Alice Coltrane – A Monastic Trio

There's good news, it's not all bad.
I was concerned base on the reviews and I hesitated to open this record because of the negatives I was hearing, but someone said they had success doing a good cleaning.

For me the dirtiest records I get I resort to using a microfiber cloth because it gets the job done of getting into the grooves. That did it and it lifted a veil of whatever crap was on there. A wet velvet brush did nothing...honestly it sounded horrible as the record went on.

I figured what's there to loose with crap like this at this point. A wet microfiber left it feeling like an open recording.
This is all manufacturing DIRT you're all hearing.
It was deep in there.

The record sounds good and clear once deeply cleaned.
Again like I said I had to have the microfiber dig into the groove and everything improved.

Might have been the worst example of a new dirty record I've ever received.
The stylus kept picking little bits of crap off it on the first spin.

I paid $14.99 new from Amazon on 01/04/25. I ran it through my Humminguru and that helped a lot. No surface noise. It's quiet and flat. I'm happy to have it in my collection.

This is one of the releases here that I wish one of those European out of copyright companies would just take the damn CD, DMM it, and put it on clean flat vinyl like Wax Time does! Literally the only thing Third Man has produced that I own and is reasonably decent is their Trout Mask Replica (black vinyl)... when they started doing all these sort of reissues, going back to The Melvins "Stoner Witch", it was "oh cool I'll be able to get some of this nice stuff on vinyl again"... and it's like no, no it's not nice to get these crappy poorly mastered noisy vinyl copies, even the packaging seems substandard, blurry... I understand there may not be much of a profit margin on some of these more obscure recordings but what's the point if you're going to just put out lousy product? I'm telling younger music fans, just get a CD player... the Don Cherry "Art Deco" release maybe one of the worst sounding records I've ever heard... to each their own, your mileage may vary, Etc...but this isn't even funny. This specific recording is no great shakes sound quality wise but if you spin the most recent CD edition, why would you bother sticking this on the turntable??? This particular one and the Don Cherry are my final straw which is why I'm venting here... all these major corporations are going to shoot themselves in the foot regarding the so-called "Vinyl Revival", it's not just Third Man...look at the care and quality Gotta Groove, Corbett vs Dempsey, et al are putting into their releases compared to these huge corporations stamping out garbage...I was just reading something about a lot of these newer vinyl collectors not even taking the records out of the sleeve and they don't even own turntables... in that case, then this would probably be a really nice lifestyle accessory to have on the wall. Okay this old man's done yelling at a cloud now...

Mine is flat, centered, and quiet. I wouldn't call this an audiophile release, but it doesnt sound bad at all.
At $30, this is a no brainer, if you enjoy the album.

Sure it’s a bit flat. But it’s not that bad. The ‘verve by request’ releases are a bit half assed, but we all knew that. I’m glad to have an affordable vinyl of this release.

Quite acceptable release for me. The sound isn’t as bad as I expected based on all the reviews (too much negative hype). There is some mess in the top end, but still it sounds pretty good.
It’s hard to find one of the earlier releases nearby (for acceptable price in addition), so I have no complaints about this one.
No surface noise on my copy, looks clean and shiny. Antistatic inner sleeve for the plate, which is always good.

Vinyl noise was alright, mostly quiet vinyl, but the mastering on this was thin and felt like the music was pushed into the background. Bass was almost no existent here, 0 punch. Wasted reissue of an Alice Coltrane album, it deserved so much better.

I was a fool to buy this release. It sounds really thin. No way this is cut from the original master tape. From now on I refuse to buy anything from '3rd Man'. Sorry, your releases are worse than 'Audio Clarity' Russian bootlegs.

I have a 2nd generation cassette tape (of an original Lp) that I dragged out of storage for comparison and guess which recording wins? Yes, the Maxell ca. 1987. Hands-down no contest.

I can offer up my Maxell tape to Universal Music in case they need it.

I hate to pile on, but...I'd have been wise to read these reviews before ordering. This is shoddy. There's no way the original sounds this lousy - I shudder to think what sort of secondary source they might have used, but...whatever you are thinking of paying for this, please spend a little more and get an earlier pressing. Noisy, awful low-volume mastering (I'm no loudness freak, but...seriously, this is dismal), and some low-res seeming artefacts in the sound (again, I'm wondering about the source). This record was pressed enough times over the years that a better edition is surely worth holding out for. Peak "vinyls", I'm afraid.

Is it just me or is this thing mastered with the volume waaaaay down low? Good thing my copy is pressed well - no surface noise - because I have to crank the volume up just to even feel anything. Even still, the bass seems unusually low in the mix, and the whole thing lacks depth.

That said, I'm happy to have this in my hands. But now I wonder if I need to spring for the Superior Viaduct version... My local library has a copy, and it does indeed sound better than this.