More of the Music of King Crimson
Hot Stamper Pressings of Progressive Rock Albums Available Now
If you have the Atlantic pressing, from any era, you have never begun to hear this record at its best. It was cleary mastered from copy tapes, which is where its dubby sound comes from.
UK Polydor reissue? Passable, not really worth the labor to put them in a shootout just to have them earn mediocre-at-best grades.
The same can be said for some of the earliest UK pink label Island pressings.
None of them has ever won a shootout and probably none ever will.
As a rule, we don’t buy them, for two reasons:
- They are quite expensive in clean condition, and
- Their sound quality does not justify paying the premium price sellers are asking.
We leave them to the record collectors who like to collect originals.
The Mobile Fidelity pressing is surprisingly good, one of their best. Rumor has it that they stopped making their version when Editions EG came out with a Half-Speed mastered pressing of their own, which, like most Editions EG records in our experience, sounds about as awful as any copy of the album can.
We and our customers are audiophiles. We like to collect records with good sound. If we have our heads on straight, we don’t care what pressing we buy as long as it’s the one with the best sound. (Of course, not everybody agrees with us about that, but enough of you out there do, such that our business is sure to continue to prosper in the years to come.)
In the Court of the Crimson King is an album we think we know well, one that checks off a number of important boxes for us here at Better Records:
- It’s a personal favorite
- It’s a must own rock album from 1969
- It’s their rock masterpiece, as well as their magnum opus
- It’s a Demo Disc for big speakers that play at loud levels
- It’s our pick for King Crimson’s best sounding recording
- It’s part of the core collection of well recorded rock & pop albums
Further Reading
- Hot Stamper testimonial letters
- Record collecting for audiophiles from A to Z
- How to get the most out of your records – a step by step guide
