John Prine – Fair & Square

Just picked up a copy of this. Record plays beautifully, mastered beautifully, little to no surface noise. Very happy to own this and many other Prine gems!

Mine plays perfectly, no pressing defects that I can find, great pressing of a very good record..

My copy has a lot of ticks and pops. A real shame, the music is really good. I'm glad i still have the cd.

I wish I just held on to my OG copy. I have same surface noise issues. The first 2 songs have it soooo bad. Bums me out,.. such a wonderful album.

I nearly did not get this due to the two previous comments about the poor SQ. I strongly recommend you give the records a once over Ultrasonic wet clean as I thought the sound is pretty clear and with plenty of details and dynamics. There’s only very light surface noise on my copy. No issues with the spindle hole either.

The pressing is good if not excellent. Give it a go and give it a good clean, which I always do even a new/sealed record. This album deserves more audience.

Guess I got lucky, my copy is mostly quiet. A few ticks on Some Humans, and a tick on The Moon Is Down, but solid otherwise.

Sound:

Compared to the CD and Streaming, the mastering is soft, mushy with poor definition to instruments, lacks dynamics and cut at low volume.

Tested with a Dynavector 20X2, Cadenza Blue and EMT Cartridges.

Pressing:

1Lp Very tight spindle hole, had to drill.
2nd lp's off centered.

Both are noisy but not too bad.

Avoid unless you have to own this on vinyl.

Snap, crackle and pop too bad good record of John's poppy through out. Agree with below spindle very tight no drill cranked down with nut on my VPI record cleaner then ok. Pops remained.

My disc 2 has multiple issues but particularly on Clay Pigeons (surface noise and some kind of rumble that causes my speakers woofer to pulse) and Safety Joe. I got a replacement from Oh Boy and that copy was even worse, so I kept the original. I'm quite disappointed. Pressings seem to be really hit or miss lately and it's very frustrating as these things aren't cheap.

I'm not so excited about the mastering, and the clicks and plops spoil the listening experience a bit. For a 180 gram pressing it sounds disappointing. Musically full five stars - a pity.