Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now
UPDATE 2026
Years ago we described a Shootout Winning early pressing with the comments you see below. (Please excuse the excessive capitalization.)
We’ve been trying for a while to find a copy of this album with the kind of wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling sound we get from the best copies of Zuma and After The Gold Rush, but it hasn’t been easy.
However, on the best copies, the title track is out of this world.
It’s got that live-in-the-studio sound we recognize and love from Zuma, but in this case it sounds like it was recorded at three in the morning in a room full of pot smoke.
When you play a Hot Stamper copy, the soundfield is huge — big, wide, and deep — and there’s lots of space around all the instruments. You will not believe all the studio ambience, and you may even catch a contact high from it.
Two Knockout Sides
Side one held its own against every copy we threw against it, earning our top grade of A+++. The sound is relaxed, musical, and SUPER transparent — there’s virtually nothing between you and the music. Neil’s voice is PERFECTION with lots of texture, and it is surrounded by lovely ambience.
Play the second track, See The Sky About To Rain, to hear some mellow magic. Neil’s work on the wurlitzer sounds fantastic, and the soft, breathy vocals are bound to give you goosebumps.
The next song (featuring Rick Danko and Levon Helm of The Band) goes completely in the other direction and rocks like you wouldn’t believe. It’s full of energy and the bottom end has got the kind of WHOMP that brings the power of rock and roll to your living room.
Side one has also got unusually high resolution and super low distortion. Every last copy we played had at least a touch of strain in the chorus to Walk On, but on this copy it’s not all that objectionable.
Side two is PHENOMENAL as well. We found the sound of side twos to be generally stronger than on our side ones, so a grade of A++ on side two gets you SUPERB sound indeed. Al Schmitt handled production for each of the the tracks on side two, and it seems he did the same kind of bang-up job that earned him Grammy awards for his production on the Hatari soundtrack (A TAS List title) and his engineering on Steely Dan’s Aja, Toto IV, and more.
Side two has a MASSIVELY HUGE SOUNDFIELD — it’s a monster. Hi-res sound is the name of the game here — everything has clear transients and loads of texture, and the subtle dynamics really come through. The sound of the hand percussion at the beginning of the title track is INCREDIBLE. You can really hear the sound of the skins. The overall sound is lusher, sweeter, and warmer than the average copy by a mile. We rated this side A++ and I bet you’ll be surprised we didn’t rate it higher.
Further Reading