Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now
How good are the original Unboxed Deccas on Satanic Majesties?
They can be very good.
But they are never as good as the right later pressings with the Decca in a box label, the ones produced from about 1970 on.
The Unboxed Decca pressing earned a Super Hot Stamper grade (A++). The later pressing, with the right stamper, showed us just how good the album can sound.
Since the originals are pricey and hard to find, and, as a rule, noisier than the later pressings, we don’t pick them up unless we find them for cheap, which rarely happens. They have not won any shootouts, and that is very unlikely to change.
There is one set of stampers for this album that always wins, and those stampers are not found on the early label.
Want to find your own top quality copy?
Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that consistently win our Hot Stamper shootouts. This record has been sounding its best for a very long time this way:
This is the Stones at their most experimental, so there are plenty of strange effects and trippy arrangements. Only the best copies manage to make sense of it, but when you find one this music is a lot of fun.
Not only is it hard to find great copies of this album, it’s hard to play them when you do find them. You’re going to need a hi-res, super low distortion front end to play this properly, but if you’ve got the goods this is one hot record! Play this with a budget cart / table / arm and you’ll hear very little of the magic that we heard.
This is some crazy music! If you’re looking for the raging bluesy rock of Sticky Fingers and Let It Bleed, you’ll find some of that here but also a lot of psychedelic madness. You get some great rockers though — Citadel, 2000 Man, and 2000 Light Years From Home to name a few. She’s A Rainbow is the poppiest song here, and on this copy it sounds WONDERFUL.
Side One
Sing This All Together
Citadel
In Another Land
2000 Man
Side Two
Sing This All Together (See What Happens)
She’s a Rainbow
The Lantern
Gomper
2000 Light Years from Home
On With the Show
Further Reading
- More helpful advice on doing your own shootouts
- Our playback system (and why you shouldn’t care)
- Reviews and commentaries for Their Satanic Majesties Request
