Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now
The MoFi pressing of this album is a joke. It’s so compressed, lifeless, and lacking in bottom end punch that it would hardly interfere with even the most polite conversation at a wine tasting.
I consider it one of the worst sounding versions of the album ever made.
It’s an “Audiophile” record in the worst sense of the word.
Truly a hall of shame pressing and a Half-Speed mastered disaster if there ever was one.
A well-known reviewer actually — I kid you not — was still defending the sound of the MoFi as late as 2010.
2010!
In one of his reviews earlier in 2008 he had used it to test a piece of equipment he was evaluating. I’m not kidding. In 2010 he wrote this:
Mo-Fi’s half-speed mastered edition (MFSL 1-060) was controversial when issued in 1980, with its jacked up lower bass, icy top end, sucked out midrange and low overall level. I’ll tell you though, as my system has improved, the more I’ve come to appreciate it. It offers outstanding focus and clarity and its portrayal of inner detail and transient snap is unsurpassed. Admittedly the sound is not for everybody.
It’s not for me, that’s for damn sure.
And “unsurpassed” simply means you have never had the experience of hearing a good sounding copy of Sticky Fingers.
Which is sad, don’t you think? Especially if you fancy yourself a “record expert.”
If you would like to know more about Sticky Fingers, the best album these guys ever made, we’ve written quite a bit about it, and those reviews and commentaries are linked below.
How Bad Is It?
If this isn’t the perfect example of a pass/not-yet record, I don’t know what would be.
Some records are so wrong, or are so lacking in qualities that are critically important to their sound — qualities typically found in abundance on the right vintage pressings — that the defenders of these records are fundamentally failing to judge them properly.
We call these records pass/not-yet, implying that the supporters of these kinds of records are not where they need to be in audio yet, but that there is still hope. If they target their resources (time and money) well, there is no reason they can’t get to where they need to be, the same way we did. Our audio advice section may be of help in that regard.
Tea for the Tillerman on the new 45 may be substandard in every way, but it is not a pass/not-yet pressing. It lacks one thing above all others, Tubey Magic, so if your system has an abundance of that quality, as many tube systems do, the new pressing may be quite listenable and enjoyable. Those whose systems can play the record and not notice this important shortcoming are not exactly failing. They most likely have a system that is heavily colored and not very revealing, but it is a system that is probably not completely hopeless.
A system that can play the MoFi pressing of Aja without revealing to the listener how wrong it is is on another level of bad entirely, and that is what would qualify as a failing system. My system in the ’80s played that record just fine. Looking back on it now, I realize it was doing more wrong than right.
We were still selling Heavy Vinyl when this Neil Young album came out in 2005, but a scant two years later we had had enough of the sonically-challenged titles that were being produced by the boatload. It was then that we decided to focus all our energies on finding good vintage vinyl for our audiophile customers.
In 2007 we took the question we had asked rhetorically above and turned it into a full-blown commentary.
Looking back, 2007 turned out to be a milestone year for us here as Better Records.
We Can Help
If you are stuck in a Heavy Vinyl rut, we can help you get out of it. We did precisely that for these folks, and we can do it for you.
The best way out of that predicament is to hear how mediocre these modern records sound compared to the vintage Hot Stampers we offer.
Once you hear the difference, your days of buying newly remastered releases will most likely be over.
Even if our pricey curated pressings are too dear, as the English say, you can avail yourself of the methods we describe to find killer records on your own.