Led Zeppelin 1,2,3,4 Houses and Graffiti Classic Records 200 Gram Quiex SV-P
$
642
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Description
Up for auction are the first 6 albums by Led Zeppelin on Classic Records Quiex SV-P 200 gram vinyl. These are very, very rare indeed. They have never been played, but removed from original thin plastic covers to high grade covers. They are in mint condition, except Led Zeppelin 2 and 3 have a 1 inch rash on top of cover, this happened in shipping to me from Music Direct years ago, I wanted them replaced,but they sold out so fast, there were none left. They have sat on my shelf and forgotten about. Just too much vinyl I guess. Anyway, here is your chance to get all 6 in pristine condition. Led Zeppelin 1, 2, 3, 4, Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti. These go for up to $400 each ! They don't and won't make them like this anymore. Here is a little more info on these pressings.
Classic has done yet another exemplary job with these re-issues, truly labors of love in the literal sense—Classic head honcho Mike Hobson's enthusiasm for this music is boundless. Hobson and I have had many rabid conversations about our admiration for these two bands since we've known each other, and Hobson has dreamed of doing these re-issues for many years. Please don't think I'm a shill or a friend of Mike's who wants to flatter him, or a mesmerized audiophile reviewer issuing Pavlovian praise of anything his company does—these re-issues are uniformly brilliantly done, and improve upon the sonics of the originals, in some respects significantly.
The improved sonics are not surprising, considering Classic used the original two-track analog master tapes as source material for all these re-issues—not the EQ'd production masters used to create many of the original LPs. According to Hobson, all the production masters sound different than the original two-track tapes, many of which sound as "if a blanket were thrown over the speakers." (A truism, but in this case true.)
And, indeed, the single most dramatic differentiating sonic characteristic of the Led Zeppelin and Genesis re-issues is their greatly increased resolution and clarity. Flaws of the original recordings aside—there were many; though good in many respects, they're overall dynamically constricted, tonally uneven, and lacking in spaciousness, transparency and "air." The sonic shortcomings are more or less severe depending on the particular recording; no surprise there considering we're talking about several albums recorded over the course of several years by different people in different studios.
The mastering chain used to create the re-issue LPs is the stuff of audiophile nocturnal fantasies: the original master tapes were played back on mastering engineer Bernie Grundman's Studer A-80 analog two-track tape deck, fitted with a one-Henry-impedance head that matches the Ampex 300 tube tape machine electronics. Judicious, mild application of EQ was used in spots, particularly on the Led Zeppelin releases, where Jimmy Page himself gave guidance (among other advice, he told them to use the recently-issued Led Zeppelin CD boxed set [Swan Song 82526] as a reference; which itself had little EQ used in its production). From there, the signal went to a Haeco stereo tubed cutting amplifier powering a Westrex cutter head mounted on a Scully mastering lathe. The records are pressed from "better than 180-gram" vinyl—averaging around 185 grams or so. The surfaces are so clean I almost couldn't tell if the needle was dropped at the beginning of a record.
