Warner Brothers remastered Fandango in 2008, so we took some domestic pressings and put them up against their Heavy Vinyl LP.
The results were mixed; most of our original pressings were lackluster, many were noisy, and we just weren’t hearing anything with the sound we thought deserved to be called a Hot Stamper.
We shelved the project for another day.
In the interim we kept buying domestic pressings — originals and reissues — in the hopes that something good would come our way.
Fast forward to 2015. We drop the needle on a random pressing and finally — finally — hear a copy that rocks like we knew a ZZ Top album should. With that LP as a benchmark, we got a shootout up and running and the result is the record you see here.
How did the WB remaster fare once we had some truly Hot Stamper pressings to play against it?
Not well. It’s tonally correct, with a real top and bottom, something that a substantial number of copies cannot claim to be.
But the sound is stuck behind the speakers, veiled, and sorely lacking in energy and excitement.
The transparency is of course compromised on all these new reissues, and without transparency and resolution, much of the audience participation on the first side is lost.
I won’t say the new pressing is boring.
Let’s just say it’s a lot more boring than it should be.
Side One
Thunderbird
Jailhouse Rock
Backdoor Medley:
– a. Backdoor Love Affair
– b. Mellow Down Easy
– c. Backdoor Love Affair No. 2
– d. Long Distance Boogie
Side Two
Nasty Dogs and Funky Kings
Blue Jean Blues
Balinese
Mexican Blackbird
Heard It on the X
Tush
We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a public service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.
We have an audiophile record hall of shame for records that were marketed to audiophiles with claims of superior sound.
We routinely put them in our Hot Stamper shootouts, head to head with the vintage records we offer. We are often more than a little surprised at just how bad an “audiophile record” can sound and still be considered an “audiophile record.”
If you own any of these so-called audiophile pressings, let us send you one of our Hot Stamper LPs so that you can hear it for yourself in your own home, on your own system. Every one of our records is guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard or you get your money back.
Further Reading