Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now
UPDATE 2026
We were still recommending the Classic Records pressing of Who’s Next as late as 2007 (2007 being the year that everything changed) by considering its sound quality, quiet vinyl and price relative to the expensive, vintage Hot Stamper pressings we had started to offer at the time.
Hot Stamper copies are not particularly quiet, and they are never cheap, which is in marked contrast to Classic Records’ heavy vinyl pressings, which are fairly quiet and also fairly cheap. Some of you may think $30 is a lot of money for a record, but we do not. It’s a fair price.
When you buy Crosby Stills and Nash’s first album or Tapestry or Bridge Over Troubled Water on Classic for $30, you are getting your money’s worth.
But don’t kid yourself. You are not getting anything remotely close to the best pressing available, because the best pressings are hard to find. We do find them, and we do charge a lot of money for them, because they sound absolutely AMAZING in a direct head to head comparison to the Classic versions and anything else you may have heard.
We recommend you use the Classic version of Who’s Next as benchmark. When you find something that beats it, you have yourself a very good record. Until then, you still have a good, quiet record to enjoy. You win either way.
But some enough, sometime in 2007 as a matter of fact, we did our first big shootout for the album, and, as so often happens, our appreciation of the recording changed dramatically. We were finally able to hear it in all its glory on the right reissue — yes, the conventional wisdom had been wrong all along once again — and that experience left the Classic Records pressing in the dust so to speak.
Allow me to reproduce some of the relevant commentary from our shootout. (And some of what we say below is no longer true. Our current thinking can be found in the newer listings. Click on the link in the update at the top of this post.)
The Classic Almost Rocks
In fact, let’s get right to the sound of that one. It’s actually shockingly good, better than it has any right to be coming from Classic Records. The bass is PHENOMENAL; no British Track pressing had the bass punch and note-like clarity of the Classic. It shows you the kind of bass you had no idea could possibly be on the tape. It reminds me a bit of the Classic pressing of the first Zep album: in the case of the Zep, it has dynamics that simply are not to be found anywhere else. The Classic Who LP has that kind of bass — it can’t be found elsewhere so don’t bother looking. (Don’t get me wrong; we’ll keep looking, but after thirty plus years of Track Who LPs, we kinda know when we’re beaten.)
The Who Sound
But what the Classic is missing is what the best Tracks have in spades: weight and whomp. There’s a POWER to the sound that the Classic only hints at. The crashing guitar chords that are the hallmark of The Who Sound in general and Who’s Next in particular lack the weight of the real thing; they don’t punch you in the gut the way Townsend no doubt wanted them to. (And Glyn Johns too, one of our favorite engineers of all time). Moon’s drums don’t blast away like cannons on the Classic.
Folks, this is The Who’s sound. Everybody who’s ever seen them live knows it. (I saw them back in the day when Moon was still behind his kit and I’ll never forget it.)
I guess you can say that Classic did the best they could, but when you hear a good Track copy, one that can REALLY ROCK, there’s no going back. Playing the Classic you would never suspect that you’re missing very much of the Who Sound, but of course, in the world of records, everything is relative. You can’t know what you’re missing until the right record shows it to you. This is why we play so many copies of the same record — we’re looking for the one that has the sound we’ve never heard before.
I’m A Reissue
The other problem with the Classic is that, as good as it is, it has that “I’m A Reissue” sound all through the mids and highs. It can’t hold a candle to the good Brits in terms of sweetness, smoothness, spaciousness, richness, presence, life, texture and all the other things we talk about endlessly on our site.
Tubey Magical acoustic guitars? Not gonna happen on the Classic. British Track LP only.
Multiply that times every instrument on the album and you have a list of what’s better about the right Track pressing.
Further Reading