Month: December 2025

The Dvorak Violin Concerto – Was Sound This Good Still Possible in 1980?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Dvorak Available Now

You’ll find amazing Hot Stamper sound on this exceptionally quiet Philips recording of the Dvorak Violin Concerto.

As well as a SUPERB performance from Salvatore Accardo, one that is certainly competitive with the best we have heard.

Yes, it was still possible to record classical music properly in 1980, though not many labels managed to pull it off.

(Londons from this era are especially opaque and airless. We find them as irritating and frustrating as most of the Heavy Vinyl releases being foisted on the audiophile public today.)

The orchestral passages are rich and sweet, the violin present, its harmonic colors gloriously intact. This is still ANALOG, with the better copies displaying much of the Tubey Magic of ’50s and ’60s vinyl without as much compressor distortion (the Achilles’ heel of so many of the great recordings from the Golden Era).

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Earned Wisdom Versus Borrowed Wisdom

Experiments Taught Us Practically Everything We Know about Records

Thought for the Day

Borrowed wisdom breaks under pressure because you haven’t earned it.

You’re trusting someone else’s compression without knowing what created it.

Earned wisdom, on the other hand, holds up because it’s rooted in your actual experience.

You know when it works, why it works, when to ignore it and when to bend it because you created the compression.

Shane Parish

It’s amazing how far you can get in this hobby if you’re obsessive enough and driven enough. (See links below for more on these two drivers of success.)

To achieve real success you must be willing to devote huge amounts of time, money and effort to the pursuit of better home audio.

You will really go far if you’re willing to let your ears, not your brain, inform your understanding and appreciation of the sound of the various pressings you play.

If we thought like most audiophiles — that money buys good sound and original pressings are usually the best — we would currently be very unlikely to have a business selling a million dollars or more worth of Hot Stampers every year.

(For those new to the idea, here are the short versions of what they are and how one goes about acquiring them.)

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Kevin Gray Serves Up Another Blue Note to the Lo-Fi Crowd

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Note Recordings Available Now

We did a shootout for Cornbread in 2023 and again in 2025. For our latest one, we were fortunate to be able to include both the Tone Poets pressing that came out in 2019 as well as the 75th Anniversary Blue Note pressing from 2014.

Here is the way we described a Hot Stamper that ended up being the best sounding pressing we played on one of its sides, and coming in second on the other side.

  • The sound is everything that’s good about Rudy Van Gelder‘s recordings – it’s present, spacious, full-bodied, Tubey Magical, dynamic and, most importantly, alive in that way that modern pressings never are
  • Exceptionally spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied – this pressing was a big step up over nearly all other copies we played

After hearing a copy of the album that sounded as good as that one, the Tone Poets pressing would have had to be at least a bit of a letdown, right?

To be fair, all it really has to be is good sounding. For $30, the price of the average copy that sells on Discogs, can you really expect great?

I don’t know what any of the purchasers of these Tone Poets records — of this or any other title — are expecting for their thirty bucks, but I can tell you exactly what they are getting. We took notes while their remastered pressing played, and here’s what we heard.

Side One

  • Smoothed out but hard drums and sax
  • Pretty recessed
  • Not extending (high or low)
  • Everything stuck behind the speakers
  • Clean and polite and boring
  • (No Thanks!)

Side Two

  • Pretty clear and clean
  • Horn not congested but
  • Not a lot of depth or warmth in the middle
  • Very clean and recessed
  • A little brighter
  • No real transients of fun
  • Our grade: NFG

Yes, that sounds like the kind of sound you can expect from a record that Kevin Gray remastered. We’ve played plenty of his Heavy Vinyl recuts and it’s hard to find one that’s not ridiculously bad.

The man’s transistory, opaque, airless, low-resolution cutting system is almost guaranteed to make even the most wonderful analog recordings sound like CDs, and sometimes, if you can wrap your head around it, even worse than a CD. I have lots of great sounding CDs in my collection. If any of them sounded as bad as this Tone Poets LP, I would have gotten rid of them years ago.

We discuss that subject in some depth here.

You can add this disastrous recut of Cornbread to the list of bad sounding Heavy Vinyl we’ve reviewed in 2024/25.

Another One?

Our review for the Blue Note 75th Anniversary pressing will be coming to the blog soon.

Is it any better?

How could it not be?

Next Question

Is the Tone Poets pressing the worst version of the album ever made?

That’s hard to say. But it is the worst sounding version of the album we’ve ever played, and that should be enough of a warning for any audiophile contemplating spending money on vinyl of such questionable quality.

The Vinyl and the Damage Done

Worse, a marketplace flooded with practically nothing but inferior remasterings, records that sound nothing like the vintage pressings whose sound quality they supposedly improve upon, may in fact be doing a great deal of harm to the folks who take pride in collecting them.

Yes, we can all agree that these are awful sounding records, something that seems obvious to those of us with good systems and lots of high quality vintage vinyl pressings to play.

But dig a little and you may discover that underneath the production of so many new titles there’s actually something potentially very damaging going on (other than the waste of good money being thrown after bad vinyl).

These records, so lacking in the analog qualities of their predecessors, may in fact be actively preventing the collectors who own them from appreciating the need to improve the playback quality of their systems.

Changes

Imagine that you have just made some changes to your system and it is now ten percent more revealing, spacious, energetic, three-dimensional, open, present, involving, musical (please feel free to insert any of a dozen other positive attributes of your choosing here) — could you even tell?

If the sound, say, on a scale of one to a hundred, goes from somewhere in the low 30s to something more like the low 40s, is that worth the effort of making large scale changes to your system, considering how expensive some of them may turn out to be, and that many of them will be immensely more time-consuming than you might have realized before starting down that road?

Add in the effects of the dreaded j curve — which predicts, with merciless statistical accuracy, that many of these so-called improvements will give the impression that the sound is actually getting worse, not better — and the invisible barrier between the music lover and the better sound he seeks becomes even more difficult to penetrate.

This assumes that the changes he has undertaken take him in the right direction. And are even audible.

Soon enough it becomes clear that these proto-audiophiles, at least the ones who have bought into the hype behind the modern remastered LP, are really up against it in a way that those of us who grew up with vinyl in the 60s and 70s (when there was nothing else) cannot begin to imagine.

Progress

Given that so much working against the audiophile of today, can we be sure we would have succeeded in such a hostile environment?

The effect is that records that sound as bad as this Lee Morgan title may succeed in preventing you from making the progress you should be trying to make in audio.

Or seeing the need for it in the first place.

(And if you’re one of those who do not see the need to make progress in audio, you are definitely reading the wrong blog! It’s one of the main reasons this blog exists. If I can do it, so can you. Just ask Robert Brook.)

Before we go, let’s ge the producer’s take on the quality of the records he is making.

Joe Harley’s Story (emphasis added)

The LPs are mastered directly from the original analog master tapes by Kevin at his incredible facility called Cohearent Mastering. We go about it in the exact same way that we did for so many years for the Music Matters Blue Note reissues. [We’ve played some of those too.]

We do not roll off the low end, boost the top or do any limiting of any kind.

We allow the full glory of the original Blue Note masters to come though unimpeded!

Short of having an actual time machine, this is as close as you can get to going back and being a fly on the wall for an original Blue Note recording session.

That’s sure not what we heard but, hey, to each his own, right? That’s what everyone keeps telling me anyway.

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Borodin / Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3 / Ansermet

More of the Music of Alexander Borodin

  • An early London Stereo pressing of these two symphonic masterworks with very good Hot Stamper sound on both sides
  • 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
  • We guarantee there is more richness, fullness, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you own whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market, made from who-knows-what tapes
  • These originals are selling for hundreds of dollars on ebay these days, so don’t expect many early London pressings to make it to the site

We’ve long considered the album one of the greatest of all the Decca / London recordings.

Big, rich and dynamic, this is the sound of LIVE MUSIC, and it can be yours, to enjoy for years to come — if you’ve got the stereo to play it and the time to listen to it.

The powerful lower strings and brass are gorgeous. Ansermet and the Suisse Romande get that sound better than any performers I know. You will see my raves on record after record of theirs produced during this era. No doubt the world renowned Victoria Hall they recorded in is key. One can assume Decca engineers use similar techniques for their recordings regardless of the artists involved. The only real variable should be the hall.

Ansermet’s recordings with the Suisse Romande exhibit a richness in the lower registers that is unique in my experience. His Pictures At Exhibition has phenomenally powerful brass, the best I’ve ever heard. The same is true for his Night On Bald Mountain. Neither performance does much for me — they’re both too slow — but the sound is out of this world. Like it is here.

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Electric Light Orchestra – Face The Music

More of the Music of the Electric Light Orchestra

  • Incredible sound throughout this vintage UK pressing, with both sides earning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades, just shy of our Shootout Winner – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This copy has real depth to the soundfield, full-bodied, present vocals, plenty of bottom end weight, and lovely analog warmth
  • You probably know most of these songs, even if you don’t recognize the titles (“Waterfall,” “One Summer Dream”)
  • 4 stars: “The soulful ‘Evil Woman’ was one of the most respectable chart hits of its era, and one of the best songs that Lynne ever wrote (reportedly in 30 minutes), while ‘Strange Magic’ showed off his writing in a more ethereal vein.”
  • If you’re a fan of the band, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this classic from 1975 belongs in your collection

Nobody seems to have noticed — at least I can find no evidence for anyone noticing, using a Google search — that the song “Fire on High,” which opens side one of this album, is directly lifted from the opening song on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, “Funeral for a Friend.”

Jeff Lynne owes a lot of his sound to The Bee Gees as well as The Beatles, another thing about his music that nobody seems to notice.

But that takes nothing away from the fact that he is a consummate craftsman of catchy pop songs, the kind that get stuck in your head and make your day brighter than it would otherwise have been.

There are many fine examples of these kinds of songs on this very album. The first three (out of four) tracks on side one are all very strong: “Fire On High,” “Waterfall” and “Evil Woman.” On side two all the songs after “Poker” are very strong: “Strange Magic,” “Down Home Town,” and “One Summer Dream.”

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Letter of the Week – “I looked at the speakers in wonderment, goosebumps down my legs”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Peter Gabriel Available Now

Our good customer Michel wrote to tell us how much he liked the White Hot Peter Gabriel (3) Hot Stamper pressing we just sent him. (I have edited some of the text but mostly it came to me this way.)

Hi Tom,

Knowledge is everything and good ears don’t lie!

Side 2 of Peter Gabriel 3 is the side that I really like. I have had many pressings and many 12″ 45s made in the UK and a few 12″ 33s from the US.

Over the years I kept searching for good sound, but I never got there apparently. I simply stopped listening to the music. Maybe a Biko 12″ once in a while, but the LP never cut it. Not even the supercool packaging of the Classic along with the fancy clarity handmade super vinyl profile II. Now that’s a mouthful!

So in comes the 3+ side 2 that I just received. I played side two first.

It was all over.

I looked at the speakers in wonderment, goosebumps down my legs.

I was looking right into the music.

The separation was through the roof, everything in its proper proportion.

The naturalness of it all was astounding. The highs crystal clear, the mids all there, the bass punchy and tight.

The whole thing demanding to be turned up to maximum volume.

I play it over and over again, smiling all the way. This is the shit!

So then I put the Classic on. [Cue the sound of a needle sliding across a record.]

I could not keep turning it up, as the sound got worse on the top end. Their version, don’t know if it was BG, is whacked out.

Things are not in proper proportion in the soundfield. Too much and not enough kind of thing.

Why do they have to f*ck with the tape so much, as if they know better?

Michel

Michel,

Judging by the enthusiasm of your letter, I could not be happier to learn of the joy our Hot Stamper pressing of the album has brought you.

Good ears don’t lie, as you say, and we take that to mean that you’re hearing what we heard when we played side two of your copy, the side that won the shootout. We agree — it is a thrill to hear a record sound that good.

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On Jazz, Transparency Is Key

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Ry Cooder Available Now

The best copies realistically convey the live in the studio quality of the sound. This is a tight ensemble working at the top of their game, no surprise there — Ry surrounds himself with nothing but the best.

But the better copies have such amazingly transparent sound you can’t help feeling as though you really are in the presence of live human beings. You really get the sense of actual fingers plucking those guitar strings. You hear mouths blowing air through horns and woodwinds.

These are sounds that most recordings pretend to capture, and like hypnotist’s subjects, we go along for the ride. This recording has the potential to actually bring forth that living, breathing musician sound, no imagination required.

As is sometimes the case, there is one and only one set of stampers that consistently wins our shootouts for this album.  Click on this link to see other titles with one set of stamper numbers that always come out on top

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Wes Montgomery – Road Song

More of the Music of Wes Montgomery

  • Wes Montgomery’s final album returns to the site after a nearly four year hiatus, here with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from first note to last
  • Rudy Van Gelder in 1968 is pretty hard to beat for the kind of full-bodied, musical, warm and smooth sound that he managed to capture on tape, and this pressing shows off his talents better than any other one we played in our shootout
  • “These songs are short, sweet, and supported by classical-tinged string and woodwind arrangements. This is not heavy jazz in any sense. Wes sounds to be just relaxing and having fun with it…”

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Eric Clapton – 461 Ocean Boulevard

More of the Music of Eric Clapton

  • With two STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides or close to them, this vintage UK import could not be beat – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Big and full-bodied with exceptionally breathy vocals, strong rhythmic energy and virtually none of the smear that plagues so many copies
  • If you’re a Clapton fan, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this return to form released in 1974 is clearly a must own, a title it shares with two of his other top albums: Unplugged and Just One Night
  • As good as the best domestic pressings can be, these British LPs simply capture a good deal more of the Midrange Magic of the master tape than they do
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…the pop concessions on the album don’t detract from the rootsy origins of the material, whether it’s Johnny Otis’ ‘Willie and the Hand Jive,’ the traditional blues ‘Motherless Children,’ Bob Marley’s ‘I Shot the Sheriff,’ or Clapton’s emotional original ‘Let It Grow.'”
  • If you’re a Clapton fan, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this return to form released in 1974 is clearly a Must Own, a title it shares with two of his other top albums: Unplugged and Just One Night.
  • His debut album is a longtime personal favorite, but I’m not quite sure it would make the cut for our core rock collection

Tom Dowd recorded this album at Criteria in Miami, the same studio in which Layla was recorded. I’d say the sound here is substantially better than what you typically get on that album, keeping in mind the sonic variations from track to track on Layla, which can be fairly dramatic.

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Customers Rave about their Hot Stamper Pressings of Zep III

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

Below you will find some of the letters customers have sent us after playing one of our Hot Stamper reissue pressings of Led Zeppelin III.

We’ve written more about Led Zeppelin’s music and sold more of their albums than any other band apart from The Beatles.

All five of their first five albums are in our Top 100, and for good reason: they are amazingly well-recorded albums, but — and this is a big but — you can’t know how good these albums can sound without the right pressings.

Letter of the Week – “…fantastic and beyond expectation.”

Letter of the Week – “A great example of a record where proper mastering makes an ENORMOUS difference”

Letter of the Week – “While the loud parts rock in an unbelievable way, the quiet bits reveal the magic…”

Letter of the Week – “I now have twelve copies in total… eleven of them are useless.”

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