Month: March 2025

Roxy Music / Country Life – A Killer Arty Rock Album from 1974

More of the Music of Roxy Music

  • Roxy’s fourth studio LP, here with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides of this original UK Island pressing
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “great size and energy”…”sweet and tubey”…”big, note-like bass”…”huge and solid and jumping out of the speakers”…”lots of weight and body”
  • This one is simply bigger, richer, more clear and more Tubey Magical than all other copies we heard in our recent shootout
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, but once you hear just how killer sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • 5 stars: “…Country Life finds Roxy Music at the peak of their powers, alternating between majestic, unsettling art rock and glamorous, elegant pop/rock. Roxy Music rarely sounded as invigorating as they do here.”

Many of the best songs Bryan Ferry ever wrote and Roxy Music ever played are on this album. Musically, it’s right up there with the first album and Siren. All three represent the high watermark of early- to mid-70s Arty Rock.

These British pressings give you the richest, fullest, biggest sound with the least amount of sibilance, grain and grunge. It’s the rich, full-bodied analog sound — with some problems, to be sure — that we adore here at Better Records.

We thank John Punter for his engineering and production at George Martin’s legendary AIR Studios.

Roxy’s Art Rock

Now for those of you who are not big Roxy Music fans and don’t know this music, this album may take a bit of getting used to. We assure you it will be well worth your while. We think it’s brilliant.

And if you do consider yourself a fan of Art Rock, every Roxy album should be on your shelf, right up there with your Bowie, Pink Floyd, Supertramp, Eno, Peter Gabriel, 10cc and too many others to list. (Most are personal favorites of mine, albums I have played hundreds of times over the last 40 years and plan to keep playing until my ears give out.)

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How Can the Best Stampers Also Be Some of the Worst?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Vintage Columbia Albums Available Now

Recently we conducted a shootout for a favorite Columbia recording, one that we had auditioned a couple of times before and one for which we knew the music and the general quality of the sound well.

It’s not the record you see pictured. For now we’re keeping the title a mystery, consistent with the idea that we give out lots of bad stampers on this blog, but almost never do we give out the good ones. (When we do give out the best stampers, we keep the title under wraps. We are not the least bit interested in putting ourselves out of business.)

The discussion for today revolves around the idea held by a great many audiophiles that the 6-Eye pressings are going to be the best sounding of almost any album they might happen to run across.

And, to be fair, in the case of this mysterious album, they’re right.

What interests me in these findings is that the stampers for a shootout winning copy, the top one, are almost identical to the one that came in close to last in the shootout outside of the Columbia Special Products reissue, with decent, respectable but far from shootout winning grades of 1.5+ and 2+.

One of the 1K side ones was the best we played, and one was very bright.

If an audiophile collector were to go to Discogs, find the IK pressings, he could either find himself with a top quality copy, or a not-nearly-as-good copy, depending on his luck.

Why one set of stampers sounds so much better than another set, or the same or similar set on a different pressing, is a mystery, and it’s one that we confidently predict will never be solved.

Does anyone have a practical way to get around the unfortunate reality that allows one set of stampers to sound great and the same or a similar set of stampers to sound no better than very good, if that?

Well, we can’t say there is a practical way, but we do know of an impractical one. We’ve been practicing and refining that one for more than twenty years.

We just play lots and lots of copies of the albums to find out how they sound.

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Elton John / Honky Chateau – A Must Own Classic

More Elton John

  • This vintage UK import pressing boasts superb Tubey Magical British Rock sound, with excellent Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides
  • A monster Demo Disc – the bottom end is huge, the top is open and extended, and the overall tonality rich and balanced
  • An amazing recording and a founding member of our Top 100 – it’s a shame we rarely find them with sound this good and audiophile quality surfaces (DJM see-through vinyl being what it is)
  • 5 stars: “The most focused and accomplished set of songs Elton John and Bernie Taupin ever wrote.”
  • This is a Must Own album from 1972, one that deserves a place in any audiophile’s collection
  • Honky Chateau is also one of those albums with one set of very special stampers that consistently win shootouts.

If you doubt that Elton John was an unusually gifted Pop Music Genius for much of the ’70s, just play this record. These eleven tracks should serve as all the proof you could possibly need. There’s not a dog in the bunch, and most of these songs are positively brilliant. Drop the needle on any track, you simply can’t go wrong.

Honky Chateau has to be one of the best sounding rock records of all time — certainly worthy of a prized spot on our Rock and Pop Top 100 List. It’s a shining example of just how good High-Production-Value rock music of the ’70s can be.

The amount of effort that went into the recording of Honky Chateau is comparable to that expended by the engineers and producers of bands like Supertramp, The Who, Jethro Tull, Ambrosia, Pink Floyd and far too many others to list. It seems that no effort or cost was spared in making the home listening experience as compelling as the recording technology of the day permitted.

The sides that had sound that jumped out of the speakers, with driving rhythmic energy, worked the best for us. They really brought this music to life and allowed us to make sense of it. This is yet another definition of a Hot Stamper — it’s the copy that lets the music work as music.

Big Production Tubey Magical British Rock just does not get much better than Honky Chateau. (more…)

Eric Clapton – E.C. Was Here

More of the Music of Eric Clapton

  • Outstanding sound for this UK import pressing (only the second copy to hit the site in years), with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • Forget the dubby domestic pressings – here is the energy, the dynamic power, the low end WHOMP, and the Clapton-live-in-your-listening-room presence you’ve never experienced on the album before, guaranteed
  • “E.C. Was Here makes it clear that Clapton was and always would be a blues man. The opening cut, “Have You Ever Loved a Woman,” clearly illustrates this, and underlines the fact that Clapton had a firm grasp on his blues guitar ability, with some sterling, emotionally charged and sustained lines and riffs… [the album] remains an excellent document of the period.”

Check out Clapton’s superb arrangements and performances of two of the best songs from his short-lived Blind Faith period: “Presence of the Lord” and “Can’t Find My Way Home.” They’re two of the highpoints on an album filled with good material that does not seem to get the credit it is due. I bought this album when it came out in 1975 and never really got into it. Of course I had an inferior domestic pressing and a stereo that couldn’t have done the album justice anyway, but in my defense I would have to say that there really wasn’t any such stereo system on the face of the earth; we still had a long way to go.

Eric Clapton has made very few consistently good albums, considering his career is going on 50+ years. Slowhand, Unplugged, and his first album come to mind. After that it’s pretty slim pickin’s. Now you can add this one to the list. This concert album shows Clapton at his bluesy best.

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How Does the Abbey Road Half-Speed of Sticky Fingers Sound?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

A listing for an early domestic Hot Stamper pressing for Sticky Fingers will typically be introduced this way:

If you have never heard one of our Hot Stamper pressings of the album, you (probably) cannot begin to appreciate just how amazingly well-recorded an album it is.

It is truly a landmark Glyn Johns / Andy Johns / Chris Kimsey recording, as well as our favorite by the Stones, a Top 100 Title (of course) and one that earned 5 stars on Allmusic (ditto).

5 stars: “With its offhand mixture of decadence, roots music, and outright malevolence, Sticky Fingers set the tone for the rest of the decade for the Stones.”

However, we found the new Half-Speed Heavy Vinyl pressing mastered by Miles Showell at Abbey Road to be seriously lacking in “outright malevolence.” It’s so tame that even at high volume it would be unlikely to disturb the most innocuous afternoon tea in the back garden of a country estate.

Brown Sugar is:

  • It’s smaller
  • Not as weighty or lively
  • Tonally pretty close

Sway is:

  • Tonally pretty close
  • Just missing some weight and dynamics

Oh, is that all? Well then, not as bad as it could have been, right?

1.5+, which means it would qualify for our lowest Hot Stamper grade. But no record that does not earn at least that grade on both sides can make it to our site, and when we flipped the album over, side two let us down even more than side one.

Bitch is:

  • A little sandy up top

I Got the Blues is:

  • Missing the dynamics

Grade for side two: 1+. Substandard. Not good enough to sell.

Usually our notes are filled with disgust about how awful sounding the current crop of remastered pressings tends to be.

Those interested in reading such notes have plenty to choose from. Here are some from 2024 through 2025. (At some point this year the number of awful sounding Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve reviewed will hit 200!)

But this version isn’t awful. It’s just not very good. The sound quality is middling.

The sound of other audiophile pressings of Sticky Fingers, including one mastered by the venerable Robert Ludwig, was much, much worse.

As far as audiophiles are concerned, this new release should be regarded as nothing more than a waste of money.

The Question Before the House

We’ve asked this question before, but it’s worth asking again:

Can this really be the sound audiophiles are clamoring for?

It shouldn’t be, but apparently it is.

However, it’s not as though we haven’t run into this issue hundreds and hundreds of times before. Audiophiles and the reviewers who write for them regularly rave about one Heavy Vinyl pressing after another being The Greatest of All Time, yet we have never found a single instance in which this was true for any of the modern reissues they have seen fit to crown.

Except for this one.

Three Little Words

Our explanation for the mistaken judgments audiophiles and reviewers make so consistently has never been all that complicated. As you may have read elsewhere on this blog:

More evidence, if any were needed, that the three most important words in the world of audio are compared to what?

No matter how good a particular copy of a record may sound to you, when you clean and play enough of them you will almost always find one that’s better, and often surprisingly better.

You must keep testing all the reissues you can find, and you must keep testing all the originals you can find.

Shootouts are the only way to find these kinds of very special records. That’s why you must do them.

Nothing else works. If you’re not doing shootouts (or buying the winners of shootouts from us), you simply don’t have top quality copies in your collection, except in the rare instances where you just got lucky. In the world of records luck can only take you so far. The rest of the journey requires effort.

If you would like to hear what you’ve been missing, there’s a small chance we have a Hot Stamper pressing of the album in stock.

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Letter of the Week – “It was a happy revelation to get Monk flying again on your Hot Stamper.”

More of the Music of Thelonious Monk

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

Note that he owns the kind of audiophile pressing that seems to be all the rage, but, at least in this case, turns out to be just another example of the emperor’s new clothes.

         Hey Tom, 

The Thelonious Monk is AMAZING. If you ever get another 3/3/3/3 of that, I’ll pay almost anything : )

(I also have a MoFi Ultradisc One Step of Monk’s Dream, which I can barely stand to listen to — just boring, so it was a happy revelation to get Monk flying again on your Hot Stamper.)

Hello,

Thanks for writing. A boring MoFi? Say it isn’t so!

By definition, boring records do not have Hot Stampers. We made that point about a Shootout Winning copy of Revolver way back in 2007.

At the risk of being definitive about things that are better left ill-defined,I would say that the Number One quality we look for in a pressing is the element of Life or Energy.

We can put up with many shortcomings, including even some tonality problems, but when a record fails to convey the spirit and enthusiasm of the musicians, it’s pretty much over.

The Monk record we sent you seems to have gotten Monk flying again, and what could be better than that?

Best, TP

PS

If you are still buying these modern pressings, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed Masters.

At the very least let us send you a Hot Stamper pressing — of any album you choose — that can show you what is wrong with your copy. And if for some reason you do not find that our record sounds better than yours, we will happily give you all your money back and wish you the best.

Jeff Beck – Blow by Blow

More Jazz Fusion

  • Beck’s 1975 release, here with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from first note to last
  • These are just a few of the things we had to say about this incredible copy in our notes: “bass fully extended down low”…”tubey and 3D”…”great energy”…”jumping out of the speakers”…”focused and transparent and spacious”
  • These sides are doing practically everything right — they’re clean, clear and open with lots of space around the players, and plenty of rich, bottom end weight
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Blow by Blow signaled a new creative peak for Beck, and it proved to be a difficult act to follow. It is a testament to the power of effective collaboration and, given the circumstances, Beck clearly rose to the occasion. In addition to being a personal milestone, Blow by Blow ranks as one of the premiere recordings in the canon of instrumental rock music.”

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Copland – Rodeo / El Salon Mexico / Danzon Cubano / Dorati

More Music Conducted by Antal Dorati

  • Dorati and the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra’s performance of these wonderful Copland works appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout this original Plum Label Mercury stereo pressing of SR 90172
  • It’s also remarkably quiet at the high end of Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • This copy is everything that a good Mercury should be: dynamic, open, immediate, exciting, and of course, with Dorati and the MSO, beautifully performed
  • The “of course” should be taken with a grain of salt — plenty of Dorati Mercury records do not sound good, and if anybody should know, we should, we’ve played them by the score
  • But we love what he and the MSO have done with these Copland pieces – we tried lots of other recordings, and nothing could touch Mercury for exciting, lifelike and energetic sound
  • 1959 was a phenomenal year for audiophile quality recordings – as of 2025 we’ve auditioned hundreds and reviewed more than one hundred and seventy titles, and there are undoubtedly a great many more that we’ve yet to discover.
  • We think there are a large number that belong in any audiophile’s record collection worthy of the name.

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Big Brother & The Holding Company – Cheap Thrills

More Five Star Albums Available Now

  • Cheap Thrills returns to the site for only the second time since2019, here with solid Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides of this original Stereo 360 pressing
  • We would love to offer this classic to more of our customers at a better price, but we simply don’t have the staff it takes to return nine out of ten copies to their sellers for noise and scratches, which forces us to make do with the few copies that show up in stores, and that means a wait of more than five years between listings, sorry!
  • Most copies we played were too compressed or veiled to involve you in the music, but this one has the kind of rich, big, clear sound this Bay Area band needs to work its bluesy magic
  • Turn this one up good and loud (which you can do when the sound is right) and you’ll have a living, breathing Janis Joplin performing right in front of you
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, but once you hear how excellent sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting stitches and just be swept away by the music
  • 5 stars: “Nobody had ever heard singing as emotional, as desperate, as determined, or as loud as Joplin’s, and Cheap Thrills was her greatest moment… Heard today, Cheap Thrills is a musical time capsule and remains a showcase for one of rock’s most distinctive singers.”

We’ve rarely been able to get this shootout off the ground, but we finally managed to stumble upon enough clean copies to get this round going. It’s been years since we last had a copy of this album on the site.

This album has got that trippy 60s San Francisco sound, no doubt about it. Those of you who are familiar with Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow or the early Grateful Dead albums know what I’m talking about. The Tubey Magic of the guitars is worth the price of admission alone; you just don’t hear this kind of sound on modern records.

Like you might expect from this mixture of blues and psychedelic rock, the sound can be a bit raw. Of course, that’s probably the way the band wanted it to be — I don’t see what more a mastering engineer could have done to make this music work any better.

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Art Pepper’s Roadgame Doesn’t Cut It Anymore

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Art Pepper Available Now

Roadgame is a live recording from 1981 on Galaxy Records, but nothing about it was impressive. Certainly not the sound. If you’re a die-hard fan and you see it for cheap, by all means, pick it up and see if it does more for you than it did for us.

Those of you looking for top quality vintage vinyl should stick to the man’s better albums, of which there are plenty.

We’ve auditioned countless pressings like this one in the 37 years we’ve been in business — buying, cleaning and playing them by the thousands. This is how we find the best sounding vinyl pressings ever made.

Not the ones that should sound the best. The ones that actually do sound the best.

If you’re an audiophile looking for top quality sound on vintage vinyl, we’d be happy to send you the Hot Stamper pressing guaranteed to beat anything and everything you’ve heard, especially if you have any pressing marketed as suitable for an audiophile. Those, with very few exceptions, are the worst.

Our Job

Our job is to find you good sounding pressings.

That’s the reason we carry:

  • Virtually no Heavy Vinyl repressings of any kind. (This one was done as a fluke a few years ago and since abandoned. The original plum label VICS pressings are the ones that win shootouts, not something pressed by Classic Records.)
  • Just a handful of Half-Speed mastered titles, including one that was made by, can you believe it?, Mobile Fidelity.
  • Rarely any Japanese pressings, and
  • Nothing made in the 21st century from vintage tapes. (Well, almost. This one is coming to the site, eventually, and another is in the works,)

If these kinds of records sounded good compared to the vintage pressings we offer — in other words, if they performed well in shootouts — we would be happy to offer them to our customers. But they almost never do.

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