More Led Zeppelin
Reviews and Commentaries for Led Zeppelin I
- In 2021 we came across a superb original domestic pressing of Zep’s debut with Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl, especially considering that this is an early Atlantic pressing
- Note that from our perspective in 2023, we would be very unlikely to try another domestic original — our guess is that it would be more likely that the next original would be worse sounding and noisier rather than better sounding and quieter, and the right imports are practically guaranteed to beat the pants off of any domestic LP
- The story of how we came to possess this specific LP is told below
- 5 stars: “Taking the heavy, distorted electric blues of Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Cream to an extreme… But the key to the group’s attack was subtlety: it wasn’t just an onslaught of guitar noise, it was shaded and textured, filled with alternating dynamics and tempos.”
There’s an interesting story behind this copy.
I bought it from an erstwhile customer who also had one of our Hot Stamper imports from years back, and he swore up and down that this original domestic pressing was a step up in class, a true White Hot Stamper pressing.
Well, that turned out not to be the case, and it’s the main reason shootouts on highly-tuned, properly-calibrated, extremely-resolving large audio systems are the only way to separate the winners from the also-rans.
What The Best Sides Of This Legendary British Blues Rock Album Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1969
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space
No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
Like any Zeppelin album, this music absolutely requires big bass. So many copies are weak in that area, suffering from a lack of weight down low. When some of the deep bass is missing, the tonal balance shifts upwards and the sound can become upper midrangy and bright. When you get a copy without the kind of big, meaty bottom end a track like “Dazed and Confused” demands, you’ll be left cold — just as we were from all the second rate copies we heard this time around.
Engineering
There’s a reason the first Zeppelin album is one of the two best they recorded: it’s engineered by Glyn Johns, one of the greats.
(The other killer Zep recording is of course Led Zeppelin II, by far the best thing Eddie Kramer and Andy Johns, Glyn’s younger brother, ever did.)
It was only about 2000 or so that we discovered what an amazing engineer (and producer) Glyn Johns is. A Hot Stamper of the first Eagles album (his masterpiece) on the original Asylum White Label blew my mind, produced and engineered by none other, so I quickly started looking around for other records he might have had a hand in.
The list was long: Who’s Next. Let It Bleed. Sticky Fingers (the best-sounding Stones album). On The Border (my personal favorite Eagles album). Led Zeppelin’s debut (my favorite Zep LP). A Nod Is As Good As A Wink. All his. Which explains why he is one of our favorite engineers.
What We’re Listening For On Led Zeppelin’s Debut Album
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
- The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
- Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
- Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
- Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
Vinyl Condition
Mint Minus Minus is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)
Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don’t have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.
If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that’s certainly your prerogative, but we can’t imagine losing what’s good about this music — the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight — just to hear it with less background noise.
A Must Own Rock Record
We consider Zep’s debut LP a masterpiece. It’s a Demo Disc Quality recording should be part of any serious Rock Collection.
Others that belong in that category can be found here.
Side One
Good Times Bad Times
Babe I’m Gonna Leave You
You Shook Me
Dazed and Confused
Side Two
Your Time Is Gonna Come
Black Mountain Side
Communication Breakdown
I Can’t Quit You Baby
How Many More Times
AMG 5 Star Rave Review
Led Zeppelin had a fully formed, distinctive sound from the outset, as their eponymous debut illustrates. Taking the heavy, distorted electric blues of Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Cream to an extreme, Zeppelin created a majestic, powerful brand of guitar rock constructed around simple, memorable riffs and lumbering rhythms.
But the key to the group’s attack was subtlety: it wasn’t just an onslaught of guitar noise, it was shaded and textured, filled with alternating dynamics and tempos.