Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now
In 2018 we described our Shootout Winner this way:
Amazing sound throughout for Neil’s self-titled debut – shootout winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides. Both sides are rich, full and Tubey Magical with a big bottom end and excellent resolution.
Surely one of Neil’s toughest to find with top quality sound – and only these early pressings with the original mix have the potential to sound as good as this one does.
Six years later, in 2024, we had acquired enough copies of Neil’s debut to do the shootout again. (Yes, it seems that you may have to wait until 2030 for a chance to buy a Hot Stamper pressing of the album from us. However, feel free to use the stamper information provided in the blog listing linked here to help you avoid some of the worst sounding stampers of them all, the earliest ones.
To be clear, some of the later label reissues that come in the second cover are even worse sounding than the first mix stamper pressings that come in the first cover.
(A great deal more on the superior sound of some reissues can be found at the bottom of this listing.)
UPDATE 2024
In our latest shootout, the original mix on multiple copies we played did poorly.
We were wrong and for that we apologize. Please ignore what we wrote about the album below back in 2018. The old mix definitely does not beat the new mix.
The Old Mix Beats the New Mix
We’ve always felt that this album was not nearly as well recorded as the albums that followed. Why that would be the case we do not pretend to know. It was a long time ago. Who on earth has the arrogance to think they know precisely what went wrong? (I could actually name a few people but the less said about them the better.)
It turns out the remixed pressings we’d been selling for years were not the way to hear this album at its best. Neil wanted his voice to sound clearer and more present than the first mix, but the approach the engineers took to increase the clarity and presence was simply to boost the middle and upper midrange, a boost that seriously compromises the wonderful Tubey Magic found in the rich lower midrange of the original mix.
Neil may have liked the sound of his voice better on the new mix, played back on whatever mediocre-at-best stereo he was using at the time, but we here at Better Records are of a decidedly different opinion. On a modern, highly-resolving system Neil’s voice will not sound the least bit “buried” on the original mix, not on the best pressings anyway. Of course, the best ones are the only ones we sell.
If you want to hear this album sound right, we strongly believe that the original mix is the only way to go. And if you want to hear this album sound really right, better-than-you-ever-thought-possible right, you need a copy that was mastered, pressed and cleaned properly, and that means a Hot Stamper from Better Records.
Our Big Shootout
The sound of the typical pressing leaves a LOT to be desired. You get copies where Neil’s voice is so forward that it quickly becomes fatiguing and unpleasant. Many later pressings are just the opposite — Neil’s voice is so muffled he’s practically underwater, probably because those pressings are made from copy tapes of compromised fidelity.
It’s the rare copy that puts him in the right place, and even then there are still plenty of ways in which a copy can fall short of the best. But this original handily won our shootout. It towered over most of what we played. There was nothing that could touch it.
Side One
The Emperor of Wyoming
The Loner
If I Could Have Her Tonight
I’ve Been Waiting for You
The Old Laughing Lady
Side Two
String Quartet from Whiskey Boot Hill
Here We Are in the Years
What Did You Do to My Life?
I’ve Loved Her So Long
The Last Trip to Tulsa
The Story Behind the Mix
Some sources place the album’s release date on January 22, 1969, while other sources have the release date as Young’s 23rd birthday, November 12, 1968. It was then partially remixed and re-released in November 1969, but at no time has the album ever charted on the Billboard 200.
The album was released on January 22, 1969. The first release used the Haeco-CSG encoding system. This technology was intended to make stereo records compatible with mono record players, but had the unfortunate side effect of degrading the sound. Young was unhappy with the first release. “The first mix was awful”, he was reported as saying in Cash Box of September 6, 1969. “I was trying to bury my voice, because I didn’t like the way it sounded.”
The album was therefore remixed (as announced in Rolling Stone issue 47, from December 13), and re-released without Haeco-CSG processing. The words “Neil Young” were added to the album cover after what was left of the original stock had been used up, so copies of both mixes exist in the original sleeve. Copies of the original mix are now rare and sought-after, because many Neil Young fans believe that the remix diminished the songs, especially “Here We Are in the Years”.
A List of Nearly 200 Reissues that Can Beat the Originals
In our experience, the records linked here potentially sound their best on the right reissue.
What the “right” reissue is — from which era, from which country, with which stampers — is something I have spent most of my adult life trying to figure out. Now that I have retired, our staff of ten is carrying on that work and constantly discovering new and better pressings.
Sometimes the new and better pressings turn out not to be the reissues we used to like, and when that happens we learn from our mistake, admit we were wrong and offer our customers something even better sounding than before.
We call them Hot Stampers, and we make them available to the serious audiophile who appreciates — and is willing to pay a premium price for — the best sounding vinyl in the world.
Naturally, they are almost exclusively pressed on vintage vinyl, since modern remasterings, in our experience, consistently fail to provide the higher sound quality they promise.
Further Reading