Month: September 2019

Buffalo Springfield – Finally, a Pressing with Some Highs and Lows

Hot Stamper Pressings of Country and Country Rock Available Now

Note to customers: We rarely have Hot Stamper pressings of Buffalo Springfield available on the site, so albums with Stephen Stills or Neil Young playing on them are about the best we can do these days. We regret we must go many years between shootouts for this seminal band’s albums, two of which are personal favorites and have been since they were released, 1968’s (Again) and 1969’s (Last Time Around).

The following review was written many years ago.

This is the first White Hot Stamper pressing of Buffalo Springfield’s self-titled LP to ever hit the site, and folks, you are in for shock if you know the album well at all. Although for the most part this is no Demo Disc, this pressing is SO MUCH BETTER than any other version we know of that it just blows our minds. I had my mind blown about ten years ago when I found my first one, and nothing has changed. It’s still the best pressing ever.

Side One

A+++, and my notes say that this is the only side one that actually has any frequency extension on either end. For whatever reason, the mastering engineers who cut this first album rarely managed to put any real top or bottom on the record. Why I can’t imagine. Highs and lows are on the tape; this copy proves it.

Again, notes for this side say it’s by far the best, with Tubey Magic, richness, bottom end, presence and freedom from distortion that no other copy could touch. You will not believe it, and the more copies you have tried in the past, the more astonishing the sound of this copy will be to you.

Side Two

A+++, yes, it won both sides in our shootout, and there actually is Demo Disc sound on this side. Track three, Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It, is AMAZING sounding here, probably because the arrangement is so simple that not much studio trickery was needed. (Kind Woman on the third album is that way too — Demonstration Quality on the best pressings.)

So rich and Tubey-Magical, yet clear and very high-rez, this version of the album changes everything. There is simply nothing like it, and when you hear it you will know that that is no hype.

Want to find your own killer copy?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that tend to win our shootouts.

As of 2025, this record should sound its best this way:

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Duke Ellington – Piano In The Foreground

More Duke Ellington

More Jazz Piano Recordings

  • Two KILLER sides: Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on the first side and solid Double Plus (A++) sound on the second 
  • Ellington was inspired on this date and clearly playing his heart out – eleven of the twelve tracks were recorded in one session (at Radio Recorders right here in L.A.)
  • Exceptionally quiet vinyl for a vintage 360 stereo Columbia LP – this copy played well beyond our expectations, with Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus surfaces
  • “This trio recording, with his orchestra’s rhythm section of drummer Sam Woodyard and Aaron Bell, clearly unveils the maestro’s powerful touch, black-and-tan chords, and unstoppable swing, all often overshadowed in the work of his bigger bands.” – Amazon

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Deep Purple / Who Do We Think We Are! – Our Shootout Winner from 2011

More Deep Purple

More British Blues Rock

This British Import Purple Records pressing has a GREAT side one, and AMAZING A+++ side two, and VERY QUIET VINYL throughout! I don’t think you could find a better sounding side two no matter what you did. The sound here is BIG, BOLD and LIVELY with real weight down low and excellent presence. It really JUMPS out of the speakers and fills up the room! Side one is very good as well, with all of the qualities described above. It doesn’t fully open up the way side two does, but it still slaughtered most of the copies we played it against.

The big hit song from this one was Woman From Tokyo and it sounds excellent on this copy — very natural with real texture to the guitars and lots of WHOMP down low. (more…)

Art Blakey Quartet – A Jazz Message

  • This original Impulse stereo pressing has stunning nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound from start to finish 
  • Both sides here are superb — big, full-bodied and super dynamic with a huge bottom end and lots of space around all of the players
  • “Although this session was under Blakey’s leadership, Stitt (on both tenor and alto) emerges as the main soloist, playing his trademark bebop lines with creativity and typical enthusiasm.” – All Music

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Liszt / Sonata in B Minor & Other Pieces / Curzon

More of the music of Franz Liszt (1811-1880)

Hot Stamper Classical LPs on Decca & London

This Super Hot Stamper solo piano record is 1963 Decca recording technology at its finest (or would be if we had ten copies to shoot out and could find the White Hot Stamper pressing hidden among them).

As it is, we are happy to have found this one, Super Hot on both sides, an amazingly realistic representation of a piano. You will have a hard time finding better. 

And the music, especially on side two, is compelling and wonderful. This is classical music that will engage you at the deepest and most serious level. Widely considered Liszt’s masterpiece, in Curzon’s forceful hands it is not hard to understand why.

Side One

A++ Super Hot Stamper sound, with a clear piano surrounded in space. Present and dynamic, there is little to fault here, save a touch of smear and a slight lack of weight.

Real pianos in live recitals have weight that I have never heard reproduced by any stereo system, so “real weight” is a relative term, one that applies more to recordings than to the live instrument itself. (more…)

Fleetwood Mac / Mystery To Me

More Fleetwood Mac

Reviews and Commentaries for Fleetwood Mac

Here it is, folks — the best sounding copy of Mystery To Me to ever hit our site. This copy positively DOES IT ALL — it’s super open and spacious with tons of energy and incredible presence. The bottom end is just KILLER and there’s dramatically more richness and fullness than you get on most copies out there. 

It’s beyond difficult to find great sounding copies of this album, which is why it’s been about four years since we last had these on the site.

Mystery To Me is my All Time Favorite Fleetwood Mac album, and this White Hot Stamper copy has the sound that I always DREAMED this album could have, but didn’t — until now. This is just the second Hot Stamper shootout that we’ve been able to do, since clean copies with the right stampers are ridiculously hard to come by. I’m not kidding. I have spent the last ten years and more trying to find the right stampers for this record. I can tell you I was dead wrong so many times in the past that I had almost given up. Time and time again, just when I thought I had it figured out, I would go back and play my so-called “hot” copy, to find myself miserably disappointed all over again. (more…)

Sibelius / Finlandia in Phase IV!

More of the music of Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

More of the music of Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)

In 2013 we stumbled upon the London pressing of this relatively rare record — never heard of it before, and who on earth is Kazimierz Kord? — and were shocked to hear how good the random copy of this unknown-to-us recording sounded. The brass was incredibly solid and powerful; I don’t think I had ever heard Finlandia with the kind of heavy brass that this record was able to reproduce. We had to know more! 

We started by pulling out every performance on every label we had in our backroom and playing them one after another. Most never made it to the half-minute mark. Sour or thin brass on the opening salvo of Finlandia? Forget it; on to the trade-in pile you go.

If you have too many classical records taking up too much space and need to winnow them down to a manageable size, pick a composer and play half a dozen of his works. Most classical records display an irredeemable mediocrity right from the start; it doesn’t take a pair of golden ears to hear it. If you’re after the best sound, it’s the rare record that will have it, which makes clearing shelf space a lot easier than you might imagine. If you keep more than one out of ten you’re probably setting the bar too low, if our experience is any guide. (more…)

Sticky Fingers Is a MoFi Disaster to Beat Them All – Now With Video

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones

If you click on the video you can read some of the silly comments people are making about this awful pressing, which happens to be one of the worst sounding versions of Sticky Fingers ever committed to vinyl.

When you stop to consider how awful most pressings are compared to the only version that has ever sounded good to us, the right original domestic LP,  that’s really saying something.

The MoFi pressing of this album is a joke. It’s so compressed, lifeless, and lacking in low end weight and power that it would hardly interfere with even the most polite conversation at a wine tasting. I consider it one of the worst sounding versions ot the album ever made.

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Song Book #2 – Brash Sound? Not this Copy!

Hot Stamper Pressings of Ella Fitzgerald’s Albums Available Now

The first Harold Arlen Song Book to hit the site, and with sound like this it’s going to be very hard to beat. White Hot on side two, Super Hot on side one, Ella is especially rich, Tubey Magical and breathy throughout.

The space is HUGE and the sound so rich. The vocals have dramatically less hardness and the orchestra — especially on side two — is not brash for once.

Huge amounts of Tubey Magic as well, which is key to the best sounding copies. The sound needs weight, warmth and tubes or you might as well be playing a CD.

Hardness and Brashness

Want to know what we are on about with all this talk of hardness and brashness? Easy, just play the average copy. Unless you have been exceptionally fortunate to have chanced upon a properly mastered and pressed and cared for copy, you will hear plenty of both.

It’s one of the main reasons we have such a hard time doing shootouts for Ella’s Songbook albums. The other of course is the poor condition most copies are in. Few pressings do not have marks that play or damaged grooves. The players of the ’50s and ’60s, not to mention their owners, were ruinous on the records of the day.

Which is simply another reason not to expect another top copy of this album to come to the site any time soon. Give us three to five years or so and we might be able to find another batch with which to do a shootout. In that time we might look at fifty copies, buy ten, and end up with five that are worth playing. We obviously wouldn’t bother if the music and sound were so good. (Click on The Legendary Songbooks tab above to read more about the historical value of the music. The sound we can judge for ourselves.)

Stereo Vs. Mono

It is our opinion that the mono takes all the fun out of the Billy May’s deliberately wide, spacious orchestral presentation surrounding Ella. Which is too bad: the mono pressings are five times as common as the stereo ones.

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The Glorious Sound of Tubes (60s Tubes, That Is)

More of the Music of Thelonious Monk

On this record, more than most, the tubes potentially make all the difference. 

Keep in mind that we are referring specifically to 1963 tubes, not the stuff that engineers are using today to make “tube-mastered” records.

Today’s modern records barely hint at the Tubey Magical sound of a record like this, if our experience with hundreds of them is any guide. We, unlike so many of the audiophile reviewers of today, have a very hard time taking any of the new pressings seriously. We think our position is pretty clear, and we have yet to hear more than a stray record or two that would make us want to change our minds.

If you’ve ever heard a pressing that sounds as good as this one, you know there hasn’t been a record manufactured in the last forty years that has this kind of sound. Right, wrong or otherwise, this sound is simply not part of the modern world we live in. If you want to be transported back to Philharmonic Hall in New York circa 1963, you will need a record like this to do it.

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