More of the Music of Linda Ronstadt
UPDATE 2026
This review was written in 2006. These days I doubt very much that I would consider this record a service to the audiophile community, as I mistakenly wrote at the time. Many of the records that sounded good to me back in the day don’t sound so good to me anymore.
Like most Heavy Vinyl, it is at best a stopgap.
Sonic Grade: C
This pressing beats the average Capitol LP in some ways, which is typically an aggressive, grainy piece of crap.
Take my word for it: I easily have 30-40 copies of this album, and I can tell you from years of experience that it is extremely difficult to find good sounding pressings of this music.
Cisco has done a service to the audiophile community by producing a very 
enjoyable LP of this, Linda’s masterpiece. It’s music that belongs in your collection. (If you have the bread, check out our Hot Stamper copies, guaranteed to kill any modern pressing — including this one — or your money back.)
Cisco’s version is completely free from compression of any kind, and sometimes that works in favor of the overall sound and sometimes it doesn’t. I may have additional commentary discussing these issues down the road, but for now let’s just say you will have a hard time finding a better copy of Heart Like A Wheel on vinyl.
[Not true, assuming you can clean and play your originals properly.]
And of course, virtually no Capitol pressing is ever going to be as quiet as one of these lovely 180g RTI LPs.
Further Reading
Records are getting awfully expensive these days, and it’s not just our Hot Stampers that seem priced for perfection.
If you are still buying these modern remastered pressings, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered LPs
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. of the album.
And if for some reason you believe that the pressing you own sounds better than the Hot Stamper we send you , we will happily give you all your money back and wish you the very best.
Below you will find our reviews and commentaries for the hundreds of Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years.
We confess that even as recently as the early 2000s we were still impressed with some of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings. If we’d never made the progress we’ve worked so hard to make over the course of the last twenty or more years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues many audiophiles are impressed by these days.
We’ll never know of course; that’s a bell that can be unrung. We did the work, we can’t undo it, and the system that resulted from it is merciless in revealing the truth — that these newer pressings are second-rate at best and much more often than not third-rate or even worse.
Some audiophile records sound so bad, I was so pissed off I created a unique circle of vinyl hell to put them in.
Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, we know that our customers see — and hear — things the same way.