Anyone try the Mosaic jazz collections?

[aardvark baguette]

Anyone here try any of the Mosaic jazz collections instead of getting all the discs from Amazon?

I'm wondering if these are better masters than the standard discs, or just a prettier face.

Most of them I've looked at are remastered from the original master tapes, often at 20 bit.

http://www.mosaicrecords.com/prodinfo.asp?number=197-A-MD-CD

I usually just buy all the albums of an artist, so I dont know what to make of these yet.

[aardvark baguette]

I just noticed, under "mosaic singles" Art Blakey's "Hard Bop" album is $15; used on Amazon for $50, and the amazon one doesn't have bonus tracks. The Mosaic, in this case, was remastered at 24 bit

**there is a compilation called hard bop for Blakey on Amazon, which is different material altogether**

[blessingx]

I picked up their recent Mosaic Select Boogie Woogie and Blue Piano. Because of the age of the recordings its a little difficult to discuss SQ, but the selections are very nice. You probably know, but some of their collections have short runs. I think this one was 5,000 copies.

[aardvark baguette]

Yeah, I noticed they have some truly ancient stuff on there. I'm debating picking up the Ellington stuff, but the SQ is probably a gamble. I enjoy full bandwidth when available, obviously.

It looks like most, if not all of the Select series are limited, as you said. I just bought the Horace Parlan Sessions, Stanley Turrentine Qt. Sessions, and the Mosaic Select McCoy Tyner series. In the case of the Select Series, it looks like they offer remastered versions of albums that are not available on Amazon, new or used, i.e. Turrentine's Mr Natural. There are a few used copies of the U.S. and Japan versions of some of the Parlan albums, and they are going for more than the entire Parlan set, so its a no-brainer for those

The Complete Blue Note Horace Parlan Sessions (5 CDs)

Blue Note Stanley Turrentine Qt./Sxt. Sessions (5 CDs)

Mosaic Select: McCoy Tyner (3 CDs)

[LFF]

Mosaic sets are awesome. I have heard quite a few of them and they are great. SQ wise I think they do a great job.

If your into that stuff, a more budget oriented label to check out is JSP, especially the stuff restored by Ted Kendall.