Demo Discs – Rock, etc.

Here you will find about 150 rock, pop and soul recordings that sound absolutely amazing on big speakers at loud levels.

On a dynamic, powerful system in a big room, the best pressings of these recordings are Demo Discs guaranteed to beat any other version you’ve heard, or your money back.

The Beatles – Abbey Road

More of the Music of The Beatles

  • This vintage UK copy of The Beatles’ last and arguably greatest album boasts two seriously good sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Quiet vinyl is rarely in the cards for Abbey Road, but here it is, and on a great sounding copy too
  • The stereo to play The Beatles magnum opus didn’t exist when the record was made, but it does now
  • If you’ve heard the disastrous new Half-Speed mastered remix LP, or the remastered Heavy Vinyl from a few years back, then you surely know that nothing comes close to a real, vintage, analog Abbey Road
  • This pressing might just give you a new appreciation for one of the Greatest Rock Albums of All Time
  • 5 stars, a permanent member of the Top 100, and a true rock and pop Demo Disc
  • 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.

Abbey Road Magic

Those of you who follow the site (or do your own shootouts) know that it’s much tougher to find great copies of Abbey Road than it is for MMT or Please Please Me. Most of the copies we’ve played just aren’t good enough to put on the site. For whatever reasons — probably because this recording is so complicated and required so many tracks — Abbey Road is one of the tougher nuts to crack in the Beatles’ catalog.

We’re wild about this album, and here’s a copy that will show you exactly why. Both sides are big, rich, sweet and present with lots of energy, wonderfully breathy vocals, and huge dynamic guitars. You don’t hear too many copies with a massive bottom end like this bad boy. A copy with this kind of transparency really allows you to hear INTO the soundfield and appreciate every last detail — quite a privilege for the lucky person who takes this one home.

This is the final statement from The Beatles. To take away the power of their magnum opus by playing it through inadequate equipment makes a mockery of the monumental effort that went into it. Remember, the original title for the album was Everest. That should tell you something about the size and scope of the music and sound that the Beatles had in mind.

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Little Feat – Waiting For Columbus

More Little Feat

  • A vintage copy of Waiting For Columbus with seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on all FOUR sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Some of the best sounding live rock and roll sound you will ever hear outside of a concert venue (particularly on sides one, two, and four)
  • If you want to understand the unique appeal of the band, there’s no better place to start than right here
  • One of our all-time favorite live recordings and their single best release – a true Masterpiece
  • 4 1/2 stars: “There’s much to savor on Waiting For Columbus, one of the great live albums of its era, thanks to rich performances that prove Little Feat were one of the great live bands of their time.”
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” but with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Waiting for Columbus is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but should.

This is an amazingly well-recorded concert, and what’s more, the versions the band does of their earlier material are much better than the studio album versions of those same songs in every case.

Fat Man In A Bathtub on this album is out of this world, but you could easily say that about a dozen or more of the tracks on this double album. Which simply means that you will have a very hard time listening to any of the studio versions of these songs once you’ve heard them performed with the kind of energy, enthusiasm and technical virtuosity Little Feat brought to this live show. (I saw them twice with Lowell and they were amazing both times.)

This is some of the best sounding live rock and roll sound you will ever hear outside of a concert venue. In fact, on a great copy, it’s just about as good as live rock’n’roll sound gets.

Here is a link to take you to more letters, commentaries and reviews for Waiting for Columbus.

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Emerson, Lake and Palmer – Pictures at an Exhibition

More Emerson, Lake and Palmer

  • An original UK Island pressing of this ELP Classic live album with a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a seriously good Double Plus (A++) side one
  • Both of these sides are amazingly Tubey Magical and exceptionally spacious, with a massive bottom end and plenty of Rock and Roll (and classical) energy
  • Pictures at an Exhibition is yet another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you turn up your volume
  • “…it worked on several levels that allowed widely divergent audiences to embrace it — with the added stimulus of certain controlled substances, it teased the brain with its mix of melody and heavy rock, and for anyone with some musical knowledge, serious or casual, it was a sufficiently bold use of Mussorgsky’s original to stimulate hours of delightful listening.”

This British Island LP has real weight and heft, so when Emerson lays into the organ, it’ll rattle the walls. It has that big, fat, rich, smooth sound that we love here at Better Records. It’s warm and full, not thick and sludgy. It’s on the right end of the “tubey-transistory” spectrum.

Listen to how GIGANTIC the organ is that plays the fanfare opening of the work. Honestly, I have never heard a rock album with an organ sound that stretched from wall to wall like this one does. It sounds like it must be seventy five feet tall, too.

No, I take that back. The first ELP album has an organ that sounds about that big, but that’s a studio album. How did they manage to get that kind of organ sound in a live setting without actually having to build one inside the concert hall?

The domestic copies are a bad joke as you may have guessed.

You might think that you could just pick up any old Brit pressing to get this kind of sound, but that has not been our experience. Many of them are thick, dull, smeary, veiled, congested and/or just plain lifeless.

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Cat Stevens – Mona Bone Jakon

More of the Music of Cat Stevens

  • Incredible sound throughout this UK Island pressing of Cat Stevens’s brilliant third album, with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them
  • So transparent, open, and spacious, nuances and subtleties that escaped you before are now front and center
  • When you play “I Wish, I Wish” and “I Think I See The Light” on this vintage pressing, we think you will agree with us that this is one of the greatest Folk Rock albums of them all
  • One of the most underrated titles on the site – you owe it to yourself to see just how good the album that came out right before Tillerman can be when it sounds this good
  • 4 stars: “A delight, and because it never achieved the Top 40 radio ubiquity of later albums, it sounds fresh and distinct.”

So many copies excel in some areas but fall flat in others. This side one has it ALL going on — all the Tubey Magic, all the energy, all the presence and so on. The sound is high-rez yet so natural, free from the phony hi-fi-ish quality that you hear on many pressings, especially the reissues on the second label.

Right off the bat, I want to say this is a work of GENIUS. Cat Stevens made three records that belong in the Pantheon of greatest popular recordings of all time. In the world of Folk Pop, Mona Bone Jakon, Teaser and the Firecat and Tea for the Tillerman have few peers. There may be other Folk Pop recordings that are as good but we know of none that are better.

Mike Bobak was the engineer for these sessions from 1970. He is the man responsible for some of the best sounding records from the early ’70s: The Faces’ Long Player, Rod Stewart’s Never a Dull Moment, The Kinks’ Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One, (and lots of other Kinks albums), Carly Simon’s Anticipation and more than his share of obscure English bands (of which there seems to be a practically endless supply).

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

10cc – The Original Soundtrack

More of the Music of 10cc

  • With two seriously good Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this vintage UK import
  • Superb clarity and energy, solid down low, silky up top, and as huge as any recording you’ve ever heard
  • A Top 100 Album and a real sonic blockbuster on a copy that sounds as good as this one does
  • “Musically there’s more going on than in ten Yes albums, yet it’s generally as accessible as a straight pop band… 10cc is among the few groups actively engaged in stretching rock’s restrictive boundaries in a constructive and meaningful manner, without falling prey to pretense or excess.” – Rolling Stone

The recording itself is a Tour De Force, one reason I’ve been demonstrating my stereo with it for more than thirty years. The extended suite that opens side one, One Night in Paris, has ambience, sound effects, and incredibly dynamic multi-tracked vocals at its climax that will make your jaw drop.

Reinventing The Wall of Sound The Right Way

This is the kind of record that makes you sit up and take notice. It’s classic 10cc everything-but-the-kitchen-sink “Wall of Sound” sound (minus the Phil Spector distortion), the kind big speaker guys like me live for.

Supertramp; Yes; Ambrosia; Blood, Sweat and Tears; Zeppelin; Bowie — to this day I’m a sucker for the Cinerama soundstage these musicians liked to play on. It’s one of the reasons I was the proud owner of the Legacy Whisper speaker system for close to ten years, with its eight fifteen inch woofer complement. You need that kind of piston power to produce The Really Big Sound with Super Low Distortion at Really High Levels. The louder the better.

We now have a pair of highly modified Focuses set up in our listening room. Three twelves per channel moves a fair amount of air too, and can do it with much less power, so that the system has much more resolving power than the Whispers could manage.

We’re CRAZY About This Album

This was my first 10cc album, and I fell in love with it completely. Used to play it all the time. “Une Nuit a Paris,” the suite that opens side one, is just an phenomenal Demo Quality track. As you may have read elsewhere on the site, it’s the kind of sound that a big powerful stereo reproduces well. Even back in 1975 I had speakers nearly as tall as I was that weighed 300 pounds apiece (the famous Fulton J!), so playing a record like this was just a thrill.

It still is. I still love it. And I recommend it highly to those of you who are fans of the band. If you don’t know who 10cc are, this album and this band may not make much sense to you, but if you have an open mind and like Art Rock from the 70s, you may end up falling for it the way I did all those years ago.

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The Eagles / Desperado

More Eagles

  • Both TAS-approved sides of this original White Label Asylum pressing were giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for, earning INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them
  • This copy has huge amounts of Tubey Magic, a strong bass foundation, and plenty of space around the guitars and voices – man, that is our sound!
  • Unfortunately, both of the shootout winners were not without issues, as you can see below, so those of you looking for one with audiophile surfaces will have to circle back with us in a year or so
  • This is the second-best sounding Eagles record of all time, no doubt thanks to their brilliant engineer and producer, Glyn Johns
  • “A solid country-rock classic… the music stands the test of time, especially when Desperado is heard in its entirety, from start to finish.”

Acoustic guitar reproduction is key to this recording, and on the best copies the harmonic coherency, the richness, the body and simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard in every strum.

What to Listen For on Desperado

Too many instruments and voices jammed into too little space in the upper midrange during the loudest passages. 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 area of the midrange, causing congestion and a loss of clarity.

With the smoother, 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 vocals (lead and backing) comfortably, without having to pile them up one on top of another as is so often the case with densely mixed pop recordings. On the better copies, the upper midrange does not get overwhelmed and congested with too many elements fighting for too little space.

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The Eagles – Self-Titled

More Eagles

  • You will be floored by the huge, rich, Tubey Magical guitars exploding out from your speakers on “Take It Easy” on this  side one – it will make a fantastic Demo Disc to blow your audiophile friends’ minds
  • These early pressings are extremely hard to find in audiophile playing condition, and one that sounds as good as this one might take you quite a few years to track down
  • This is exactly the kind of record that makes virtually any audiophile pressing pale in comparison – just about everything you could ask for as an audiophile is here, and more
  • One of the best sounding rock records ever made, a member of our Top Ten and without a doubt Glyn Johns‘s engineering (and producing) Masterpiece
  • A Top 100 Tubey Magical Demo Disc that is guaranteed to blow your mind on a pressing that sounds as good as this one does

It will not take the lucky owner of this record long to recognize what we’ve known for years: the Eagles first album is clearly and inarguably one of the best sounding rock records ever made. Almost all the qualities we look for on this album can be found on this very copy.

We’ve been up on our soapbox for years telling people how amazing this record can be, and here’s a copy that backs up our position from start to finish. (more…)

Elton John / Tumbleweed Connection

More Elton John


  • Both sides of this early DJM import pressing have superb sound for Elton John’s 1970 Masterpiece, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • The sound here is richer, with much less transistory grain, and more of the all important Tubey Magic than most other copies we played
  • An incredible recording and longtime member of our Top 100 — our pick for Elton’s very best music and sound
  • 5 stars: “….[Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s] most ambitious record to date… A loose concept album about the American West… draws from country and blues in equal measures…”
  • If you’re an Elton John fan, this is a classic from 1970 that belongs in your collection
  • We consider this album to be a Masterpiece. It’s a recording that should be part of any serious popular music collection.
  • As is sometimes the case, there is one and only one set of stampers that consistently wins shootouts for this album.  Click on this link to see other titles with one set of stamper numbers that always come out on top

This has to be one of the best sounding rock records of all time — certainly worthy of a Top Ten spot on our Top 100 list. Engineered by Robin Geoffrey Cable at Trident, there is no other Elton John recording that is as big and powerful as Tumbleweed.

A copy like this really tells you why we love this album so. The highs are silky sweet, the vocals are full-bodied and breathy, and the tonal balance is perfection from top to bottom. And big drums — monstrously big. Can’t forget those.

By the way, if you have any doubts that Elton was a pop music genius, simply play this album a few dozen times. It’s all the proof you will need. Tumbleweed Connection and Honky Chateau are the two titles that are as close to perfect pop recordings as will ever exist in this world. 10 on a scale of 1 to 10.

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Elton John / Honky Chateau – A Must Own Classic

More Elton John

  • This vintage UK import pressing boasts superb Tubey Magical British Rock sound, with excellent Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides
  • A monster Demo Disc – the bottom end is huge, the top is open and extended, and the overall tonality rich and balanced
  • An amazing recording and a founding member of our Top 100 – it’s a shame we rarely find them with sound this good and audiophile quality surfaces (DJM see-through vinyl being what it is)
  • 5 stars: “The most focused and accomplished set of songs Elton John and Bernie Taupin ever wrote.”
  • This is a Must Own album from 1972, one that deserves a place in any audiophile’s collection
  • Honky Chateau is also one of those albums with one set of very special stampers that consistently win shootouts.

If you doubt that Elton John was an unusually gifted Pop Music Genius for much of the ’70s, just play this record. These eleven tracks should serve as all the proof you could possibly need. There’s not a dog in the bunch, and most of these songs are positively brilliant. Drop the needle on any track, you simply can’t go wrong.

Honky Chateau has to be one of the best sounding rock records of all time — certainly worthy of a prized spot on our Rock and Pop Top 100 List. It’s a shining example of just how good High-Production-Value rock music of the ’70s can be.

The amount of effort that went into the recording of Honky Chateau is comparable to that expended by the engineers and producers of bands like Supertramp, The Who, Jethro Tull, Ambrosia, Pink Floyd and far too many others to list. It seems that no effort or cost was spared in making the home listening experience as compelling as the recording technology of the day permitted.

The sides that had sound that jumped out of the speakers, with driving rhythmic energy, worked the best for us. They really brought this music to life and allowed us to make sense of it. This is yet another definition of a Hot Stamper — it’s the copy that lets the music work as music.

Big Production Tubey Magical British Rock just does not get much better than Honky Chateau. (more…)

Edmundo Ros – Rhythms of the South

More Exotica Recordings of Interest 

  • An original London Stereo pressing with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from start to finish – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Side two was very close in sound to our Shootout Winner – you will be amazed at how big and lively and tubey the sound is
  • This copy is super spacious, sweet and positively dripping with ambience — talk about Tubey Magic, the liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny
  • These sides are simply bigger, clearer, richer, more dynamic, transparent and energetic than most of what we played

It’s unfortunate that Edmundo Ros and his orchestra command so little respect these days from the record buying public. As for audiophiles, it’s doubtful that many even know who he or they is/are. We at Better Records are doing our best to change all that.

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