Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now
Here is our review from 2005.
After doing our next shootout for Who’s Next in 2007, and replaying the Classic afterwards, we changed our minds about Classic’s version of the album.
Apparently, a surprising amount of audio progress was made from 2005 to 2007, reflected in this review as well as dozens of others.
Looking back, 2007 seems to have been a milestone year for us here at Better Records, although we certainly had no idea at the time that such dramatic changes had been put in motion.
For example, later that same year we swore off Heavy Vinyl (prompted by the less-than-enchanting sound of the Rhino pressing of Blue) and committed ourselves to doing record shootouts of vintage pressings full time. To accomplish this we eventually ended up doubling the staff.
(Cleaning and playing every record you see on our site turned out to very time consuming. No one man band can begin to fathom the complex and random nature of the vinyl LP, which explains why the audiophile reviewers of the world are right about as often as the proverbially stopped clock.)
Live and learn is our motto, and progress in audio is a feature, not a bug, of record collecting at the most advanced levels. (“Advanced” is a code word for having no interest in any remastered pressing marketed to the audiophile community. There is nothing advanced about these deceptively-packaged mediocrities if you have the stereo to reveal their shortcomings. After spending fifty years in audio (1975-2025, we do. )
This is how good Who’s Next sounds these days, when we have them, which is not often.
In 2007 we did a big shootout for Who’s Next, and as is so often the case, the shortcomings of the Heavy Vinyl version were mercilessly revealed when played head to head with The Right Vintage Pressing. (And not the original Track by the way.)
Oddly enough, and contrary to expectation, even the domestic Decca label copies had amazing sound, not just the British Track label pressings I had favored for so long. (To keep from being influenced by biases of any kind, when we do these shootouts the listeners have no idea which pressing they are evaluating.)
Allow me to replay some of the relevant commentary from our Hot Stamper shootout.
The Classic Almost Rocks
In fact, let’s get right to the sound of that one. It’s actually shockingly good, better than it has any right to be coming from Classic Records. The bass is PHENOMENAL; no British Track pressing had the bass punch and note-like clarity of the Classic. It shows you the kind of bass you had no idea could possibly be on the tape. It reminds me a bit of the Classic pressing of the first Zep album: in the case of the Zep, it has dynamics that simply are not to be found anywhere else. The Classic Who LP has that kind of bass — it can’t be found elsewhere so don’t bother looking. (Don’t get me wrong; we’ll keep looking, but after thirty plus years of Track Who LPs, we kinda know when we’re beaten.)
The Who Sound
But what the Classic is missing is what the best Tracks have in spades: weight and whomp. There’s a POWER to the sound that the Classic only hints at. The crashing guitar chords that are the hallmark of The Who Sound in general and Who’s Next in particular lack the weight of the real thing; they don’t punch you in the gut the way Townsend no doubt wanted them to. (And Glyn Johns too, one of our favorite engineers of all time). Moon’s drums don’t blast away like cannons on the Classic.
Folks, this is The Who’s sound. Everybody who’s ever seen them live knows it. (I saw them back in the day when Moon was still behind his kit and I’ll never forget it.)
I guess you can say that Classic did the best they could, but when you hear a good Track copy, one that can REALLY ROCK, there’s no going back. Playing the Classic you would never suspect that you’re missing very much of the Who Sound, but of course, in the world of records, everything is relative. You can’t know what you’re missing until the right record shows it to you. This is why we play so many copies of the same record — we’re looking for the one that has the sound we’ve never heard before.
I’m A Reissue
The other problem with the Classic is that, as good as it is, it has that “I’m A Reissue” sound all through the mids and highs. It can’t hold a candle to the good Brits in terms of sweetness, smoothness, spaciousness, richness, presence, life, texture and all the other things we talk about endlessly on our site.
Tubey Magical Acoustic Guitars? Not gonna happen on the Classic. British Track LP only. Multiply that times every instrument on the album and you have a list of what’s better about the right Track pressing.