JOAN ARMATRADING, Joan Armatrading UK NIMBUS SUPERCUT AUDIOPHILE NEAR MINT LP

	£		53
	$		70

UK NIMBUS SUPERCUT VINYL LP.

Joan Armatrading's finest hour, her debut, that featured the classic songs 'Love and Affection' and 'Down to Zero'. A superbly played album expertly produced by Glyn Johns, who manages to place every single instrument where you can hear it precisely. The vocals shine with perfection. Regular copies of this title can be easily found for a few dollars on CD or vinyl, so why pay a premium price for this copy? Because it is easily the best ever pressing you are likely to come across - a limited edition (about 1,000 copies were pressed) virgin vinyl bonifide Supercut. We have compared this pressing to a UK first issue and it wipes the floor in nearly every respect.

This UK Nimbus Supercut is on pristine high quality near-silent vinyl, it is certainly the quietest and cleanest vinyl we have ever heard (all the Supercuts are excellent pressings), the dynamics are stunning and the bass is finally where it should be: sat firmly in the groove. These Nimbus pressings definately managed to achieve something in the lower end that no other mastering does.

The limited edition UK Nimbus Supercut Records were mail-order only audiophile vinyl LPs, pressed & mastered for readers of 'Hi-Fi Today' and 'Practical Hi-Fi' magazines. Gerald Reynolds, the owner of Nimbus Record Company, said to the English magazine 'Hi-Fi News & Record Review' (July, 2010): "One of the hi-fi magazines in the 1970s, Practical Hi-Fi did a wonderful job in getting the original master tapes for LPs, from artists like Supertramp and Joan Armatrading, and we cut and pressed them as supercuts. Although we archived one of everything, we did not keep stocks - which is a real pity because they now change hands at hundreds of pounds a time ".

Nimbus Records have somewhat legendary status within the audiophile circle for their 'Supercut' releases; they mastered each release from the original master tapes (Joan Armatrading was recorded in the UK, so it is possible first generation master tapes were used for this special mastering) using the best available mastering processes, employing many techniques for each release that were not commonly used. For example, generally when bass moves from channel to channel on an LP, groove modulation is employed to reduce the movement of the stylus and this results in this bass being centered more over both channels. Most audiophiles would argue that this - and in fact anything, which changes the original recording should be avoided although this is common practice on most LPs. This release of Joan Armatrading had bass moving from channel to channel in several places, but Nimbus did not limit this, resulting in an outstanding pressing.

Nimbus also had the ICI company produce an extremely pure vinyl for the LPs, which has amazing frequency reproduction and is virtually noise free - similar in quality to the 'super vinyl' used on earlier Mofi pressings. Due to their rarity and small pressing quantities, they are often more expensive than audiophile LPs from other labels, but the sums paid can be justified by the outstanding quality of the pressings, and the fact that they tend to rise in value over time and as such are deemed investments by some audiophiles.

MATRIX NUMBERS IN RUN-OFF GROOVES: SIDE A: NIMBUS ENGLAND - 1 AMLH 64588 A1 ? GR 3 / SIDE B: NIMBUS ENGLAND AMLH 64588 B1 GR 3 I JH

SLEEVE: EXCELLENT MINUS, JUST THE LIGHTEST OF SHELF AND EDGE WEAR AND A SMALL QUARTER INCH SEAM WEAR MIDDLE TOP.

DISC: EXCELLENT. VERY CLEAN VINYL WITH NO MARKS OR SCRATCHES, NO SPINDLE WEAR, WHICH PLAYS AND SOUNDS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING.

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