Rock, Psych

Psych Rock

Traffic – The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys

More Prog Rock

  • With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides, this UK Island pressing (only the second copy to hit the site in four and a half years) could not be beat
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “rich and dynamic”…”big and tubey”…”great size and energy”…”huge bass”…”tubey and present and 3D vox”…”pretty great!” (side two)
  • Low Spark is clearly one of the best sounding Proggy/Arty Rock records ever made – the space it recreates is huge
  • A Better Records Top 100 album and real Demo Disc on a pressing that sounds as good as this one does
  • This is a lot of money for a somewhat noisy copy, but the sound is so awesome and quiet pressings of the album so hard to come by that we hope someone will take a chance on it and get the thrill we did from hearing it sound right for once
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The commercial and artistic apex of the second coming of Traffic… The standout was the 12-minute title track, with its distinctive piano riff and its lyrics of weary disillusionment with the music business. “
  • Our last shootout for the album was in 2019, and a domestic copy did better back then than it would do now

After doing the shootout for John Barleycorn recently, a record we love in spite of its problematic sound, this album was truly a breath of fresh air. I can honestly and enthusiastically say that the sound we heard on the best pressings was out of this world. This album is a permanent member of our Rock and Pop Top 100, that’s how good it is.

Who knew? We had no idea this recording could sound so incredibly spacious and open. The distortion level is so close to zero that we don’t even want to assign a positive number to it. Let’s just say it’s below the threshold of hearing; does that work for you?

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Spirit’s Psych Rock Masterpiece (The First of Two)

More Psychedelic Rock

  • Wall to wall, with layered studio depth like you will not believe, the kind of space you hear on an engineering classic like Dark Side of the Moon
  • 4 1/2 stars on Allmusic, but in our estimation it deserves five – it’s simply one of the All Time Greats from the era
  • 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. Spirit’s First Album is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but would be well advised to get to know better.
  • If I were to make a list of my favorite Rock and Pop albums from 1968, this album would definitely be on it, close to the top I should think.

Need a refresher course in Tubey Magic after playing too many modern recordings or remasterings? These Ode pressings are overflowing with it. Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead-on correct tonality — everything that we listen for in a great record is here.

No recordings will ever be made that sound 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, quite a few I would guess, but those of us with a good turntable could care less. (more…)

Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow

More of the Music of the Jefferson Airplane

  • The band’s sophomore release is back on the site for only the second time in fourteen months, here 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 shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • If this price seems high, keep in mind that the top copy from our most recent shootout went for $1000, and the vinyl was not as quiet
  • It’s the rare copy of this 60s Psych Classic that has this kind of freedom from grit and distortion – it’s also swimming in Tubey Magic, the glorious sound of vintage analog vinyl, found on the real thing and, let’s be honest, nowhere else
  • An incredibly difficult album to find with audiophile sound, but this pressing has the goods and is guaranteed to beat – and by a very large margin – whatever you care to throw at it
  • 5 stars: “Every song is a perfectly cut diamond … a groundbreaking piece of folk-rock-based psychedelia that hit — literally — like a shot heard round the world…”
  • The DCC is a hopeless disaster – after fighting its way through Kevin Gray’s transistory, opaque, airless, low-resolution cutting system, whatever was good about the recording is completely gone
  • If I were to compile a list of my favorite rock and pop albums from 1967, this album would definitely be on it
  • As is sometimes the case, there is one and only one set of stampers that consistently wins our shootouts for this album.  Click on this link to see other titles with one set of stamper numbers that always come out on top

Three Qualities Are Key 

The best copies of Surrealistic Pillow have three things in common.

  1. Low Harmonic Distortion,
  2. Driving Rock and Roll Energy, and
  3. Plenty of Tubey Magical Richness.

It’s the exceedingly rare copy that has all three. The more of each of these qualities a given pressing has, the higher the sonic grades we typically will award it.

In order to find these three qualities, you had better be using the real master tape for starters. At this point, we only buy the Black Label Original RCA pressings, preferably in stereo but occasionally in mono when they’re clean enough to take a chance on, although we think the mono pressings are not competitive with the best of the stereo LPs.

Next, you need a pressing with actual extension up top, to keep the midrange from getting congested and harsh.

Richness, Tubey Magic, weight, and warmth — the other end of the spectrum — are every bit as important, if not more so.

Add freedom from dynamic compression — the exciting, lively sound that’s practically impossible to find on any modern reissue — and you should have yourself a musically involving, hopefully not-too-noisy LP to throw on the table and enjoy whenever you like, for years to come.

We know that the best pressings of this groundbreaking album, when played back on modern, high quality equipment, are every bit the thrill you remember — if you were around at the time like I was — from more than fifty years ago.

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Traffic – The Best of Traffic

More Music on Island Records

For those who wish to find their own Hot Stamper pressings of the album, we say more power to you. Our helpful advice can be found at the bottom of the listing,

  • This original Pink Label Island pressing was doing just about everything right, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • Side one was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • Here are the full-bodied mids, punchy lows and clear, open, extended highs that let this 1969 release come alive
  • This amazing compilation boasts superb sound, often dramatically better than the very same tracks on many of the original British releases
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • Top 100 and 4 stars: “The entire second side of the LP, comprising ‘Medicated Goo,’ ‘Forty Thousand Headmen,’ ‘Feelin’ Alright,’ ‘Shanghai Noodle Factory,’ and ‘Dear Mr. Fantasy,’ was the kind of progressive rock that would define Traffic and give it its place in the rock pantheon.”
  • For our current take on the sound of the various labels and stampers for Mr. Fantasy and The Best of Traffic, please click here.

This British Pink Label Island pressing has some of the best Traffic sound you’ll ever hear! We’ve been flipping out over Hot Stamper copies of this greatest hits comp for ages for a very simple, yet likely shocking, reason — the sound on the best copies can be better than the best original pressings! How can that be you ask, dumbfounded by the sheer ridiculousness of such a statement? Well, dear reader, I’ll tell you. Follow me over the jump to find out.

It’s a dirty little secret in the record biz that sometimes the master for the anticipated “hit single” (or singles) is pulled from the album’s final two-track master and used to make the 45, the thinking being that the 45 is what people are going to buy, or, having heard it sound so good on the radio, cause them to buy the album. One way or another, it’s the single that will do the selling of Traffic’s music.

A dub is then made of the master tape that was used to cut the 45 and spliced back onto the album master, so that the single (or singles) is one generation down from the master for the other songs on the side.

This explains why the “hit single” from so many albums is often the worst-sounding song on the album — most likely to suffer from bad radio EQ and distorted, smeary, sub-gen sound. And it also explains another anomaly those of us who play tons of records run into from time to time: songs on greatest hits albums sounding better than their counterparts on the original albums from which they are taken. That’s crazy talk, but this Traffic record is all the evidence you need to demonstrate that as it crazy as it seems, every once in a while it turns out to be true. This is one of those times.

Heaven Is In Your Mind

Best proof: “Heaven Is In Your Mind,” the second track on side one. It is amazing sounding here and such a disappointment on every Pink Label Island original (and some reissues) we’ve played. Once you know how good that song can sound — by playing a Hot Stamper copy of Best of Traffic like this one — going back to the original version of the song found on the album is not just a letdown, it’s positively painful.

Where’s the analog magic? The weight to the piano? The startling clarity and super-spaciousness of the soundfield? The life and energy of the performance?

They’re gone, brother. Not entirely gone, mind you, more a shadow of what they should be. But once you’ve heard the real thing, it’s no fun listening to a shadow. It’s just a drag.

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Pink Floyd / Obscured By Clouds

More Pink Floyd

  • Obscured by Clouds is finally back on the site for the first time in years, here with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides of this vintage British Harvest import
  • These are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “huge and fully extended from top to bottom”…”tubey and lots of bass”…”jumping out of the speakers”…”spacious and detailed”…”vox are sweet and rich and breathy”
  • We shot out a number of other imports and the midrange presence, bass, and dynamics on this outstanding copy placed it head and shoulders above the competition
  • Don’t expect a fully realized album a la Dark Side, because this ain’t that – it’s a nice collection of songs and instrumentals that should provide a nice thrill to Floyd fans who really dig the Prog-Psych aspect of the band
  • Those of you who enjoy Meddle will certainly get a lot out of this one
  • “Obscured by Clouds is the soundtrack to the Barbet Schroeder film La Vallée… Here, the instrumentals float pleasantly, filled with interesting textures… Often, they seem quite tied to their time, either in their spaciness or in the pastoral folkiness, two qualities that are better brought out on the full-fledged songs interspersed throughout the record…”

Incredible sound and some seriously strange music! This obviously isn’t Floyd’s greatest album, but we still found a lot to like about this record and specifically this copy.

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Love – Forever Changes

More Psych Rock

  • Both sides of this stereo Gold Label pressing were giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades
  • A classic from 1967, a combination of proto-punk and psychedelia that was clearly well ahead of its time
  • Engineered by none other than Bruce Botnick, here is the kind of massive bottom end weight and energy that we like to call WHOMP
  • According to AllMusic, the band embraced “a more gentle, contemplative, and organic sound on Forever Changes,” with much of the album “built around interwoven acoustic guitar textures and subtle orchestrations, with strings and horns both reinforcing and punctuating the melodies.”
  • This is a lot of money for a noisy copy, but the sound is so awesome and quiet pressings of the album so hard to come by that we hope someone will take a chance on it and get the thrill we did from hearing it sound right for once
  • 5 stars: “Love’s Forever Changes made only a minor dent on the charts when it was first released in 1967, but years later it became recognized as one of the finest and most haunting albums to come out of the Summer of Love, which doubtless has as much to do with the disc’s themes and tone as the music, beautiful as it is.”

Some of you may not know this music, but it’s a true Must Own Psychedelic Gem from the ’60s, a record no rock collection should be without, along with other groundbreaking albums from the ’60s such as Surrealistic Pillow, The Doors’ debut, the first Spirit album and too many others to list.

If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good 1967 All Tube Analog sound can be, this outstanding copy will do the trick.

This Gold Label pressing is 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. Of course there’s a CD of this album, but those of us in possession of a working turntable and a good collection of vintage vinyl have no need of it.

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Cream – Disraeli Gears

More of the Music of Cream

  • With killer Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades on both sides, this UK copy is practically as good as we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • You aren’t going to believe how hard this copy rocks, with all the WHOMP and energy you never knew was there
  • Classics like “Strange Brew,” “Sunshine Of Your Love” and “Tales of Brave Ulysses” make this Cream album a Must Own
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…the imagination of the arrangements, the strength of the compositions, and especially the force of the musicianship make this album transcend its time.”
  • 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

This superb copy has the kind of smooth, analog sound you need for this music — warm, rich, smooth, and pretty much free of the nasty grain that gets in the way on most pressings. There’s good extension up top, and the bottom end is meaty and well-defined.

The lesson we’ve learned over the years is that when the extremes are properly transferred to the vinyl, the middle will take care of itself. Since the extremes seem to be the hardest thing to get right, at least on this record, that might explain why so many copies don’t really sound the way they should.

This outstanding copy has the kind of smooth, analog sound you need for this music — warm, rich, smooth, and pretty much free of the nasty grain that gets in the way on most pressings. There’s good extension up top, and the bottom end is meaty and well-defined.

The lesson we’ve learned over the years is that when the extremes are properly transferred to the vinyl, the middle will take care of itself. Since the extremes seem to be the hardest thing to get right, at least on this record, that might explain why so many copies don’t really sound the way they should.

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The Moody Blues – In Search Of The Lost Chord

More of The Moody Blues

Reviews and Commentaries for The Moody Blues

  • Incredible sound throughout this early UK pressing, with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “jumping out of the speakers”…”big and tubey”…”sweet and breathy vox”…”weighty and rich”…”much more transparent and detailed” (side two)
  • Chock full of Moodies Magic: warm, full-bodied, rich and smooth, with tremendous space and plenty of rock energy
  • The first Moody Blues album to feature their trademark mellotron arrangements, and what a glorious sound that is when it sounds like this
  • “…the album on which the Moody Blues discovered drugs and mysticism as a basis for songwriting and came up with a compelling psychedelic creation, filled with songs about Timothy Leary and the astral plane and other psychedelic-era concerns.”

This early Deram British import LP has outstanding sound and reasonably quiet vinyl. It has higher resolution, is more dynamic, sweeter and clearer than practically all other copies, without sacrificing the richness, warmth and lushness for which the Moody Blues recordings are justifiably famous. I’ll put it this way — this pressing is correct from top to bottom, so present and alive, while still retaining all the richness and sweetness we expect from British Moody Blues records.

This copy has all the elusive elements that we search for: vocal clarity, real weight down low, great energy, tight punchy bass, and lots of texture to the keyboards and synths. This copy is full of Tubey Magic and, importantly, it doesn’t sound too murky or muddy. That’s a neat trick for any copy of this album, as those of you who’ve been playing it for years certainly know by now.

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The Moody Blues – A Question of Balance

More of The Moody Blues

Reviews and Commentaries for The Moody Blues

  • With outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides, this vintage UK pressing (one of only a handful of copies to hit the site in about a year) will be very hard to beat
  • Huge and spacious, as well as wonderfully Tubey Magical – to our way of thinking, if this isn’t exactly the way the band wanted to sound in 1970, we can’t imagine what would be
  • This pressing has some of the best Moody Blues sound we’ve ever heard – it’s a truly exceptional recording in their canon
  • Includes the big hit “Question,” one of the all time greats by the band, which sounds fantastic here of course

Achieving just the right balance of “Moody Blues Sound” and transparency is no mean feat. You have to be using the real master tape for starters. Then you need top end extension, a very rare quality on these imports, and finally, good bass definition to keep the bottom end from blurring and bleeding into the midrange. No domestic copy in our experience has ever had these three qualities, and only the best of the British imports (no Dutch, German or Japanese need apply) manages to get all three on the same LP.

Allow me to steal some commentary from a Moody Blues Hot Stamper shootout we did years ago, for the wonderful In Search of the Lost Chord, in which we say that, on the best Hot Stamper pressings, the clarity and resolution come without sacrificing the Tubey Magical richness, warmth and lushness for which the Moody Blues recordings are justifiably famous.

We guarantee this copy will take the Moodies’ wonderful music to a level you have never experienced in all your music-loving days.

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Traffic – John Barleycorn Must Die

More Traffic

  • An outstanding copy (only the second to hit the sit in two years) with solid Double Plus (A++ ) sound from start to finish
  • These sides have the vintage analog sound we love – they’re full-bodied and smooth, with plenty of Tubey Magic, gobs of studio space, and the right balance of richness and the clarity that is the key to getting top quality sound for John Barleycorn
  • Arguably the band’s best album, certainly their most groundbreaking, original and involving – Low Spark would rank a not-especially-close second
  • “…the band sounds utterly grounded. As the grooves percolate effortlessly along, it becomes clear that unity, not any technical skill, is what makes the music levitate.”
  • This is a Must Own title from 1970, a great year for rock and pop music

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