In Search Of Amazing Mona Bones

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

UPDATED 2026

Below you will see the notes we made during our first shootout for Mona Bone Jakon back in 2007.

Until fairly recently the handful of UK imports we had played sounded subpar to us.

The UK pressings may have been the versions on the TAS Super Disc List, but none of the ones we’d played sounded all that super to us.

Out of the blue, in 2023 we found some imports that set a new standard for the recording quality of the album.

We thought we knew “How high is up?”, but the mports we played that year proved to us we didn’t.

Egg on our faces? Not really. It’s just us going about doing the work.Since no one else in the world of records seems to want to figure any of this stuff out, you don’t have a lot of other sources for reliable information. Seriously, wWho else are you going to turn to, other than Robert Brook?

Most of the reviewers we stumble upon act like it’s still 1982.

True, the imports don’t win by much — the best domestic pressings can still earn Nearly Triple Plus grades — but that extra half a plus the Shootout Winning imports merit is quite noticeable when you play the best pressings against the close-to-the-best copies.

Our review for a Shootout Winning domestic pressing in 2007 can be see below:

Trouble sounds OUT OF THIS WORLD here — it’s rich and sweet with a lovely delicate quality to the acoustic guitar. Just listen to all that room around Cat’s voice!

I Wish I Wish sounds off the charts as well. It’s lively, musical and super transparent with tight bass. It’s rich and full with a wide soundfield. 

There are at least 3 original stampers for both sides one and two.

We’ve spent countless hours on different occasions playing them against each other. It’s very time consuming when you have multiple copies of the same stampers that don’t sound the same. Add to that that we have a couple of nice Import original Sunray pressings, and you have quite a project.

But it was all worth it because I’ve learned a lot, and I’m happy to share with you what I discovered.

To make judgments about the relative merits of each of the pressings, you have to find the right tracks that are the most revealing of the particular side’s strengths and weaknesses.

None of the later pressings I have ever heard sound remotely as good as the right originals. The original British & German imports, of which I have had a few over the years, are decent, but they don’t sound as good as these original domestic copies. They tend to be either too smooth, or too bright and therefore spitty on the vocals.

In fact, now that I think about it, the best stampers for this record are simply the ones that have the most correct tonal balance from top to bottom. For whatever reason, this record was obviously very difficult to master. (And press for that matter.)

This is the only explanation I have for why it is so difficult to find good sounding copies of this album. There are lots of good copies of Tea and Teaser. Many of them have been put on the site and we still have many more to list.

Further Reading

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