Compilations

The Everly Brothers – The Golden Hits of The Everly Brothers on the Gold Label

More Sixties Pop

  • A killer sounding Gold Label WB Stereo LP with a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two
  • Our early pressing here showed us a wonderfully Tubey Magical midrange for the Everlys that we’re pretty sure most audiophiles have never heard
  • So much good material here – “Cathy’s Clown,” “Crying In The Rain,” “So Sad,” “That’s Old Fashioned,” “Lucille,” etc.
  • “There are few sounds in American popular music more thrilling and sublimely satisfying than the harmonies of Don and Phil Everly…”

It took us a long time to find enough records to do this shootout. How many extremely popular 60+ year old records survived into the present era in such clean condition? We can’t be sure when the next shootout will be, but we can be pretty sure it won’t be any time soon.

(more…)

Fleetwood Mac – The Pious Bird Of Good Omen

More of the Music of Fleetwood Mac

  • Seriously good sound throughout this original UK Blue Horizon pressing, with both sides earning Double Plus (A++) grades – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • The early pressings take the cake on this one, but try to find one in audiophile playing condition – it takes us many years to get one of these shootouts going
  • Both of these sides are remarkably big and rich, with correct tonality, punchy energy and wonderfully breathy vocals – this is the way early Fleetwood Mac is supposed to sound
  • One of the top Fleetwood Mac compilations – I have it on CD and have never tired of the music
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…makes for a terrific laid-back stroll through some of the best British blues music ever made.”

If you’re a fan of Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac — and who in his right mind wouldn’t be? — then you can’t go wrong with this record. “Need Your Love So Bad,” “Albratross” and “Black Magic Woman” are all featured here.

Speaking of “Black Magic Woman,” the better copies of Pious Bird reproduce the bass-heavy drumming on that track much better than the Greatest Hits album we also recommend. It’s very unlikely that you can find better sound for that classic than right here on this very copy.

(more…)

Miles Davis – Collector’s Items

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • Excellent MONO sound throughout these 70s reissue pressings, with solid Double Plus (A++) grades on all FOUR sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This Prestige Two-Fer contains the complete Collector’s Items (1956) and Blue Moods (1955), both brilliantly remastered by the one and only RVG
  • The Demo Disc sound throughout these sides is rich, full, sweet, tonally right on the money, and lively as can be
  • Davis partners here with jazz greats, including Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker and others

(more…)

The Beatles – Hey Jude

More of the Music of The Beatles

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on both sides, this vintage import copy is doing just about everything right – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • An amazing 10-song compilation from 1970 of some of the band’s biggest and best hits – “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Paperback Writer,” “Lady Madonna,” and the iconic title track among them
  • Longtime customers know that we had never been able to offer this title up until 2022 – it took us twenty years to figure out what the right pressings are, and believe me, we had to go through a lot of crap to find them
  • If you know the album at all, you know how bad it sounds on the average copy, and my guess is you just gave up on the idea of finding good sound for these songs, which is more or less the way we felt too, but we finally found what we were looking for, and here it is (particularly on side one)
  • “…showcases the Beatles’ versatility and growth, as they move from the exuberance of Beatlemania to the intense psychedelia of the mid-60s and then settle into rich post-Pepper days…. Great songs all.”
  • And Past Masters, referred to in the Allmusic review below, is not the answer they seem to think it is — it has some of the most abominably bright and aggressive digital mastering we have ever heard
  • Your one other option for some of this music with top quality sound is the 1967-1970 compilation album, the Hot Stamper pressings for which have only recently been discovered
  • “…showcases the Beatles’ versatility and growth, as they move from the exuberance of Beatlemania to the intense psychedelia of the mid-’60s and then settle into rich post-Pepper days…. Great songs all.”

If you love these songs as much as we do, you won’t believe how good they sound here.

(more…)

Mississippi John Hurt – The Best of…

More Blues

  • Insanely good sound on all four sides with each earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades – exceptionally quiet vinyl for the most part too
  • As is often the case with old records, the title is misleading – this is simply a live recording from 1965 of MJH accompanied by his guitar running through a batch of his favorite folky blues songs
  • “Hurt was remarkably consistent as a performer… the skill and delivery is always steady, professional, and charming. Among the highlights in this set is his intricate and atmospheric slide guitar work on “Talking Casey,” one of the few times Hurt abandoned his trademark three-finger guitar picking style.” 

(more…)

Gabor Szabo – The Best of Gabor Szabo

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Guitar

  • With outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides, this vintage Impulse pressing is doing just about everything right – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Clean, clear, full-bodied and present with an abundance of Tubey Magic and right-on-the-money instrumental timbres, the originals may be a bit better sounding, but both are they expensive these days and rarely can be found in audiophile playing condition
  • For some reason, the guitar sound from this era of recording seems to have died out with the times – it can only be found on the better copies of these vintage pressings, such as this one

(more…)

We Was Wrong about Saxophone Colossus and More in 2010

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Sonny Rollins Available Now

The album is a compilation of three major sessions from 1956, all with both Sonny Rollins and Max Roach. Allmusic describes it this way:

“Saxophone Colossus, the album that really made the jazz public fully aware of the majestic talents of Sonny Rollins, is combined here with seven other great performances from the same highly creative period in the long career of this major artist.”

In 2010 we thought this two-fer had very good sound for the music it contained. Here is what we had to say all those years ago:

This Prestige Two-Fer Double LP has FOUR GREAT SIDES with each rating an A+ or better. The standout sides here are two and four, both rating an A++. Both sides are EXCELLENT and very lively with lots of energy and presence. Side one rates an A+ and has a wonderfully extended top end and side three rates an A+ – A++ with clean and clear sound and huge breathy horns.

Well, it turns out that in 2010 we had a lot to learn.

We were about to do a shootout for Saxophone Colossus about five [make that ten or more] years ago, and we decided to pull out some of the two-fer pressings we had sitting in the backroom to see how they would hold up against the early pressings we liked, which you can read about here.

It did not go well. The album sounded like a cheap reissue, which of course it is, but many cheap reissues sound great, so we never hold the price of the record against it when deciding whether or not it is worth cleaning and auditioning.

There are scores of budget jazz reissues from the 70s and 80s that sound great, some of them two-fer pressings.

Just not this one. It’s passable at best, and a very far cry from what the best pressings can sound like.

More on Saxophone Colossus

Our last White Hot Stamper Gold Label Mono pressing went for big bucks, 900 of them in fact.

Of course, a clean original goes for many times that, which is one reason you have never seen such a record on our site.

How much would we have to charge for a Hot Stamper pressing of an album we paid many thousands of dollars for? Far more than our customers would be willing to pay us, that’s for sure.

You Say You Don’t Have Nine Hundred Bucks for This Album?

Try the DCC pressing from 1995.

The DCC Heavy Vinyl pressing is probably a nice record. I haven’t played it in many years, but I remember liking it back in the day.

It’s dramatically better than the 80s OJC, which, like many OJC pressings, is thin, hard, tizzy up top and devoid of Tubey Magic.

I would be surprised if the DCC Gold CD isn’t even better than their vinyl pressing.

They usually are.

Steve Hoffmann brilliantly mastered many classic albums for DCC. I like DCC’s CDs much better than their records.

Their records did not have to fight their way through Kevin Gray’s opaque, airless, low-resolution cutting system, a subject we discussed in some depth here.

(more…)

Hot Stamper Sharing Can’t Get Off the Ground, How Come?

Basic Concepts and Record Realities Explained 

The above link takes you to our blog. Normally such a link would take you to our in-stock Hot Stamper pressings on the site for the band in question, but we rarely have any Traffic albums to sell these days, which is the case as of this writing.

Finding just the right Traffic pressings, with audiophile-quality vinyl no less, requires effort and resources that we just haven’t been committing to lately. We hope to do better in 2025.

In 2014 somebody on the Hoffman forum tried to get a Hot Stamper thread going under this heading: cheap Hot Stampers revealed.

The thread:

“If you have a “hot stamper” record – one that smokes and takes no prisoners, I mean a BADASS pressing, show it here with matrix info, label or other identifying features so we can all hunt with a bit of a head-start.

“I know these records are out there, just looking for a place to show off their analog glory.

“Here is a recent find that fits the bill and then some:

“Traffic: Best Of Traffic UK.

“Matrix # ILPS 9112 A-1/B-1”

OK, let’s talk about this Island reissue. We know the record well. If it sounds the way the copies we played over the years have sounded, we would say it can be good, not great, and if it qualified for Hot Stamper status, it might — might — earn a plus and a half at best. (1.5+.)

We don’t even bother to pick them up at any price these days, if that tells you anything.

He got very little support in his endeavor. The thread closed after a while with practically nothing in it.

Could it be that the folks on the Hoffman forum have a poor grasp of the amount of effort, time and money it takes to find Hot Stampers?

And, having committed to neither the effort, the time nor the money, find that they have nothing of any value to contribute to such a list?  

Yes, that could be. That definitely could be. Thank god it doesn’t keep them from criticizing those of us who, working in concert with a staff of ten or so, have devoted ourselves to the task and found them by the thousands.

By the way, we know that Traffic title very well. The Pink Label original is by far the best pressing in our experience. No copy we have ever heard on the label promoted by this poster would qualify as much more than a bargain Hot Stamper in comparison to the Pink Label and Pink Rim label pressings that we sell, although of course, not having heard his copy, we can’t say it’s not fabulous. 

It’s just not very likely to be fabulous. 

(more…)

Ray Charles / All Time Great Country and Western Hits – Better Sound than the Originals? Can It Really Be True?

More Ray Charles

More Soul, Blues and R&B

  • These vintage ABC pressings boast superb Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on all FOUR sides
  • If you could only have one Ray Charles album, it would have to be this one – you’ll have a hard time doing better than this very copy
  • What was especially shocking about this shootout is that in some ways the better sounding copies of the reissue not just the equal of, but actually best their original album counterparts
  • 22 classic songs on two LPs, including huge hits like “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” “You Don’t Know Me,” “Oh Lonesome Me,” “Bye Bye Love,” and much more – no wonder AMG gave both discs 5 stars
  • This is some big, bold, absolutely glorious Tubey Magical analog (particularly on sides one, two and four) – the tape to disc transfer is hard to fault, making a mockery of the audiophile remasters to come
  • There are some bad marks (as is sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs) on “You Win Again” and “Some Day,” but once you hear just how excellent sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and just be swept away by the music

The music is wonderful. Just listen to that swingin’ horn section behind Ray on Hey, Good Lookin’. They are hot! And Bye Bye Love just plain ROCKS.

Both these LPs have the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern pressings cannot BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back. (more…)

The Everly Brothers / The Very Best of The Everly Brothers

More Everly Brothers

More Sixties Pop Recordings

  • The Very Best of the Everly Brothers returns the site for only the second time in years on this vintage Stereo Gold Label pressing that boasts two solid Double Plus (A++) sides
  • Tubey Magic is the key to the sound of the best pressings, and we guarantee our early Gold Label pressings have the kind of Tubey Magic that no modern pressing of the last 40 years has been able to offer audiophiles
  • This 1961 compilation album allowed the brothers to re-record some of their Cadence hits, and to do it in stereo
  • Our recent shootout taught us something we had no idea would be true, but it’s one that doesn’t surprise us in the least – the earliest pressings can be very good, but they’re somewhat veiled, which means they are definitely not the best sounding
  • “There are few sounds in American popular music more thrilling and sublimely satisfying than the harmonies of Don and Phil Everly, the Everly Brothers, and this album features them singing a dozen great songs that have come to be associated with them.” – All Music

This compilation contains some real Warners recordings (from after 1960, when they signed with the label) mixed with some re-recordings of their best classic Cadence material, to make an album with as many hits and great songs as a single album can hold.

It took us about ten years to find the records for this shootout. Not sure when the next one will be, but we’re pretty sure it won’t be any time soon.

(more…)