John Martyn – Solid Air

Excellent sounding pressing. Not only is the music of this man some of the best ever, but GZ did a great job with this one. Flat, centered, no non-fill, no flash, and the surface is quiet as quiet gets.

Acoustic Research ARxa turntable
Shure M78s Cart
Yamaha R-S202
Dynaco A25 Speakers

Sounds good! Pressing keeps the original dynamics well with a warm / full tone

Really good music, very relaxing, good sound. I like this CD

Quality pressing great music,noise & warp free 180g black vinyl,you can clearly tell/hear the original recording/mastering was to a high standard.
Recommended to all Folk, Folk Rock, Blues Rock etc fans,4.5 stars
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Music 4.5*
Sound quality 4.5*
Mastering/pressing 4.5*

Turntable:Rega P3/RB880 tonearm/Neo psu
Cartridge: Roksan Corus Blue cartridge
Phono Stage: Whest Audio TWO.2 Class A fully balanced

couple years later and still think this is one of the best copies of solid air

ive had a first press since then and a half speed remaster

if i wanted one copy it would be this (if i could get a clean one) or the half speed ...

top 10 album for me all time

I've been through a LOT of copies trying to get a flat quiet one, seems like there is an issue with a chunk of this pressing where there is a rotating fuzzy hiss sound on track B1 apparent on several copies. Very annoying. The mastering is great and the rest of the tracks sound great, finding that clean copy with a clean B1 is tricky so far IME

This record sounds absolutely superb. I have three other early UK pressings of this album and this one surpasses all of those. What impressed me most was the bass. Most other half-speeds i have are a bit thin on bass, with lovely crisp treble. This one has it all.

The John Martyn recording is taken from a high-resolution copy of the quarter inch master, why are you not cutting straight from the master tape?
Miles Showell: The biggest variable when cutting from tape is the replay machine. Every individual roller in the tape’s path will have a direct effect on the quality of the audio emanating from the machine. In addition to this, the 35 Hz low-frequency roll off on a Studer disc-cutting advance head tape machine is in effect coming into play at 70 Hz at half speed. This is a problem if you want to hear as originally intended the lowest register of the bass end on a recording. In addition the masters for John Martyn’s album were encoded with Dolby A noise reduction. Dolby only ever made a very small quantity of half-speed enabled Dolby A cards, none of which are available to me. Although the technical team at Abbey Road are more than capable of modifying some spare Dolby A cards for half-speed use, to do so would require an intimate knowledge of the expansion circuit in the card which has never been made available outside of the Dolby Company. Finally, analogue tape becomes degraded with each pass over the replay heads. These tapes are getting old and it is no longer considered good practise to play and play and play precious old original masters for fear of damage and general wear and tear. Far better then to eliminate the variable of the reply machine, to decode the Dolby noise reduction correctly and to minimise wear of the master by capturing the music digitally at very high resolution using professional converters locked down with stable external word-clocks. To capture from an Ampex ATR-102 with extended bass heads is a far superior method in my opinion.

My record sounds totally fine, in my opinion it’s a great pressing, get it while you can

i must have been unlucky really noisey pressing cleaned twice no improvement has what looks like water marks but in the vinyl