Will Come) and they all sound great to me. But a lot of others have been too expensive to track down and I didn’t want to take a chance on them with the way SHF talked about them. I went back to look today and people seemed to complain more about some of the CDs but I have to remember to take it with a grain of salt. As you said, the Hoffman cult of personality is strong there so once he says something it’s gospel. I still keep my eye out for earlier pressings but it’s harder and harder to find titles I want for decent prices.
I find them significantly less impressive than AP records tbh. I’m constantly wow’d by their work, I’m more or less unmoved by MoFi
I think a lot depends on the type of music you’re listening to as well. Which MoFis do ya have? AP has much better/wider range of curation and a much better jazz selection. I don’t get excited by many new MoFi titles. But just going off some titles I have, there are a more MoFis off the top of my head that I would put in my top 10 sounding albums than APs. I do own more MoFis though. For some reason I haven’t picked up nearly as many APs.
This is also true, I still think it depends on the album in question as well. If you take any clean OG pressing pre 1980-ish, I can almost guarantee it sounds amazing. The rub and challenge is finding some of these albums in really good condition, take for instance albums that have come up recently in here like The Nightfly, Brothers in Arms and or something like The Alan Parsons Projects- I Robot, you can, with a little patience, come across clean OGs in the wild for a $10 spot or so and they are beautifully recorded and mastered.
The one that always springs to mind for me when it comes to MoFi is Tears For Fears – Songs From The Big Chair. Yes, it's a silver label, but I have other silver labels that I think sound fantastic. Here's the thing though, when I first got this I wasn't overly thrilled with the sound quality and I had an OG that blew it away, hands down. But, over time and equipment upgrades, the sound quality started to change and as it stands today, it's sounds like a different record than when I first played it. At it's current value of $200+ and sounding pretty damn good, the OG, in my opinion, sounds much better.
I hear ya, but look at the flip side, would you want to spend that much on a "One-Step" quality album and get it in a standard weight jacket and paper sleeve
The one that always springs to mind for me when it comes to MoFi is Tears For Fears – Songs From The Big Chair. Yes, it's a silver label, but I have other silver labels that I think sound fantastic. Here's the thing though, when I first got this I wasn't overly thrilled with the sound quality and I had an OG that blew it away, hands down. But, over time and equipment upgrades, the sound quality started to change and as it stands today, it's sounds like a different record than when I first played it. At it's current value of $200+ and sounding pretty damn good, the OG, in my opinion, sounds much better.
Again, to my previous post, lots of variables involved
Shit. For $2500 I want them to have Carlos Santana deliver it personally with white gloves on.I hear ya, but look at the flip side, would you want to spend that much on a "One-Step" quality album and get it in a standard weight jacket and paper sleeve
I am aware MoFi doesn't set the aftermarket price, but maybe jonaphile1322 on Discogs can get in touch with somebody.True, but please remember - the pre-Music Direct MOFI was a different animal, and it was down to them and Clasic for audiophile vinyl at the time. Those pressings - 90's and early 00's - were the best at the time. Many have been bettered today - that Ziggy Stardust, for example. The John Hiatt.
I used to be on team OG for a long time but have almost given up on trying to find clean OGs on a lot of older stuff, especially if there's a good AAA reissue. A lot of times, especially on Hoffman, I see everyone always say things like "you can't beat the OG UK 1st pressing", but the likelihood of me finding a very clean OG (especially one that is affordable) can often be nearly impossible. With jazz, I missed out on a lot of the AP stuff like the Prestige series monos which are now $100+ for certain titles. When someone like Craft comes along and presses a One Step of one of those titles, I will usually grab it if I love the album. The prices on some of those jazz APs have gone insane so it makes it a little easier for me to justify spending $100-$125 on a One Step. And I'm glad I got a lot of the MoFis I did when I did. I have a lot of the Miles Davis ones (shout out to that strange discogs account from the old forum that sold tons of MoFis for really cheap haha).