Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now
UPDATE 2020
This review from 2007 describes our experience of having stumbled upon the right stampers for Meddle. To this day, only these stampers and no others have won the many shootouts we’ve done for the album in the ensuing years, perhaps as many as a dozen shootouts or more.
These stampers are also very hard to find, which is why you may not have seen a copy of Meddle hit the site in a while. If we could find them, believe me, we would have them up all the time, as this is one amazing sounding album.
To see more albums with one set of stampers that consistently win shootouts, click here.
Want to find your own shootout winner?
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This Harvest Green Label British Import pressing has a side one that goes FAR beyond anything we’ve ever heard for this album. We had no choice but to award this side one the very rare A with FOUR pluses. We’ve never given any side of any other Pink Floyd record such a high grade, so you can be sure that you’ve never heard them sound this amazing.
- Our lengthy commentary entitled outliers and out-of-this-world sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how to go about finding them.
- We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.
- Nowadays we often place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that, out of the blue, reveal to us sound that fundamentally changes what we thought we knew about these often familiar recordings.
- When this pressing (or pressings) landed on our turntable, we found ourselves asking “Who knew?“
- Perhaps an even better question would have been “how high is up?”
We’ve been buying up every clean copy we can find with good stampers since we found our last White Hot Meddle back in March. Unfortunately, most of them left us a bit cold. Most copies just don’t have the kind of magic that we know is on the tape. Beyond that, many of them are too noisy to sell — even the minty looking ones.
The Best Side One Ever
Side one here is OFF THE CHARTS, OUT OF THIS WORLD, DEMO DISC QUALITY. Everything you’ve ever wanted in a Pink Floyd album is here in generous quantities — transparency, breathy vocals, HUGE bass, warmth, richness, ambience, and depth to the soundfield. A copy like this allows you to hear INTO the music in a way that would never be possible with a lesser pressing. The presence and immediacy are staggering, and the bass is going to blow your mind. There’s TONS of life and energy, and the highs are silky beyond belief. This is tubey magical analog at its best, folks — it’s an A++++ side without doubt.
I can count the records on one hand that we’ve given such a high grade to. We only feel comfortable giving the A-Four-Plus designation to the ultimate copies of records we are VERY familiar with: Blood, Sweat & Tears; Magical Mystery Tour; JT; and now Meddle.
Side two of this copy is amazing as well, but just doesn’t reach the heights of the wildly hot side one. It’s probably a good thing for everyone, because we would have to charge at least a cool grand for this copy if it did! The sound is super tubey magical — so much that it’s a bit much at times. The best sounding sides are a bit more open and spacious. Still, it’s an excellent side two that’s very hard to beat — silky highs, breathy vocals, and very sweet. We rate it A+ – A++.
And you’ve seen this commentary on the site before too, but it describes this record perfectly:
Once again, here’s a record that sounds so good, you feel like you just threaded up the master tape and hit play. The effect is that you’re so totally IMMERSED in the musical experience you forget you’re listening to a record. You’re hearing the music exactly the way the musicians intended it to sound. You can’t ask for more than that.
Musically this record really grew on me over the course of this year. There’s not a bad cut on it, and most of them have not been played to death like everything else by the band.
Play Fearless to hear Pink Floyd at their best, and I mean anywhere. Psychedelic Pop doesn’t get any better.
Meddle sounds best this way:
- On big speakers at loud levels
- On the right British import pressing
- On the right Harvest reissue pressing
Further Reading