More of the Music of Led Zeppelin
Yet Another Record that Sounds Better on Big Speakers at Loud Levels
In our review for this album, we debunked the Classic Records pressing using a very simple test which you may want to try at home.
The test we stumbled upon is actually quite an easy one to use — a copy that makes you want to turn up the volume is likely to be a winner. The Classic does not pass that test.
We threw one on and just couldn’t deal with the edgy vocals and upper-midrange boost. We wanted to turn down the volume as quickly as we could get our hands on the knob. As far as we’re concerned there’s no substitute for The Real Thing. As hard as it is to find great sounding copies of this album, it’s even harder for us to sit through a sub-par version like the Classic.
And boy were our faces red. We used to think the Classic version was pretty decent, but the best originals SLAUGHTER it! We had never done a shootout for this album before 2007. We didn’t feel up to the challenge, because the typical pressing tends to be miserable — gritty, grainy, and hard sounding, with congested mids, dull up top, and on and on.
But 2007 turned out to be a Milestone Year for us here at Better Records.
Looking back on that year, the discovery of the Walker Cleaning System, along with some system upgrades, allowed us to jump to the next level.
With better cleaning and more revealing and accurate playback, the Zeppelin shootout we conducted in 20o7 made it clear to us that the Classic was all sorts of wrong up against the best domestic pressings.
Try the Turn Up the Volume Test and see if your copy makes the grade, or makes you want to turn it right back down. I’m guessing the latter, unless you were lucky enough to get one of our Hot Stampers from the last shootout. There sure weren’t enough to go around.
More records that sound best the way this one does: