Focus-R/P/S

Here you will find rock, pop, soul, etc. albums we think we know well, having cleaned and played them by the score over the course of many decades.

There are currently 160 or so entries, but the number could easily exceed 1000 considering how many records we play every week in our shootouts.

More Bass or More Detail, Which Is Right?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now

With Doug Sax mastering from the real tape, on the best pressings of Who By Numbers you get a rock solid bottom end like you will not believe. Talk about punchy, well-defined and deep, man, this record has bass that you sure don’t hear too often on rock records. 

And it’s not just bass that separates the men from the boys, or the real thing (a vintage pressing) from the current reissues (on Heavy Vinyl) for that matter. It’s weight, fullness, the part of the frequency range from the lower midrange to the upper bass, that area that spans roughly 150 to 600 cycles.

It’s what makes Daltry’s voice sound full and rich, not thin and modern.

It’s what makes the drums solid and fat the way Glyn Johns intended.

The good copies of Who’s Next and Quadrophenia have plenty of muscle in this area, and so do the imports we played.

Want to find your own top quality copy?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that tend to win our shootouts.

Hot Stamper shootouts for this album should be carried out:

How else can you expect to hear the recording at its best?

Based on our experience, The Who by Numbers sounds best:

Donald Gets Dynamic on Rikki

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

Pretzel Logic is one knockout of a recording.

Having done shootouts for every Steely Dan title, I can say that sonically this one has no equal in their canon. (Click on that link to see two hundred others.)

Which is really saying something, since Becker and Fagen are known to be audiophiles themselves and real sticklers for sound. No effort in the recording of this album was spared, that I can tell you without fear of contradiction.

They sweated the details on this one. The mix is perfection.

But you would never know it by playing the average pressing of this album, which is dull, compressed and dead as the proverbial doornail.

(We’ve played plenty of records — actually, specific pressings of records — that were dull, compressed, and dead as a doornail. We’ve made links for them by the hundreds here so that audiophiles who do not want records with these problems can more easily avoid them.)

It’s positively criminal the way this amazingly well-recorded music sounds on the typical LP pressing. Hint: avoid all imports and anything not on ABC.) How can you possibly be expected to appreciate the music when you can’t hear it right?

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When Did You First Hear that 10k Boost on Sittin’ In?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Loggins and Messina Available Now

UPDATE 2026

It took us a long time to recognize it, I can tell you that. 30 years? Maybe even more.

And how about the boost to the low end?

This commentary is from many years ago, perhaps as far back as 2010.

Of course it could not have been written until the stereo had reached the level where these anomalies and others like them could be easily recognized, the clearest kind of evidence of progress in audio.

If you’re not noticing these kinds of things on the vintage vinyl you play, then it’s probably time for a serious upgrade or two.

The anomalies are there, of that there can be no doubt. They’re everywhere. You just need a more accurate and revealing system and room to show them to you.

In that respect, you my find our shootout notes are helpful at pointing you in the right direction as to what you should be listening for. They are especially helpful in recognizing when one side or another falls short in some specific area.

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The Seeds of Love – A Nearly Perfect Pop Masterpiece

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Hot Stamper Pressings of Art Rock Albums Available Now

The band’s magnum opus, a Colossus of Production to rival the greatest Prog, Psych and Art Rock recordings of all time. (Whew!)

When it comes to Genre Busting Rock I put this album right up at the top of the heap, along with several other landmark albums from the Seventies: Roxy Music’s first, The Original Soundtrack, Crime of the Century, Ambrosia’s first two releases, Fragile, Dark Side of the Moon and a handful of others.

The Seeds Of Love is clearly the band’s masterpiece, and being able to hear it on a White Hot Stamper pressing is nothing short of a THRILL.

I have a long history with this style of Popular Music, stretching all the way back to the early ’70s. I grew up on Bowie, Roxy Music, 10cc, Eno, The Talking Heads, Ambrosia, Peter Gabriel, Supertramp, Yes, Zappa and others, individuals and bands that wanted to play rock music but felt shackled by the constraints of the conventional pop song. Nothing on Sowing the Seeds of Love fits the description of a Conventional Pop Song.

Which albums by The Beatles break all the rules? Side two of Abbey Road and the whole of The White Album, which is why both are Desert Island Discs for me. Can’t get enough of either one.

The Discovery of a Lifetime

When I discovered these arty rock bands in my early twenties I quickly became obsessed with them and remain so to this day.

My equipment was forced to evolve in order to be able to play the scores of challenging recordings issued by these groups and others in the 70s. These albums informed not only my taste in music but the actual stereo I play that music on. I’ve had large dynamic speakers for the last four decades precisely because they do such a good job of bringing to life huge and powerful recordings such as these.

Tears For Fears on this and their previous album continue that tradition of big-as-life and just-as-difficult-to-reproduce records. God bless ’em for it.

Analog Sound

The sound of most copies is aggressive, hard, harsh and thin. What do you expect? The album is recorded digitally and direct metal mastered at Masterdisk.

Most of us analog types put up with the limitations of the sound because we love the music, some of the most moving, brilliantly written and orchestrated psychedelic pop of the last thirty years.

Imagine if the Beatles in their Sgt. Pepper/ Magical Mystery Tour phase kept going in that direction. They very well might have ended up in the neighborhood of Sowing the Seeds of Love.

But wait — the best pressings have smooth, sweet, analog richness and spaciousness I didn’t think was possible for this recording. The bass is full and punchy. When it really starts cooking, such as in the louder, more dynamic sections of Woman in Chains or the title cut, it doesn’t get harsh and abrasive like most copies. It’s got energy and life without making your ears bleed — if you have the system to play it.

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Mona Bone Jakon – Live and Learn (about Killer Import Pressings)

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

UPDATE 2026

Scroll down to check out our two updates, one from 2024 and one from 2025.

Live and learn? It never ends!

Assuming you love music enough to put in the work. (More on that subject here.)

When we said Mona Bone Jakon was not the sonic equal of Teaser and the Firecat or Tea for the Tillerman, boy, we was wrong and then some. Read all about it in this review for a White Hot Stamper copy from many years ago.

It’s been about a year since we last found Hot Stampers of this album, and having made a number of improvements to the stereo over that time, I’m here to report that this album got a WHOLE LOT BETTER, better than I ever imagined it could get. Mona Bone Jakon now ranks as a DEMO DISC of the highest order, every bit the equal of Teaser and Tea.

To think that all three of these records came out in one fifteen-month period is astonishing. The only other artists to have produced music of this caliber in so short a time would have to be The Beatles, and it took four of them to do it.

Which is not what we used to think, as evidenced by this paragraph from a previous Hot Stamper listing.

This album is one of Cat’s top four titles both musically and sonically. Tea and Teaser are obviously in a league of their own, but this album and Catch Bull At Four are close behind. The music is WONDERFUL — the best tracks (including I Wish I Wish and I Think I See The Light) rank right up there with anything from his catalog. Sonically it’s not an epic recording on the scale of Tea or Teaser, but with Paul Samwell-Smith at the helm, you can be sure it’s an excellent sounding album — on the right pressing.

That last line is dead wrong. It IS an epic recording on the scale of Tea and Teaser. This copy proves it! Now that we know just how good this record can sound, I hope you will allow me to borrow some commentary from another classic Cat Stevens album listing, to wit:

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Bill Porter’s Tubey Magical Caribbean Guitar

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chet Atkins Available Now

This album is a little more lively than some of Chet’s other recordings, which can be criticized for being a little too laid back. For example, try side 2, cut 2, where Chet actually jams.

The last track on side 2 where Chet is joined by a trumpet player is my favorite on the album. That guitar-trumpet combination is pretty magical on that song. And you’ve got to love the kind of sound Bill Porter gets for a trumpet. That’s the kind of sound we audiophiles drool over. I do anyway.

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Wild Things Run Fast – A Personal Favorite

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

One of our favorite Joni Mitchell albums.

A Desert Island disc for me and one of the few good reasons to listen to new music in the 80s. 

My personal Must Own Joni Mitchell list includes:

  1. 1968 Song to a Seagull
  2. 1971 Blue
  3. 1974 Court and Spark
  4. 1982 Wild Things Run Fast

WTRF is a TAS list Super Disc with many good qualities, but you’d never know it from the typically lean, bass-shy pressing you might find on your turntable.

Also, since this record can be a little cold sounding — it’s a modern recording after all, and 1982 is sadly nothing like 1972  — filling it out and warming it up is just what the doctor ordered.

John Golden (JG) mastered the originals. The best of them prove that he did a great job at least some of the time. (To find “the best of them,” aka Hot Stampers, read on.)

You can count on the fact that our Hot Stamper pressings will be unusually rich and full-bodied, with lovely warmth and presence.

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The Uncanny Feeling of Being in the Room While the Band Is Playing

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

Years ago we did a shootout and found a copy that we described this way:

No other copy gave us the feeling we got from this pressing — the indescribable illusion of being in the room while the band is playing. This is what we refer to as Master Tape Sound. Once you’ve experienced it you’re never the same. Read some of our testimonials. People really go crazy over this kind of sound. Records like this are few and far between, but when you find one, the effect it can have on you may make you go a little overboard too.

You might even feel the need to write us a letter. It’s the kind of experience that compels you to find some way to share it with the world. The problem there is that those reading your letter don’t have a copy with the kind of sound you have, and they therefore can’t experience the music the way you can. If they haven’t heard it for themselves, it’s all just talk, the kind of crap you can read on any internet forum about any piece-of-junk record ever made.

That’s why we love to hear from people who’ve actually played the very same record we did. We know why they’ve flipped out. We flipped out too.

When you drop the needle on a record this good, you feel like you just threaded up the master tape and hit play. You quickly become so totally IMMERSED in the musical experience that you soon forget you’re listening to a record. You’re hearing the music exactly the way the musicians intended it to sound. You can’t ask for more than that. Records like that get the Triple Plus.

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What to Listen For on Breakfast in America

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Supertramp Available Now

What follows is some advice on what to listen for.

If you are interested in digging deeper, our listening in depth commentaries have extensive track breakdowns for some of the better-known albums for which we’ve done multiple shootouts.

What to listen for, you ask?

Number One

Too many instruments and voices jammed into too little space in the upper midrange. When the tonality is shifted-up, even slightly, or there is too much compression, there will be too many elements — voices, guitars, drums — vying for space in the upper part of the midrange, causing congestion and a loss of clarity.

With the more solid sounding copies, the lower mids are full and rich; above them, the next “level up” so to speak, there’s plenty of space in which to fit all the instruments and voices comfortably, not piling them one on top of another as is often the case. Consequently, the upper midrange area does not get overloaded and overwhelmed with musical information.

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Energy Is the Key to the Best Sounding Pressings of Let’s Dance

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Bowie Available Now

With Let’s Dance the name of the game is energy, and boy do the best copies! Both sides of this former shootout winner have the deep, punchy bass, smooth vocals and sweet, extended highs that Bowie’s music needs to come alive.

With that big bass and natural top end, this is one record you can turn up good and loud without fear of fatigue. On a big pair of dynamic speakers, you will get more than your money’s worth from the best of our Hot Stamper pressings. 

If you’re a fan of big drums in a big room with jump out of the speakers sound, this is the album for you.

Side One

Modern Love

This track has a tendency to be a bit brighter than those that follow. To find out if your Let’s Dance is killer, see how the title track further down sounds.

China Girl
Let’s Dance

The best sounding track on the album and one of the handful of best sounding Bowie tracks ever recorded. With a truly Hot Stamper copy, try as you might you will be very hard-pressed to find better sound. Demo Disc quality doesn’t begin to do it justice.

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