Month: October 2023

Letter of the Week – “FINALLY, a copy that does this brilliant, impassioned music justice.”

More of the Music of Sinead O’Connor

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

Man, you guys did it again!!! You NEVER disappoint. 🙂

I just got done spinning Sinead’s “Lion & the Cobra.” OMG. This is an album that almost never sounds good. But the copy you sold me sounds INCREDIBLE. FINALLY, a copy that does this brilliant, impassioned music justice. I sat there (not kidding – embarrassingly) with tears streaming. Ridiculous.

Perhaps even more of a testimony, my 14-year-old son heard it from upstairs, came downstairs to check it out – and actually ended up staying through both sides! We both looked at each other when it was done, and shook our heads in disbelief. AMAZING.

Can’t thank you guys enough – for your dedication to quality in sound reproduction, and for allowing music of incredible quality to be well represented – as it SHOULD be.

Steve M.

Steve,

Thanks so much for your letter!

Further Reading

Bill Withers – Menagerie

More Bill Withers

  • With two nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sides, this copy is close to the BEST we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner
  • Big, rich and smooth — this is vintage analog after all ** this is just the right sound for this music
  • Includes Withers’ signature hit, “Lovely Day” as well as “Lovely Night For Dancing”
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Where his Sussex material was slyly eclectic, touching on a number of different styles, this album is more cohesive, a smooth album that points the way toward quiet storm while retaining a warm soulfulness, largely due to Withers’ wonderful voice.”

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Shaded Dogs with 12s Stampers Are Not the Way to Go on LSC 2566

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Edvard Grieg Available Now

One set of stampers for the Shaded Dogs we played in our most recent shootout sounded consistently subpar, 12s/12s.

The sound was blary on both sides. (More records with blary sound can be found here.)

Although the Shaded Dog originals with the right stampers will always win our shootouts, the White Dog reissues still sound quite good to us, just not as good.

This Shaded Dog might be passable on an old school audio system, but it was too unpleasant to be played on the high quality modern equipment we use.

There are quite a number of other vintage classical releases that we’ve run into over the years with similar shortcomings. For fans of vintage Living Stereo pressings, here are some to avoid.

Some audiophiles may be impressed by the average Shaded Dog pressing, but I can assure you that we here at Better Records are decidedly not of that persuasion.

Something in the range of five to ten per cent of the major label Golden Age recordings we play will eventually make it to the site. The vast majority just don’t sound all that good to us. (Many have second- and third-rate performances and those get tossed without ever making it to a shootout.)

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Blood, Sweat & Tears – Self-Titled on 360

Blood, Sweat and Tears’ Second Album Is a Top Test Disc

UPDATE 2026

Our last shootout took place in 2023. Hard to know when the next one will be.

Here is how we described our last Shootout Winner.

The versions of the album we prefer are the 360 originals, but most of the dozen or more stamper numbers we know of cannot hold a candle to this pressing.

The sound is huge, rich, dynamic and powerful (particularly on side one) – BS&T is a permanent member of our Top 100 and a Demo Disc par excellence.

This is Roy Halee‘s engineering masterpiece, and here’s the kind of pressing that, given the right equipment, room, and setup, really makes our case (also particularly on side one).

Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you.

It is our considered opinion that this is the best sounding rock record ever made. I may be biased by the fact that I like the music so much; nevertheless, on a big stereo, a Hot Stamper pressing like the one here is nothing less than astounding. It has the power of live music. You don’t find that on a record too often, practically never in fact. I put this record at the top of our Ten Best Sounding Rock Records of All Time list for good reason — it’s in a class of its own.

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