Best Bob Marley On Vinyl?

What are some of the best sounding Bob Marley records? Any help? .... I have one of the legend "Best of" issues. Sounds okay, but a bit thin and compressed.

And what are his 'rarest' records? This one looked pretty cool. ... but spendy!
BOB-MARLEY-WAILING-WAILERS


.

 

12" of Trenchtown sounds amazing!
http://www.discogs.com/Bob-Marley-The-Wailers-Trenchtown/release/2894838

best sounding Marley I have on vinyl

 

This right here

http://www.discogs.com/Bob-Marley-The-Wailers-The-Box-Set/release/2144554

 

If we are talking LPs then all of the original British Island pressings are good, Dutch, German and US copies are also okay, other European pressings, Greek, Portuguese etc., aren't too hot, Jamaican pressings are all bad, I haven't heard Japanese pressings.

There are MoFi issues of "Catch A Fire" and "Exodus" though persoanlly I prefer the original Island copies.

There is also the Island box set containing all the Island LPs except "Babylon By Bus" and "Confrontation", custom sleeves and very nice German, (Alsdorf?), pressings.

There are also plenty of Island period twelve inch singles that sound good and often have unique tracks or mixes on them.

For non Island material, avoid Jamaican pressings, they are all bad, even the ones that go for hundreds, for Studio One period tracks the Heart Beat label is your best bet, for the Kong/Perry material first press UK Trojan issues are probably the best sounding.

 

For a starter go for Trojan's compilation African Herbsman. Sounds great and widely available.

If you want to explore further the Complete Wailers volumes are good, particularly Satisfy My Soul Jah Jah/Keep On Skanking and Freedom Time. They can get hard to find on vinyl but will have less surface noise than the singles.

 

I'd love to have a complete collection of all the songs on that LP pictures in the first post , but in their original 7" form - I'm fairly certain all the tracks are needledrops. I have a later pressing of that with a white label instead of red. The songs recieved some overdubs as well.

Do we know anything about Coxsone's recording set up back in the mid-60's?

 

So if I want a core collection of 2-4 albums, best recordings on vinyl, what do you recommend? I love his songs. New to vinyl (or rather ack after a long time) and I have a nice system now to play.

 

Hey guys.

Very interesting. Would those of you who have the box set or the 12 inchers say that they are another step up from Barry Diament's excellent Tuff Gong CDs?

If that strikes you as an ignorant question, well - on this matter, I AM ignorant...

ccm

 

I'd say choose the music that you like first, but any combination of these will be sonically and musically pleasing as long as you get seventies or eighties British pressings: "Catch A Fire", Burnin'", "Exodus", "Survival", "Kaya", "Uprising", "Natty Dread" and "Rastaman Vibration". You should be able to find near mint copies, though not necessarily first pressings, for £10-15.

 

Do you mean the German pressed LP box, I've never compared them to any version of the CDs, it's a really nice set, very nice pressings, it came out just after Bob died, I'll have to get it out and see if there's information about the mastering, it's different to the CDs, I can tell you that.

 

I think the pink rim islands (US or UK) of the first two (catch a fire and burnin') sound great. They were both pressed at sterling and have stamps in the deadwax. Exodus was also mastered by sterling and sounds just as good. These have always been my three favorites.

 

Unfortunately a nice pink rim "Catch A Fire" is £100+ and if you can find a nice pink rim "Burnin'" it should be close to half that though a lot of dealers don't realise how scarce near mint first presses are so you may get a bargain. I recently got asked to source excellent copies of several Marley LPs, not necessarily first pressings, but good UK pressings in at least excellent condition, I went through 25 copies of some titles before finding a good enough copy, the Marley LPs are common, near mint ones definitely aren't.

 

Second label UK are great sounding. And often quieter and in better condition. The Island Life reissues from the early 1980's are superbly mastered from analog and great pressings.

 

So, in summary, we have:

1. The German Alsdorf pressed "The Box Set", of which Jerry graciously posted a picture for us.

About this set, we have confirmed that the sound is good and balanced, but we have not heard any reports from someone who has compared them against the Diament CDs using turntables/CD players of identical quality.

Do we know that the German set was all analog?

Then we have 2. The Island Life reissues from the early 80's, mastered from analog. That's a good sign, but we don't have any A/B comments against the Tuff Gong Diament CDs.

We have good reports about the potential for early UK pressings, but they are expensive and something of a crap shoot, and will probably take many tries to find a solid pressing.

It doesn't seem valuable to get any of the Tuff Gong Diament sourced vinyl, since the CD master was used to cut those (although it is hard to tell which ones those were). As such, the CDs make more sense, since they are effectively the master for these.

And we have "Avoid the Jamaican pressings". That's valuable advice.

Still would love to hear about a shootout of the Diament CDs vs the analog cut 80's box set and/or Island Life reissues on comparable quality equipment.

I've got the whole set on Diament CD, and I adore 'em. But all analog, un-goosed and balanced (as we have heard mentioned here) LP cuts from the same masters that Barry used definitely have the potential to be on another level, merely d/t the limits of 16/44.

Higher rez often outshines CD in the area of note decay, etc. Bob Marley material has a lot of long-ringing instruments in it and natural reverb. The vinyl stands a legitimate chance of really being special - again if they were the same tapes that Barry used.

I only loosely remember someone saying that the tapes that Barry used had some crazy story surrounding them, and that they have since been not stored well or lost, etc, and that we won't get issues as good as the Tuff Gongs ever again as a result.

It would be great if someone knew for sure that this "The Box Set" and the Island Life reissues in the 80's were from these special tapes. Even better if we knew who cut the vinyl.

But it would be good enough just to hear from someone who has heard and compared both, that has an equal quality and equally neutral analog setup to their digital setup. Which is admittedly rare in itself.

ccm

 

Hear for yourself..here is the German box set

Get Up Stand Up

 

Bless you, sir.

Based on an A/B with that flac and my flac rip from the Tuff Gong Diament Burnin', the Diament master is SIGNIFICANTLY more immediate than the sample provided.

So either those lps aren't from the lower generation tapes that Barry had access to, or the additional veil is attributed to needledrop playback/capture loss.

When you listen to your needledrop, would you say that it compares very closely with the live playback of the vinyl?

Thanks very much for posting that,

ccm

 

Sterling Sound mastered records but did not plate or press records.

 

http://www.discogs.com/groups/topic/168918

Lists it as Graehme Durham

 

I was looking for a UK copy, but I have right now the opportunity of buying a NM german first pressing (-1/-1) LP of Rastaman Vibration, not much expensive. From posts above it should be nice, but maybe inferior to the UK. I have a couple of questions for the experts here:
Is it worth to get it? Being a first pressing, does that fact make it comparable to a standard UK?
Will the mixes be the standard ones, or rather those of the german box (I suppose no)?
Thanks

 

Exact, finding a pink rim is not that important, you can find a late 70's blue label that still use the original mastering, with STERLING in deadwax etc. for 20$.

I have some german pressings and when i compare to the UK (or US) pressings they are quite good, just a bit inferior. The dutch pressings are good also but not so good, lack of bass generaly (still speaking about BMW pressings).

 

Indeed, UK Blue and Palm Trees labels often have original mastering. They are usually much less expensive and equally fine sounding.