Reissue=Best

In our experience, the records linked here potentially sound their best on the right reissue.

What the “right” reissue is — from which era, from which country, with which stampers — is something I have spent most of my adult life trying to figure out. Now that I have retired, our staff of ten is carrying on that work and constantly discovering new and better pressings.

Sometimes the new and better pressings turn out not to be the reissues we used to like, and when that happens we learn from our mistake, admit we were wrong and offer our customers something even better sounding than before.

We call them Hot Stampers, and we make them available to the serious audiophile who appreciates — and is willing to pay a premium price for — the best sounding vinyl in the world.

Naturally, they are almost exclusively pressed on vintage vinyl, since modern remasterings, in our experience, consistently fail to provide the higher sound quality they promise.

Gene Ammons – Blue Gene

More Gene Ammons

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone

  • Blue Gene returns to the site after a nearly two year hiatus, here with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them from start to finish, and pressed on fairly quiet vinyl
  • One of the best sounding Ammons records we know of – it’s huge, rich and Tubey Magical, with a solid bottom end and bluesy jazz energy like no other
  • Clean and clear and open are nice qualities to have, but rich and full are harder to come by on this record – this pressing has it all
  • The original pressings we’ve played were astonishingly bad — those of you who are interested can go to the blog in the coming weeks to read all about just how awful they can sound
  • “Some ballad performances in his oeuvre are a testament to an exceptional sense of intonation and melodic symmetry, powerful lyrical expressiveness, and mastery both of the blues and the bebop vernacular that can now be described as, in its own way, ‘classical.'”

For us audiophiles, both the sound and the music here are wonderful. If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good a 1958 All Tube Analog recording by Rudy Van Gelder on Prestige can sound, this killer copy will do the trick.

This pressing is super spacious, sweet and positively dripping with ambience. Talk about Tubey Magic, the liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny. This is vintage analog at its best, so full-bodied and relaxed you’ll wonder how it ever came to be that anyone seriously contemplated trying to improve it.

This IS the sound of Tubey Magic. No recordings will ever be made like this again, and no CD will ever capture what is in the grooves of this record. There is, of course, a CD of this album, but those of us who possess a working turntable and a good collection of vintage vinyl could care less.

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Pink Floyd – Piper at the Gates of Dawn

Pink Floyd Hot Stamper Pressings Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for Pink Floyd

  • A superb UK import pressing of Floyd’s debut studio album with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER from top to bottom
  • Side two was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be amazed at how big and powerful the sound is
  • This shockingly well-recorded album is a big step up from many that followed, and surely the best sounding Floyd until Meddle came along four years later
  • We made a huge breakthrough during our shootout, discovering a very special label and stampers that took the sound to a whole new level
  • 5 stars: “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn successfully captures both sides of psychedelic experimentation — the pleasures of expanding one’s mind and perception, and an underlying threat of mental disorder and even lunacy; this duality makes Piper all the more compelling in light of Barrett’s subsequent breakdown, and ranks it as one of the best psychedelic albums of all time.”

Outstanding sound for this classic early Floyd album featuring Syd Barrett! We did not expect to hear sound this good for the album. If you’ve played other versions of this one you’re going to be surprised — shocked even — at how big, rich and solid the sound is. “Astronomy Domine” and “Interstellar Overdrive” are especially impressive. We don’t think you’ll have much luck finding a copy with even one side this good, let alone two!

Without a doubt, this is by far the best sounding early Floyd recording we’ve ever played — the credit of course belongs with longtime Beatles engineer, Norman Smith.

Once the 70s arrive, the band went on to release four of the best sounding albums of the decade: Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall. All four are in our Top 100. Dark Side I would put in any Top Ten worthy of the name.

The Beatles may have owned the 60s but the 70s clearly belong to Floyd.

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David Bowie – Hunky Dory

More of the Music of David Bowie

  • Bowie’s pre-Ziggy folk rock masterpiece is back on the site after a ten month hiatus, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER on both sides of this UK import pressing
  • Side one was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • Ridiculously hard to find these days, hence the price we’re asking – if we could find clean copies with the right stampers and do these shootouts more often, believe me, we would love to make these killer pressings more affordable
  • Preternaturally Tubey Magical sound throughout thanks to the engineering prowess of Ken Scott, who continues to blow our minds to this very day
  • The best tracks on the album are demonstration quality – “Oh You Pretty Things” is a knockout here
  • Rich, spacious and sweet, with a huge soundstage – drop the needle on “Changes” and listen to how dynamic it is
  • 5 stars: “On the surface, such a wide range of styles and sounds would make an album incoherent, but Bowie’s improved songwriting and determined sense of style instead made Hunky Dory a touchstone for reinterpreting pop’s traditions into fresh, postmodern pop music.”

Tubey Magical acoustic guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this record. Simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum, along with richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and especially from modern remasterings).

The amazing Ken Scott (Ziggy Stardust, Magical Mystery Tour, Honky Chateau, Crime of the Century (all Top 100), as well as All Things Must Pass, Truth, Birds of Fire, Son Of Schmilsson, America’s debut and many more) is the man responsible for the sound here (he also produced the album, replacing Tony Visconti). It should go without saying that this is one seriously talented guy.

The kind of Tubey Magical richness and smoothness that he achieved at Trident in the early 70s, not to mention sound that is remarkably spacious and practically free from distortion — qualities that are especially important to us Big Speaker guys who like to play their records good and loud — has rarely been equaled by anyone in the years that’ve followed (even by Ken).

As noted above, many of his best recordings can be found in our Rock and Pop Top 100 list of Best Sounding Albums, limited to the titles that we can actually find sufficient copies of with which to do our Hot Stamper shootouts.

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Pink Floyd / Animals

More Pink Floyd

More Recordings Engineered by Brian Humphries

  • This vintage UK copy was giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for, with an INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side one
  • The best sounding pressing are British reissues, a discovery we made about ten years ago — nothing can touch them
  • For those who appreciate the concept, nothing we have played to date can touch them, but tomorrow we could find a stamper with even better sound – who can say what tomorrow may bring?
  • Forget the dead-as-a-doornail Heavy Vinyl and the domestic pressings too – only these Brits have the Tubey Magical Midrange that this Pink Floyd album needs
  • “Of all of the classic-era Pink Floyd albums, Animals is the strangest and darkest, a record that’s hard to initially embrace yet winds up yielding as many rewards as its equally nihilistic successor, The Wall. Animals is all extended pieces, yet it never drifts — it slowly, ominously works its way toward its destination. For an album that so clearly is Waters’, David Gilmour’s guitar dominates thoroughly …it surges with bold blues-rock guitar lines and hypnotic space rock textures.”

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Tchaikovsky / Excerpts from The Nutcracker

More of the Music of Tchaikovsky

  • With STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) Living Stereo sound or close to it throughout, this vintage RCA Red Seal reissue pressing is the BEST pressing of this recording we have ever heard
  • Both of these sides are exceptionally detailed, with an abundance of space around all the players, the unmistakable sonic hallmark of the properly-mastered, properly-pressed vintage analog LP
  • This copy is rich, 3D, full-bodied, and dynamic, with the clarinet especially musical
  • We noted that the sound on this later label pressing could not be beat — it was so much more roomy, spacious and detailed, without the crudity of the Shaded Dogs that we mistakenly expected to win the shootout
  • The performance is faster than our other favorite, the Ansermet, and fans of the work will have to determine for themselves which they prefer

This RCA reissue pressing of LSC 2328 has some of the BEST sound we have ever heard for The Nutcracker, and we’ve played them by the dozens, on the greatest Golden Age labels of all time, including, but not limited to, the likes of Mercury, RCA and London.

In a somewhat (but not too) surprising turn of events, the reissue pressing we are offering here beat all the originals and early reissues we could throw at it. Finally, this legendary Mohr/Layton production can be heard in its full glory!

If you like your Nutcracker exciting and dynamic, this is the copy for you.

Don’t buy into that record collecting / audiophile canard that the originals are better.

A Wealth of Recordings

For our most recent shootout we played Ansermet’s performance of the Suites on London, as well as pressings by Reiner and Fiedler, both of whom opted against using the Suites as Tchaikovsky wrote them, preferring instead to create a shorter version of the complete ballet with excerpts of their own choosing.

The CSO, as one might expect, plays this work with more precision and control than any other. They also bring more excitement and dynamic contrasts to their performance, adding greatly to our enjoyment of the music.

We like our recordings to have as many live music qualities as possible, and those qualities really come through on a record such as this when reproduced on the full-range speaker system we use.

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Iron Butterfly – In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

More Iron Butterfly

More Rock Classics

  • With two outstanding Double Plus (A++) sides, this early Atco pressing of Iron Butterfly’s Psych Rock classic will be very hard to beat
  • Surely this is one of the quietest copies we have ever listed for sale – a fluke, but one we are pleased to be able to offer to those of you who place a premium on quiet vinyl
  • The title track takes up all of side two and we guarantee you have never never heard it sound this good – it’s clean, open, rich and solid, and the vocals aren’t screechy (for once!)
  • Both sides are smooth, rich and Tubey Magical, which means the album is actually enjoyable
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The epitome of heavy psychedelic excess… the group’s definitive album.”

We’ve heard some awful, awful, just really awful sounding pressings of this album over the course of the last twenty years. If you own the album, you know what I’m talking about.

Clean originals that we’d hoped would have the goods rarely lasted more than 30 seconds on our table, they were that bad.

But that was part of the problem — the originals on the plum and gold label tend to be more crude and distorted than the yellow label reissues. That was just dumb “original is better” record collector thinking. If anybody should know better, it’s us.

When we finally got hold of some promising reissues, it was only a matter of time before a shootout could be scheduled. In the case of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, finding enough clean copies took us about five years. One of two a year, that’s how many clean copies we can find by going to multiple, high volume, high turnover record stores here in L.A. every week.

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David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust

More of the Music of David Bowie

  • Here is a copy that is doing just about everything right, with seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER from top to bottom – Ziggy Stardust in analog is simply a phenomenally good sounding recording
  • Side one was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • Exceptionally (and unusually) quiet vinyl too – the quietest we have ever found
  • The amount of Tubey Magic has to be heard to be believed – this is the pinnacle of sound for Glam Rock
  • Until you hear one of these killer British pressings you simply cannot know what you are missing
  • We know that the price we are asking is high – if we could find clean copies with the right stampers and do these shootouts more often than every five years, believe me, we would love to make these killer pressings more affordable
  • A Rock & Pop Top 100 album, and Ken Scott’s engineering masterpiece all rolled into one
  • 5 stars: “Fleshing out the off-kilter metallic mix with fatter guitars, genuine pop songs, string sections, keyboards, and a cinematic flourish, Ziggy Stardust is a glitzy array of riffs, hooks, melodrama, and style and the logical culmination of glam.”
  • This is a Must Own Title from 1972, a year which turned out to be a great one for Rock and Pop music.

Drop the needle on any song. We guarantee you have never heard that song sound better. The mastering is superb. There’s really no “mastering” to listen for — all you’re really aware of is the music flowing from the speakers, freed from all the limitations that you’ve had to accept over the years.

Unquestionably, this is the pinnacle of Glam Rock. Every track is superb; not a moment is less than stellar from beginning to end.

Is it Bowie’s Masterpiece?

Absolutely. No other Bowie record ranks higher in my book.

Is it amazingly well recorded?

You better believe it. This is not just Bowie’s masterpiece; it’s Ken Scott‘s as well. For BIG, BOLD, wall to wall, floor to ceiling sound, look no further. The best copies are swimming in rich, sweet TUBEY MAGIC. This is a sound we cannot get enough of here at Better Records.

Tubey Magical Acoustic Guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this recording. Simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum, along with richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and especially from modern remasterings)

The guitars on this record are a true test of stereo reproduction. Many pressings of this album do not get the guitars to sound right. On some they will sound veiled and dull, and on a copy with a bit too much top, they will have an unfortunate hi-fi-ish sparkle, the kind that Mobile Fidelity was infamous for in the late ’70s and ’80s.

The guitars may not sound “real,” they way they actually would in real life, but they sure sound grungy and GOOD!

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David Bowie / Aladdin Sane

More David Bowie

More Records with Exceptionally Tubey Magical Sound


  • Excellent sound throughout this vintage UK pressing of Bowie’s 1973 post-Ziggy classic, with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER from top to bottom – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Both of these sides are remarkably rich, smooth and warm, something that all the best Ken Scott tube recordings are renowned for
  • Plenty of Bowie Classics: “Watch That Man,” “Aladdin Sane,” “Panic in Detroit,” “Cracked Actor,” “The Jean Genie,” “Lady Grinning Soul,” and more
  • Bowie encyclopedist Nicholas Pegg describes it as “one of the most urgent, compelling and essential” of his releases
  • Fun fact: Bowie “ruled the (British) album chart, accumulating an unprecedented 182 weeks on the list in 1973 with six different titles.”
  • Here are more of our favorite Hot Stamper pressings of recordings with exceptionally Tubey Magical sound
  • And some reviews and commentaries for the most Tubey Magical recordings we have ever played
  • If you’re a fan of Bowie, or Glam in general, this title is clearly a Must Own from 1973

The big Bowie sound for this wonderful follow-up to Ziggy Stardust! We just finished shooting out a number of import pressings of the album, and this was one of the best copies we heard. It’s got the kind of Tubey Magical richness that takes these glam rockers to a whole new level.

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The Three / Self-Titled (45 RPM)

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

  • Amazing sound throughout this Japanese import pressing, with both sides earning KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them
  • The transients are uncannily lifelike – listen for the powerful kinetic energy produced when Shelly whacks the hell out of his cymbals
  • My favorite piano trio jazz album of all time — every one of the tracks is brilliantly arranged and performed
  • 4 stars: “One of Joe Sample’s finest sessions as a leader” – with Shelly Manne and Ray Brown, we would say it’s clearly his finest session, as a leader or simply as the piano player in a killer trio
  • Some of the other records we’ve discovered with top jazz piano sound can be found here
  • More amazing sounding piano recordings, of every kind of music, can be found here

If you want to hear the full six tunes recorded by The Three at that famous Hollywood session (which ran all day and long into the night, 4 AM to be exact), our 33 RPM pressings are your best bet.

If you want absolutely amazing, mind-blowing, you-are-there sound, a Hot Stamper 45 is the only way to go.

The music is so good that I personally would not want to live without the complete album. The Three is, in fact, my favorite piano trio jazz album of all time. Very one of those six tracks is brilliantly arranged and performed (if you have the right takes of course; more about that later).

This album checks off a number of important boxes for us here at Better Records:

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Dire Straits – Self-Titled

More of the Music of Dire Straits

  • The band’s debut album is back on the site for only the second time in ten months, here with a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two
  • One of the best sounding rock records ever made, with rich, sweet, smooth mids; prodigious amounts of bass; superb transparency and clarity; and a freedom from hi-fi-ishness and a lack of distortion like very few rock records we have ever heard
  • Rhett Davies knocked this one out of the park – it’s a Top 100 title, a member of the Tubey Magical Top Ten (see below), and our favorite by the band for both sound and music
  • If you made the mistake of buying the unbelievably bad sounding MoFi 45 RPM Half-Speed, this vintage UK pressing will be a REVELATION
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Knopfler also shows an inclination toward Dylanesque imagery, which enhances the smoky, low-key atmosphere of the album… the album is remarkably accomplished for a debut, and Dire Straits had difficulty surpassing it throughout their career.”
  • It’s our pick for the band’s best sounding album. Roughly 150 other listings for the Best Recording by an Artist or Group can be found here.

Rhett Davies is one of our favorite recording engineers, the man behind Taking Tiger Mountain, 801 Live and Avalon to name just a few of his most famous recordings, all favorites of ours of course.

The man may be famous for some fairly artificial sounding recordings — Eno’s, Roxy Music’s and The Talking Heads’ albums come to mind — but it’s obvious to us now, if it wasn’t before, that those are entirely artistic choices, not engineering shortcomings.

Rhett Davies, by virtue of the existence of this album alone, has proven that he belongs in the company of the greatest engineers of all time, right up there with the likes of Bill Porter, Ken Scott, Stephen Barncard, Geoff Emerick, Glyn Johns and others we could mention.

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