Genres

The Mahavishnu Orchestra – Birds of Fire

More of the Music of The Mahavishnu Orchestra

  • This original UK import copy boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout – it’s so smooth and natural you can turn up your volume pretty much as loud as you like and really let it blast
  • If you only own one Jazz Fusion album, you could hardly do better than Birds of Fire — It’s hard to think of another record that rocks as hard, and it’s not even a real rock record!
  • These early British pressings are very hard to find with quiet vinyl, and a lot of the ones that come from overseas are not in the condition advertised, making this a title that shows up on the site a great deal less often than we think it should
  • 5 stars on AllMusic and clearly one of the All Time Greats in the world of Jazz/Rock, as well as the band’s Masterpiece

This is the band at the peak of their powers and, no pun intended, on fire. This may be jazz, but it’s jazz that wants to rock. And on this copy, it rocks like you will not believe. The louder you play it the better it sounds.

Birds of Fire is one of the top two or three Jazz/Rock Fusion Albums of All Time. In my experience, few recordings within this genre can begin to compete with the dynamics and energy of the best pressings of the album — if you have the big dynamic system for it.

We find ourselves playing albums like Houses of the Holy and Zep II and Dark Side of the Moon for hour upon hour, with dozens of copies to get through, and we do it on a regular basis. If anybody knows “big rock sound,” it’s us. But can we really say that those albums rock any harder than this one? Birds of Fire is to Jazz what Zep II is to Rock — the ultimate statement by a band at the absolute top of their game.

The Best Copies

The main problem with this record is a lack of midrange presence. If the keyboards, drums, and guitars are not right in front of you,, your copy does not have all the presence it should. On the best copies, the musicians are in the room with you. We know this for a fact because we heard the copies that could present them that way, and we heard it more than once.

Which, of course, gets to the reason shootouts are the only real way to learn about records. The best copies will show you qualities in the sound you had no way of knowing were possible. Without the freakishly good pressings, you run into by chance in a shootout you have no way to know how high is up. On this record up is very high indeed.

Birds of Fire as a recording is not about depth or soundstage or ambience. It’s about immediacy, plain and simple. All the lead instruments positively jump out of the speakers — if you are lucky enough to be playing the right pressing. This is precisely what we want our best Hot Stampers to do. The better they do it, the higher their grade.

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Joni Mitchell – The Hissing of Summer Lawns

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • You’ll find INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout this early Asylum pressing
  • Lots of Tubey Magic, textured synths, big bass and breathy vocals – this copy brings Joni’s jazzy folky fusion to life
  • Check out the big bottom end on “The Jungle Line,” which features the Drummers Of Burundi
  • Who made a more original, forward looking and interesting album in 1975 than this? I can’t think of anyone, can you?
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Joni Mitchell evolved from the smooth jazz-pop of Court and Spark to the radical Hissing of Summer Lawns, an adventurous work that remains among her most difficult records [as difficult as it is brilliant] … a strange and beautiful fusion of jazz and shimmering avant pop.”

Both sides here are airy, open, and spacious, with plenty of ambience. The bottom end is tight and punchy throughout with good solid weight, and the top end is silky sweet. Many copies of this album have a phony hi-fi “glare” that made us wince, but the sound here is warm and natural.

After hearing a few copies that bored us to tears years ago we had pretty much given up on finding good sound for this album, but once we found some truly hot Hot Stampers we found ourselves really enjoying this sophisticated Jazzy Folk Pop music.

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Remain In Light on Ridiculously Bad Sounding Rhino Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Talking Heads Available Now

UPDATE 2026

We reviewed this awful pressing shortly after its release in 2006. More proof, as if more were needed, that Heavy Vinyl collectors have lost their minds.

A more accurate formulation might be that such collectors can’t tell a good record from a bad one. If they could, the number owning this pressing would be a fraction of that seen below, as would the number who want it. Let’s take a deeper dive into the actual evidence for its desirability:

More than 10,000 Discogs members have this album, almost two thousand would like to own it, and the consensus is that it is an outstanding reissue, having earned a grade of 4.66 out of 5 from 735 members. (Don’t worry, I won’t show you what they had to say about it, but you are welcome to go to Discogs and read it yourself.)

With an average price of 25 bucks, what is keeping those 1948 potential buyers from pulling the trigger? Seems affordable to me. Inflation has gone up 62+% since 2006, making the album cheaper now than if you had bought it when it came out.

Our 2006 Review

The Rhino Heavy Vinyl reissue of this album was deemed dead on arrival the minute it hit my turntable.

No top, way too much bottom, dramatically less ambience than the average copy — this one is a disaster on every level.

Rhino Records has really made a mockery of the analog medium. Rhino touts their releases as being pressed on “180 gram High Performance Vinyl.” However, if they are using performance to refer to sound quality, we have found the performance of their vinyl to be quite low, lower than the average copy one might stumble upon in the used record bins. 

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The Jam – Setting Sons

More Rock and Pop

  • Setting Sons appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them throughout this vintage Polydor pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Both of these sides have energy and presence that positively jumps out of the speakers, two of the qualities that we prize most highly in our Hot Stampers, and two of the things (among many) that Heavy Vinyl does so poorly
  • It’s the rare copy that’s this lively, solid and rich… drop the needle on any track and you’ll see what we mean
  • 5 stars: “Setting Sons often reaches brilliance and stands among the Jam’s best albums….”

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Peggy Lee – Ole ala Lee!

More Pop and Jazz Vocal Recordings

  • Here is an original Capitol stereo pressing with solid Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This copy is rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical – we’re dealing with an All Tube Analog recording chain from 1961 after all – with present, sweet, breathy vocals, the kind that practically no modern Heavy Vinyl record can offer
  • “Velvety flutes, peppy percussion, well-behaved brass – yes, the stage is set once more for Peggy Lee’s sedately suggestive Latin musings. [T]his sequel to the singer’s Latin ala Lee! album offers another enchanting mix of jazz-vocal staples (“Come Dance with Me,” “You Stepped Out of a Dream”) and Broadway-issue mambo (“Fantastico,” “Non Dimencticar”).

Not to be confused with Latin ala Lee and its two toreadors.

This vintage Capitol pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

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The Biggest “If” in All of Audio

Hot Stamper Pressings of Large Group Jazz Recordings Available Now

The best of the best vintage recordings are truly amazing if you can play them right.

That’s a big if.  In fact, it may just be the biggest if in all of audio.

But that is not our story for today. Our story today concerns the relationship between more accurate timbre and higher fidelity.

What do we love about vintage pressings like the Ted Heath disc you see pictured above?

The timbre of the instruments is reproduced with wonderful fidelity.

The unique sound of every instrument in this very large ensemble has been recorded accurately. Every instrument sounds the way it would sound if you were hearing it live. Every instrument sounds real.

That’s what we mean by Hi-Fi, not the kind of “Audiophile Sound” (sneer quotes are very much called for whenever the word “audiophile” is used to describe sound quality, mostly because there is so little in the way of quality to be described ) that passes for Hi-Fidelity on some records.

Some of the worst offenders along those lines can be found here.

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Johnny Cash – Hello, I’m Johnny Cash

More of the Music of Johnny Cash

  • Hello, I’m Johnny Cash debuts on the site with solid Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides of this original Stereo 360 pressing
  • The vocal presence and freedom from coloration will put a very real sounding Johnny Cash front and center right in your very own listening room
  • Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead on correct tonality, and wonderfully breathy vocals – everything that we listen for in a great record is here
  • 4 stars: “The energy that Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Three captured on the legendary Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison live record can probably never be duplicated. That being said, Hello, I’m Johnny Cash comes very close, blending slow talking-blues songs with steam-engine-paced country rockers. This forgotten album may be one of the five best in the Cash discography.”

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Queen – A Day At the Races

More of the Music of Queen


  • Boasting INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them from top to bottom, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this vintage UK pressing
  • 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 most other pressings we played
  • You may be interested in reading about a copy very much like this one that fell short in one aspect of sound important to us (and we hope you as well)
  • Forget the domestic pressings – they may be cut at Sterling, but they never sound like these shockingly good British LPs
  • “A Day at the Races is a bit tighter than its predecessor… its sleek, streamlined finish is the biggest indication that Queen has entered a new phase, where they’re globe-conquering titans instead of underdogs on the make.”
  • If you’re a Queen fan, their 1976 followup to A Night at the Opera is surely a Must Own
  • The complete list of titles from 1976 that we’ve reviewed to date — more than one hundred as of 2026 — can be found here

Forget the dubby domestic pressings and whatever crappy Heavy Vinyl record they’re making these days — the UK LPs are the only way to fly.

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Lee Morgan / The Sidewinder

More of the Music of Lee Morgan

  • Incredible sound throughout this 60s Blue Note pressing, with a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side one
  • It took us about two years to get this shootout going, but the best copies we played were so impressive that they made all the time and money it took to pull it off worth the effort – what a record!
  • These sides are rich and full, from the extended top end all the way down to the deepest bass — thanks RVG!
  • The trumpet on this album is amazing — tonally correct with wonderful leading edge transients
  • Both musically and sonically, this is Blue Note at its best
  • 5 stars: “Carried by its almost impossibly infectious eponymous opening track, The Sidewinder helped foreshadow the sounds of boogaloo and soul-jazz with its healthy R&B influence and Latin tinge. While the rest of the album retreats to a more conventional hard bop sound, Morgan’s compositions are forward-thinking and universally solid…”

When we dropped the needle on this one, we immediately stopped listening critically and just began enjoying the album. That’s the sign of an exceptional copy — the sound gets out of the way and the music becomes the point.

There’s life and presence on these sides the likes of which you almost never hear on any jazz record.

The lineup here is fantastic, with Joe Henderson on tenor sax, Billy Higgins on drums, Barry Harris on piano and Bob Cranshaw on bass. (more…)

The Rolling Stones – Self-Titled

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last on this outstanding pressing of The Stones’ 1964 release – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more richness, fullness and presence on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true for whatever godawful Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently being foisted on an unsuspecting record buying public
  • This is the real, honest sound of the early, early Stones
  • “The Stones’ debut knocked The Beatles from the chart summit… They were on their way.” – BBC Review
  • If you’re a fan of the early Stones, their debut from 1964 belongs in your collection.

The best word I could use to sum up both the sound and the music on this record is HONEST. If you want to hear how early Rolling Stones records sound when they sound right, this is the ticket. This is the real sound of the early, early Stones.

Probably what any modern engineer would want to do to the album would only end up making it worse. It is what it is and that’s good enough for us. Since the tapes are now more than 60 years old, no modern reissue will sound remotely as good as this one.

The Stones wanted their stuff to sound like the old Blues albums they grew up on and revered, and with that sound in mind you can’t argue that they didn’t succeed here.

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