Demo Discs for Tubey Magical Guitars

Elton John – Self-Titled

More of the Music of Elton John

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, this copy was giving us the sound we were looking for on Elton’s sophomore release – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • These sides are huge, and the music positively jumps out of the speakers – accept no substitutes!
  • A vintage British DJM pressing with sound this good is a Must Own for all right thinking music lovers of the audiophile persuasion – this is a very special recording, one that will reward countless plays for as long as you live
  • Some of the most remarkable string arrangements (and Tubey Magical string sound) ever recorded for a pop album
  • Top 100 and 4 1/2 stars: “Even with the strings and choirs that dominate the sound of the album, John manages to rock out on a fair share of the record. …Elton John remains one of his best records.”
  • A permanent resident of our Top 100 rock and pop list — this album is a Must Own from 1970
  • 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,” with an accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Elton John is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but would certainly benefit from getting to know better.

Folks, if you’re looking for classic popular music that still appeals to sophisticated adults fifty-plus years after it came out, this is the album for you. It’s one of the four classic Elton John records (five if you count GYBR) that belong in every right-thinking audiophile’s collection.

(more…)

Joni Mitchell – Clouds

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • This vintage copy boasts solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER from top to bottom – the first copy to make the site since our last shootout in 2022
  • Check out the clear transients on Joni’s guitar — you can really hear her moving her hands around the fretboard and pulling on the strings
  • It’s tough to find this album in clean shape with this kind of warm, natural sound (something the new reissue is no doubt profoundly lacking)
  • Stick with the Two Tone labels if you want the highest quality sound – the later Tan labels can be good but even the best of them are many steps down in sound quality from the White Hot shootout winners
  • This would most likely include any modern repress on Heavy Vinyl, although to be honest we have never played one for Clouds – what would be the point?
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Clouds is a stark stunner, a great leap forward for Joni Mitchell. Vocals here are more forthright and assured than on her debut and exhibit a remarkable level of subtle expressiveness. Guitar alone is used in accompaniment, and the variety of playing approaches and sounds gotten here is most impressive.”

Everything you could ask for from this album is here on this copy: stunning clarity and transparency, breathy vocals, richness, sweetness, warmth, and tons of ambience.

Check out the clear transients on the acoustic guitar — you can really hear her moving her hands around the fretboard and pulling on the strings. The immediacy is mindblowing — Joni and her guitar are right there in the room with you, without being forced into your lap.

The best sounding copies of Clouds are the ones that put Joni and her guitar right there in your living room.

(more…)

America – Self-Titled

More of the Music of America

  • Boasting a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two, this early Green Label pressing could not be beat – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This was the only copy in our shootout to earn a 3+ grade on any side that did not have a sizable number of marks that played, which is disappointing considering how hard it is to find top quality sound on this title!
  • One of our favorite Hippie Folk Rock albums – the instruments and voices are so well recorded they will seem to be floating right in front of you
  • The Tubey Magical acoustic guitars on this record are a true test of stereo reproduction – thanks, Ken Scott
  • 4 stars: “America’s debut album is a folk-pop classic, a stellar collection of memorable songs that would prove influential on such acts as the Eagles and Dan Fogelberg…”

This is clearly America’s best album. You’ll find the kind of immediacy, richness and harmonic texture that not many records (and even fewer CDs) are capable of reproducing. The version we are offering here has the song “A Horse With No Name.” Some copies without that song can sound very good as well, but with grades this good, this copy is going to be very hard to beat.

Interestingly, “A Horse With No Name” never sounds quite as good as the rest of the album. It was recorded in 1971, after the album had already been released, and subsequently added to newer pressings starting in 1972. Unlike the rest of the album, it was not engineered by Ken Scott at Trident, but by a different engineer at Morgan Studios. The engineer of that song took a different approach to that which Scott had taken, and we leave it to you to decide how well it worked out.

(more…)

The Eagles / On The Border – A Must Own Country Rock Classic

More of the Music of The Eagles

  • An original British SYL copy with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound throughout this criminally underrated California Country Rock classic – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • If you’ve never heard one of these early pressings, you have simply never heard this album sound the way it should, mastered with the correct polarity, for one thing
  • We’re huge fans of the album here at Better Records; it’s some of the most sophisticated, well-crafted, heartfelt music these guys ever made, and that’s saying a lot coming from us – we’ve been big fans for decades
  • 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 accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. On the Border is a good example of a record most audiophiles don’t know well but should.

Many of you have probably forgotten how good this album is (assuming you were ever familiar with it in the first place) probably because the typical domestic copy you would have played back in the day is fairly hard on the ears. Most pressings, even the British ones, barely hint at the kind of sound you’ll hear on this vintage UK pressing (the only kind we sell of course).

The LIFE and ENERGY of this pressing are going to knock you right out of your seat. Most copies leave you with a headache, but this one will have you begging to turn up the volume.

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 richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and especially from modern remasterings). (more…)

The Beatles – The White Album

More of the Music of The Beatles

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A+++) sound or BETTER on all FOUR sides of these vintage British reissue pressings
  • This copy of the Beatles’ Masterpiece (my personal favorite of all their albums) is going to thrill and delight the lucky person who snags it
  • If you’ve heard the Half-Speed and Heavy Vinyl versions of The White Album, then you know how riddled they are with unacceptable flaws
  • They are simply not enjoyable on high-quality equipment, unlike this copy, which is guaranteed to be an unalloyed joy to play
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records, but once you hear how superb sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting stitches and just be swept away by the music
  • “If there is still any doubt that Lennon and McCartney are the greatest song writers since Schubert, then next Friday – with the publication of the new Beatles double LP – should surely see the last vestiges of cultural snobbery and bourgeois prejudice swept away in a deluge of joyful music making…” Right On!
  • Our customers often write us to tell us how much they like their Hot Stamper pressings of The Beatles, and they have been especially enthusiastic when it comes to The White Album

Our White Album Hot Stampers have always been a big hit with the folks who’ve been lucky enough to snare them. If you’re ready for a high-quality copy of The White Album that’s sure to massacre all the pressings you’ve heard up until now, you should jump right on this bad boy.

(more…)

Joni Mitchell – Blue

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) sides, this copy of Joni’s 1971 masterpiece is doing just about everything right – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Full-bodied and balanced with the kind of smooth musicality that’s not always easy to find for Blue
  • We lucked into this quiet copy during our most recent shootout, but in our experience that is something we would not expect to happen very often, but we’re glad it did in the case of this wonderful pressing
  • A Better Records Top 100 title that belongs in any audiophile music collection worthy of the name
  • 5 stars: “Sad, spare, and beautiful, Blue is the quintessential confessional singer/songwriter album. Forthright and poetic, Joni Mitchell’s songs are raw nerves, tales of love and loss (two words with relative meaning here) etched with stunning complexity…”
  • Everything changed for us in 2007 with the release of the Hoffman/Gray Rhino pressing of Blue, a record that made us ask ourselves, “Why are we selling records that we would not want to listen to ourselves?”
  • It was a kicked-by-a-mule moment for all of us here at Better Records, and I am glad to say one kick was all it took to loosen the rocks that had embedded themselves in my head

The best copies bring out the breathy quality to Joni’s voice, and she never sounds strained. They are sweet and open, with good bass foundation and transparency throughout the frequency range.

The best pressings (and our better playback equipment) have revealed nuances to this recording — and of course the performances of all the players along with it — that made us fall in love with the music all over again. Of all the tough nuts to crack, this was the toughest, yet somehow copies emerged from our shootouts that made it easy to appreciate the sonic merits of Blue and ignore its shortcomings.

Hot Stampers have a way of doing that. You forget it’s a record; it’s now just Music. The right record and the right playback will bring this music to life in a way that you cannot imagine until you hear it. That is our guarantee on Blue — better than you ever thought possible or your money back.

(more…)

James Taylor – Sweet Baby James

More of the Music of James Taylor

  • An early Green Label pressing with seriously good sound for this inarguable JT Masterpiece, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on both sides
  • All that lovely echo is a dead giveaway that side one of this pressing has resolution far beyond that of the others you may have heard (and of course the Rhino Heavy Vinyl), and side two is not far behind in all those areas
  • Richness and body and Tubey Magic are every bit as important – when those big choruses kick in, you want the sound of all those singers to be as big as life without the strain that accompanies their voices on so many copies
  • Finding early pressings without marks or groove damage is no mean feat these days, but here’s one to prove it can be done
  • Top 100 and 5 stars: “Sweet Baby James launched not only Taylor’s career as a pop superstar but also the entire singer/songwriter movement of the early 70s that included Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Jackson Browne, Cat Stevens, and others…”
  • If you’re a James Taylor fan — and what audiophile wouldn’t be? — this title is clearly one of the best albums released in 1970 and a true Must Own for the singer-songwriter-loving audiophile

Vocal reproduction is key to the better sounding copies of Sweet Baby James, as it is on so many singer-songwriter albums from the era.

To find a copy where Taylor’s vocals are front and center — which is exactly where they should be — but still rich, sweet, tonally correct and Tubey Magical is no mean feat. Only the better copies manage to pull it off.

Out of the dozen or more Green Label early pressings we play every year, relatively few have the full complement of Midrange Magic we know the best copies can have. As a rule of thumb, the hotter the stamper, the better the vocal reproduction on that copy.

(more…)

Bob Dylan – Blood on the Tracks

More of the Music of Bob Dylan

  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this vintage pressing
  • Why this title is so often pressed on bad vinyl is hard to fathom, but it is a fact nevertheless, which is why you see so few copies make it to the site and even fewer on quiet vinyl
  • For tonally-correct, un-hyped acoustic guitars and vocals, the sound of this album is tough to beat in Dylan’s catalog
  • Note that some tracks are clearly better sounding than others throughout the album, and those are the tracks we tend to listen to in our shootouts
  • The better copies are rich, warm, tubey and full-bodied – in other words, they are exactly what’s good about the vintage analog pressings we offer to the discriminating audiophiles who appreciate the difference
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, but once you hear just how superb sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • 5 stars: “…it’s an affecting, unbearably poignant record, not because it’s a glimpse into his soul, but because the songs are remarkably clear-eyed and sentimental, lovely and melancholy at once. Dylan made albums more influential than this, but he never made one better.”

(more…)

Neil Young – Harvest

More of the Music of Neil Young

  • This vintage Reprise pressing was giving us the sound we were looking for on Neil’s undeniable classic, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • It’s practically impossible to find an early pressing with sound this good and vinyl that plays as quietly as this
  • I don’t know how many early pressings (which are the only ones that ever sound any good) we would have to play in order to find one this quiet, but my guess is 15 or 20, and that’s probably a conservative estimate
  • A Top 100 album and a sublime recording no audiophile should be without
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…the love songs and the harrowing portrait of a friend’s descent into heroin addiction, ‘The Needle and the Damage Done,’ remain among Young’s most affecting and memorable songs.”
  • If you’re a Neil Young fan, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this title from 1972 is clearly a Must Own
  • Harvest is one of the titles that helped us dramatically improve our playback over the course of many years

When you have this kind of open, extended top end, the grit, grain and edge just disappear, leaving you with a clear, Tubey Magical sound that’s way beyond anything you have ever heard for Harvest (or we will happily give you your money back).

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).

(more…)

The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band

More of the Music of The Beatles

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this vintage UK Parlophone LP – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Huge, spacious and detailed, with the Tubey Magic of a fresh tape, this is the way to hear Sgt. Pepper in all its analog glory, not remixed and not remastered (and ruined, of course)
  • Most pressings – especially the new ones – have nothing approaching the resolution, Tubey Magic, space and energy of this LP
  • A Better Records Top 100 – “It’s possible to argue that there are better Beatles albums, yet no album is as historically important as this.”
  • It’s hard to conceive of any list of the best rock and pop albums of 1967 that would not have this record on it, and there is a very good chance it would be perched right at the top of that list
  • Quite a few customers have written us letters telling us how much they enjoyed the Hot Stamper pressing of Sgt. Pepper we sent them

The sound here is so big and rich, so clear and transparent, that we would be very surprised, shocked even, if you’ve ever imagined that any pressing of Sgt. Pepper could sound this powerful and REAL. (more…)