Month: February 2025

Neil Young’s Guitar Masterpiece – Danger Bird

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

Listen to the way Danger Bird (the second track on side one of  Zuma opens. Each instrument, one by one, slowly, deliberately, one could almost say haltingly, feeds into the mix, until the churning guitars give way to Neil’s spare vocal — fatalistic, doomed, already resigned to some fate he barely understands. 

Even though the song has just begun, you sense that Neil feels a weight and a darkness bearing down on him, that it’s ongoing, that it’s already started, that somehow you’re coming into it in the middle, well after the weight of it has begun to crush and perhaps even kill him. He knows the story of Danger Bird all too well.

It’s as powerful and intense a piece of music as any I have ever experienced; sublime in its simplicity, transcendental in effect. You feel yourself swept along, an out of body experience that you can’t control. When Neil launches into the first of many guitar solos the sense of journeying or exploring with him the imaginary musical world he is creating is palpable. He doesn’t seem to know where it will lead and neither do you. There is no structure to reassure you, no end in sight, only the succession of notes that play from moment to moment, first tensing, then relaxing; cresting, then falling away.

Music has the power to take you out of the world you know and place you in a world of its own making. How it can do that nobody knows. Whatever Neil tapped into to make that happen on Danger Bird, he succeeded completely.

If you’re in the right frame of mind, in the right environment, with everything working audio-wise, a minute into this song you will no longer be sitting in your comfy audio chair. You won’t know where you are, which is exactly where you should be.

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Gary Wright / The Dream Weaver – One and Done

More Gary Wright

  • Superb sound throughout this vintage Warner Bros. pressing, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • Big, rich and full-bodied with lovely texture to the synths and relatively little grit – these are all qualities critically important to the sound of the better copies
  • Only the second copy to hit the site in nearly two years – pressings with this kind of sound are tougher to come by than you might imagine
  • 4 stars: “Backed with only drums and a wide assortment of keyboards, Gary Wright crafted instantly recognizable tunes such as the title cut and “Love Is Alive,” which caught on and remain staples of classic rock stations around the U.S. … Dream Weaver hasn’t lost any of its magic over time.”
  • If you’re a Gary Wright fan, or perhaps a fan of mid-70s synth-pop, this title, a personal favorite of mine from 1975, is surely a Must Own.
  • In our opinion, Dream Weaver is the only Gary Wright record you’ll ever need. Click on this link to see more titles we like to call one and done

Dream Weaver checks off a few of our favorite boxes:

Keyboards and More Keyboards

An all-keyboard pop record like this was a rarity at the time. The only other instruments besides drums (and one track with guitar) are keyboards. Every song is layered with multi-tracked clavinets, organs, and Moogs – it was a remarkable feat in 1975 to create an album with nothing but keys. Listen to the title track, the most dynamic song on the record, and you will hear just how well all of those stacked keyboards and synths work together. (Steve Winwood’s Back in the High Life borrowed a page or two from Gary’s solo debut here.)

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Doesn’t Anyone Know What Love Is (Supposed to Sound Like)?

Click Here to See Our Most Recent Review for a Real Gold Label Stereo Pressing of Forever Changes 

The one person we can say for sure who must have absolutely no idea what a vintage pressing of the album is supposed to sound like is Chris Bellman. Allow us to make the case.

Below you can see our notes for the Rhino Heavy Vinyl pressing of Forever Changes cut by Chris for Bernie Grundman Mastering in 2012.

We recently got hold of a copy locally and figured why not give it a spin and see how one of the most respected mastering engineers of the day, CB, fared with this apparently difficult to master title. (Others have tried and failed. See here and here.)

The Gold Label pressings are the only ones we buy these days. The Big Red E Elektras are passable at best, and everything after them is terrible, including imports and all the Heavy Vinyl reissues that we’ve had the misfortune to play over the years. We hope to be posting some of the stampers to avoid (we call them bad stamps) before too long.

Let’s get right into the sound of this 2012 remaster. We played the two tracks on each side that we’re most familiar with from doing shootouts for the title.

As the record played, to the best of our ability we made notes of the sound we were hearing:

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The Fantasy Film World of… “Did MoFi bother to listen to this before they ruined it?”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bernard Herrmann Available Now

Sonic Grade: F

Obviously our customers know by now that a Hot Stamper London or Decca pressing is going to be far better than the Anadisq that MoFi cut in the mid-90s.

How much better?

Words fail me.

Their record was a complete disaster. Perhaps some of the MoFi collectors didn’t notice because they had nothing to compare it to. 

God forbid they would ever lower themselves to buy as common a pressing as a London. Had they done so, what they would have heard is huge amounts of musical information that is simply nowhere to be found on the MoFi.

There is a place on this album, I failed to note exactly where, in which a group of tubas play a descending scale that is somewhat buried in the mix. On the London, they can clearly be heard and recognized as tubas. On the MoFi, I don’t think they can be heard except as some general group of low notes, and anyone thinking that they were tubas would be guessing, the sound is that murky, muddy, and ill-defined.

Robert Pincus once left a Post-It note stuck to the MoFi jacket of a copy he was playgrading for me that summed up our thoughts on the quality of their mastering to a “t”:

“Did MoFi bother to listen to this before they ruined it?”

It’s positively shameful. This music is so good. On top of that, it’s custom made for audiophiles. Audiophiles are the ones who can appreciate the new colors Herrmann created, using what a wise man once called the single greatest instrument ever invented: the symphony orchestra.

If this Mobile Fidelity LP isn’t the perfect example of a pass/not-yet record, I can’t imagine what would be. To find a more poorly remastered record, you would really have to work at it.

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Saint-Saens / Chabrier / Danse Macabre / Espana and More

More of the music of Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)

More of the music of Emmanual Chabrier (1841-1894)

  • An outstanding EMI import pressing of these sublime orchestral works with Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • Both of these sides are bigger and richer than most of what we played – they’re super clean and clear, tonally correct from top to bottom, and have all of the weight of the orchestra down low
  • If you want a classical record to test your system and demo your system, this copy is for you!
  • This Demo Disc Quality recording should be part of any serious Orchestral Music Collection. Others that belong in that category can be found here.
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we think offer the best performances with the highest quality sound. This record is certainly deserving of a place on that list.

Orchestral Showpieces

Who can resist these sublime orchestral works? To quote an infamous (around here) label, “they are an audiophile’s dream come true.”

The sound is clear, with wonderful depth to the stage. These recordings may just be the ideal blend of clarity and richness, with depth and spaciousness that will put to shame 98% of the classical recordings ever made.

Clean bottom and lower mids. Zero smear. They’re so full-bodied and rich, yet clear and clean, and spread out on such a huge stage, these sides may become your go-to reference disc for Orchestral Reproduction.

One More Thing

This is the kind of record that will make you want to take all your Heavy Vinyl classical pressings and put them in storage. None of them, I repeat: not a single one of them, can ever begin to sound the way this record sounds. (The worst of them can be found here. If these 30-odd Heavy Vinyl titles sound good to you, something is definitely wrong somewhere.)

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Letter of the Week – “…was floored by the sound quality and dynamics…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jackson Browne Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased quite a while ago:

Hey Tom, 

After years of buying the latest reissue LPs at premium pricing and being frustrated with the sound quality, I bought a copy of Jackson Browne’s “The Pretender” from you and was floored by the sound quality and dynamics and realized that your company takes all the BS out of the Audiophile shopping experience. Since then I’ve used your store a bunch.

Rob R.

Rob,

Taking the BS out of buying records is the essence of the service we think we provide, so thanks for that.

We don’t try to make good sounding records. Judging by the crap pressings that we auditioned in 2024, that is a job no one seems able to do. We sure wouldn’t know to where to begin.

The only one we’ve played that sounded like one of our killer White Hot Stamper pressings, this one, was mastered by someone working for Fantasy who didn’t bother to attach his name to the record in question!

Can you imagine? All the big name guys turn out one bad record after another, and the guy who just comes to work in the morning to make a jazz record for the OJC label knocks it out of the park.

And, even better, the guys who notice are the ones who work in some little studio in Westlake, far from where the action is.

We are happy to be as far from where the action is as possible, because the action of making at-best-mediocre records is not the kind of action that we want to be involved in.

What Is the Point?

All the way back in 2007, after playing the Hoffman-Gray remastered Blue, we asked ourselves what was the point of these nothingburger records.

Do they bring anyone even a fraction of the joy the real thing does?

The answer was obvious even back then, close to twenty years ago.

If you are stuck in a Heavy Vinyl rut, we can help you get out of it. We did precisely that for these folks, and we can do it for you.

You may of course not be aware that you are stuck in a rut. Most audiophiles aren’t. The best way out of that predicament is to hear how mediocre these modern records sound compared to the vintage Hot Stampers we offer. Once you hear the difference, your days of buying newly remastered releases will most likely be over. Even if our pricey curated pressings are beyond your budget, you can avail yourself of the methods we describe to find killer records on your own.

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What to Listen For on Birds of Fire

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz-Rock Fusion Albums Available Now

Birds of Fire as a recording is not about depth or soundstage or ambience.

It’s about immediacy, plain and simple.

All the lead instruments positively jump out of the speakers — if you are lucky enough to be playing the right pressing.

This is precisely what we want our best Hot Stampers to do. In most cases, the better they do it, the higher their grade will be.

The main problem with this record is a lack of midrange presence. If the keyboards, drums and guitars are not front and center, your copy does not have the presence it should. On the best copies the musicians are right in the room with you. We know this for a fact because we heard the copies that could present them that way, and we heard it more than once.

Which of course gets to the reason shootouts are the only real way to learn about records.

The best copies will show you qualities in the sound you had no way of knowing were there. Without the freakishly good pressings you run into by chance in a shootout you have no way to know how high is up. On this record up is very high indeed.

A True Demo Disc

Birds of Fire is one of the top two or three Jazz/Rock Fusion Albums of All Time. In my experience, few recordings within this genre can begin to compete with the Dynamics and Energy of the best pressings of the album — if you have the Big Dynamic system for it.

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Charles Mingus – Tijuana Moods

More Charles Mingus

  • Tijuana Moods is back on the site for only the second time in four years, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on both sides of this vintage RCA pressing
  • This is Sixties Living Stereo at its best – big, rich and Tubey Magical like you will not believe (particularly on side two)
  • 5 stars: “Mingus at the time said that this was his greatest recording, and it certainly ranks near the top. The passionate playing, exciting ensembles, and high-quality compositions make this a real gem, and it represents one of Charles Mingus’ finest hours.”

This is the way it must have sounded in 1957, when legendary RCA engineers BOB SIMPSON and RAY HALL were sitting behind the board in the New York studios where it was recorded. (more…)

Mendelssohn – Symphony No. 4 / Ansermet

More of the Music of Mendelssohn

  • This original London pressing of Ansermet and the Suisse Romande’s masterful performance of Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 boasts STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from first note to last
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this incredible copy in our notes: “sweet and breathy woodwinds”…”transparent”…”strings get huge and weighty”…”tubey brass”…”great size and energy”…”lots of detail and space”…”most lush and weighty strings” (side two)
  • A spectacular Demo Disc quality orchestral recording – big, clear, rich, dynamic, transparent and energetic
  • There is richness and texture to the strings that no record made in the last 30 years can capture, and if you don’t believe me, we offer this pressing as proof
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we think offer the best performances with the highest quality sound. This record is certainly deserving of a place on that list.

This record has the same kind of amazing sound as the Chabrier disc on London from the same year, but it’s much more rare, perhaps because the cover does not help to sell the album. (The Chabrier cover is not much either, but in both cases the music and sound are sublime.)

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better Mendelssohn 4th.

We admit we foolishly did not expect much from a mid-60s London with a cover this plain.

It’s hard to get excited about an album with such a generic cover, but hearing the recording we were forced to confront our silly prejudices and recognize the greatness of James Lock‘s work for Decca in 1965.

It even beats the famous Solti on Blueback, which has a cover to die for. However, like many of the Londons and Deccas we’ve played over the years, the sound of that pressing is awful.

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Letter of the Week – “…I am surprised at how muddy the bass sounds on the new one.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Sting and The Police Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a record he read about on the blog, the Nautilus pressing of Ghost in the Machine.

Hey Tom,   

Did you write something about the Nautilus record… I thought so, but I couldn’t find it.

[This Ghost in the Machine link will take you to it.]

This is one of my favorites from my teenage years and so I decided to do my own little test… Sterling vs. Nautilus vs. Half Speed Abbey Road reissue… it feels pretty clear the Sterling is tops with Nautilus close but I am surprised at how muddy the bass sounds on the new one. And just how tamped down the record sounds. Which is I guess your point.

Geoff

Geoff,

You now know a great deal more about this album than most of the audiophiles expressing their opinions on audiophile forums.

You conducted a shootout, something most of them can’t be bothered to do.

You should not be surprised about muddy bass on Half-Speed mastered records, they all have it.

And tamped down? Tell me about it.

Compressed and lifeless are two qualities the audiophile record can be guaranteed to deliver. How these companies get away with producing one shitty remaster after another is beyond me. They’ve been making this junk for more than forty years and they apparently haven’t learned anything about records in all that time.

Welcome to the upside-down world of the modern audiophile record. The worse they sound, the more audiophiles seem to like them.

Your shootout provided you with a good lesson to learn right from the start. It has set you on a better path.

Try this experiment: Take four or five UK pressings, clean them up and then compare them to any of the ones you played — the sound should be night and day better. And, after doing that shootout, one of the four or five would be a truly Hot Stamper pressing.

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