Heavy Vinyl Winners

These are some of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the last 30 years, the top 20% or so.

They are very unlikely to be superior to most other pressings, certainly not the ones we offer, but you could do worse.

Just don’t make the mistake of overpaying. They are not much more than acceptable, and if you seriously like the music, you should be able to find something superior without working too hard at it.

Sarah Vaughan / Self-Titled – A Winner from Speakers Corner

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocals Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This review was written in the 90s when the record came out. At the time we liked it and were happy to sell it. The originals and early pressings are almost impossible to find in audiophile playing condition — we know, we’ve tried — so this is probably one of those rare situations in which we recommend a Heavy Vinyl pressing as the best available option, all things considered.

I think that is the first time I have ever written such a sentence. We have more than seventy others we recommend, assuming you can find them for cheap. Whatever you do, do not ever pay premium or collector prices for any Heavy Vinyl pressing. They almost all fall well short of the standards set by the best vintage LPs.

We know of two that are competitive with the best of the best. Two out of the more than four hundred we’ve played. When it comes to the modern remastered LP, the odds are stacked against you.

Sonic Grade: B

A TOP TITLE from Speakers Corner on 180 gram. This is an outstanding Sarah Vaughan album with very good sound and top players like Clifford Brown on trumpet, Paul Quinichette on tenor sax and Herbie Mann on flute. 

We haven’t played a copy of this record in years, but back in the day we liked it, so let’s call it a “B” with the caveat that the older the review, the more likely we are to have changed our minds. (more…)

The Firebird on Speakers Corner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Stravinsky Available Now

This is probably one of the better Speakers Corner Deccas.

We haven’t played a copy of this pressing in years, but back in the day we liked it, so let’s give it a “B” for sound with the caveat that the older the review, the more likely we are to have changed our minds about the grade.

Come to think of it, it’s somewhat misleading to say that we change our minds at all.

Most of the time we are forced to raise our standards, or, to be more pedantic, have our standards raised by simply hearing better sounding pressings than the ones we had previously auditioned. This is an insight that came to us by doing regular shootouts, answering a question that we, along with every other serious audiophile, never thought to ask: “How high is up?”

It’s also one that, like so many other big questions in this crazy hobby of ours, can never be satisfactorily answered.

Back to this Heavy Vinyl Pressing. We can’t be sure if we would still agree with what we wrote when this record came out, but here it is anyway.

“Excellent sound with a wonderful performance from Ansermet.”

Currently our favorite Firebird is an early pressing on Mercury with Dorati conducting. Our opinion is very unlikely to change concerning the best combination of sound and performance for that work. The record is simply a monster on the right pressing.

We have never heard an especially good sounding London or Decca of Ansermet’s performance, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. We tend to avoid judging records we have not played and we encourage the audiophile community to do the same.

(more…)

Unhalfbricking – Simply Vinyl Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Richard Thompson Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This remastered pressing came out in 2000, which is probably the year we reviewed it and started to carry it. I thought it sounded very good at the time, but that was a long time ago! We were often fooled back in the old pre-shootout days, and there is no sense pretending otherwise because we have the embarrassing catalog entries to prove it.

What we could do back then and what we can do now, after decades of constant improvement, are as different as night from day, a subject we write about under the heading of audio progress.

I’ve also made a habit of admitting my mistakes in the hopes that other audiophile reviewers would consider following suit. (To my knowledge this has yet to happen, but hope springs eternal.)

Our 2000 Review

This 180 gram LP comes recommended, with very good English sound (smooth, rich) for this early Richard Thompson folk music, with the wonderful Sandy Denny on vocals. Happily, not your standard audiophile fare.

(more…)

Coltrane’s Sound – A Very Good Reissue by Bernie Grundman

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This review For Coltrane’s Sound on Rhino Records was written in 2021.

Sonic Grade: B+ (at least)

This is one of the better sounding Heavy Vinyl pressings we have played recently.

What makes it different from so many others that fail to live up to the remastering hype that surrounds them? (And regularly irritates the hell out of those of us who actually know what a good record actually sounds like.)

  • It’s tonally correct from top to bottom. At most five or ten per cent of the audiophile repressings we’ve played in the last ten years can make that claim.
  • The bass is not boosted or poorly defined. This eliminates at a minimum 98+% of all the Mobile Fidelity pressings we have ever played. Nobody seems to notice how bad the bass is on their records. A real puzzler, that fact.
  • It’s not exceptionally veiled or recessed. I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of Heavy Vinyl pressings that are not far too veiled and recessed to compete with their vintage vinyl brethren.

It is slightly veiled, and lacks some of the life, the space and obviously some of the presence of the real thing, the real thing in this case being an early stereo pressing on the Blue and Green Atlantic label.

Still, for your money you are getting a helluva good record.

One of the top two or three Rhino records to date.

(Bernie did a great job on this Coltrane album, but whatever you do, don’t waste your money on his recut of Lush Life. It is just plain awful, an audiophile hall of shame pressing that’s so bad it defies understanding. Something sure went wrong somewhere, I can tell you that. Stay tuned for my review.)

• Lacquers cut by Bernie Grundman
• LPs cut from the original analog masters
• Packages replicated to the finest detail manufactured with more care than ever

Our Previous Hot Stamper Commentary for Coltrane’s Sound

This is yet another superb Tom Dowd recording of Coltrane in his prime, with support from the brilliant McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones.

(more…)

Blow-Up Soundtrack on Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of Top Quality Jazz Albums Available Now

Years ago, probably sometime in 2002 when this remastered record was released, we wrote the following:

TOP RECOMMENDATION from Better Records. What an amazing discovery! I can’t take credit for it, the credit belongs to Four Men with Beards.

Herbie Hancock manages to get a lot of different jazz artists to play some of the most interesting jazz I’ve ever heard. I have no idea who all is playing but each of the different songs involved different players playing in different groupings: sometimes it’s guitar and organ, sometimes it’s saxophone-led quartet; it pretty much runs the gamut of jazz. And the amazing thing is every track is great. And the sound is great.

If you want a jazz primer that introduces you to the different ways jazz groups are arranged, I can hardly think of a better record.

(more…)

Latin ala Lee! The Record of the Year for 2003?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Miss Peggy Lee Available Now

UPDATE 2026

It’s highly unlikely we would still agree with all the good things we had to say back in 2003 about Latin ala Lee! on Heavy Vinyl, but here it is anyway.

Plenty of records that sounded good to me back in the day don’t sound too good to me anymore, for the simple reason that, in this case, since 2003 we’ve managed to make a huge number of changes to the system.

These changes resulted in more accurate and revealing playback, derived mostly from the testing we did with this group of records and others like them. (Here is a personal favorite.)

Unfortunately for all concerned, S&P’s releases from this era (as well as DCC’s) had to fight their way through Kevin Gray’s transistory, opaque, airless, low-resolution cutting system, a subject we discuss in more depth here.

As for the difficult remix, the more remixes I hear, the less I like them. The ones Hoffmann did for Nat King Cole (see here) drive me up a wall.

Our Old Review

The Record of the Year for 2003.

I know how crazy that sounds, but it’s true! If you don’t have a smile on your face fifteen seconds after playing track one, you better check your pulse, cuz, as the famous song has it: Jack, You Dead. Amazingly good sound, courtesy of a fabulous and painstakingly difficult remix by the mastering guru himself, Steve Hoffman. This is popular music for the previous generation — but why should we be denied these long forgotten treasures?

(more…)

Brothers in Arms on Simply Vinyl — Not Bad!

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Dire Straits Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This is a very old review from back in the days when we were selling Heavy Vinyl.

This older Simply Vinyl pressing (with the gold SVLP sticker) actually sounds pretty good. It’s certainly one of the most ANALOG sounding versions of Brothers in Arms I’ve heard, high praise in my book.

We’ve recommended it in the past. It’s a nice record (if you can get your hands on one) but it’s not really a match for our Hot Stamper pressings. The multiple copies we auditioned did darn good for a Heavy Vinyl reissue and substantially better than the average pressing, hence the “B” grade. Simply Vinyl seems to have done a good job here.

Correction: an unnamed mastering engineer at the label did a superb job. Simply Vinyl isn’t in the business of mastering ANYTHING. They leave that up to the pros at the record labels. Sometimes those guys screw it up and sometimes they get it right.

(more…)

Illinois Jacquet on Classic Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone

UPDATED 2026

My guess is this is still a fairly good Classic Records jazz album. Years ago we wrote the following:

This is actually one of the best Classic Jazz albums they released back in the 90s. Both the music and sound are excellent. Jacquet is one of the creators of the big soulful tenor sax sound. I don’t know of anyone who does it better.

Not having played their pressing since it came out in 1997, we can’t be sure that we would still feel the same way. This is probably a good record if you can get one for the 25 bucks we used to charge, and according to what I see for sale on Discogs, you probably can.

The originals are very hard to come by in audiophile playing condition.

(more…)

Universal Heavy Vinyl Quadrophenia Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now

Sonic Grade: B

UIPDATE 2026

These are old notes from many years ago. Take them with a very large grain of salt, and don’t buy this version of the album unless it’s reasonably priced and returnable. A pressing with Hot Stampers is going to be dramatically better, and might sound as good as this pressing.

Wow! This Universal Heavy Vinyl pressing from circa 2000 (the turn of the century!) is superb, not all that far from a good Track original, and quieter for sure. 

Side One rocks incredibly hard from start to finish. What a great album. It has to rank right up there with the best rock of the ’70s, right behind Who’s Next and probably on a par with Tommy, good company indeed, since we LOVE all three of those albums here at Better Records. (Both Tommy and Who’s Next are Top 100 titles, but Quadrophenia is not far behind either of them for sound or music.

Here’s what we wrote about this pressing when it was still in print ten twenty or more years ago.

Thank you Universal! We have almost forgiven you for the Cat Stevens records you ruined. With more great releases like this one, that debacle will fade one day from memory.

Although you can still buy those crappy pressings from my competitors. Have they no shame?

As with any Who album, this is obviously not your average Audiophile Demo Disc. We don’t imagine you’ll be enjoying this one with wine, cigars, and polite conversation. This one is for turning up loud and rockin’ out — in other words, it’s our kind of record.

(more…)

Back to Back – A Classic Records Winner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Duke Ellington Available Now

 Duke Ellington And Johnny Hodges Play The Blues

UPDATE 2026

When this record came out in the 90s, we were happy to recommend it to our customers:

This is one of the better sounding Classic titles from their Verve series, and the music is excellent.

Finding a clean original is no mean feat, as I’m sure you can imagine.

I can find no record of us ever having done a shootout for it, which probably means that we just could not find enough clean original copies to do it and just gave up.

They sell for an average of $27.20 on Discogs so for that price you are probably getting a very good record for your money.

(more…)