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.

Tommy – Simply Vinyl Reviewed

More of the Music of The Who

Reviews and Commentaries for Tommy

Sonic Grade: B

One of the BEST titles on Simply Vinyl! Better than the Classic version, that’s for sure. This one has the bass that’s all but missing from the new 200 gram pressing.  

The Classic Tommy Has No Bass

It could have had amazing bass, like their Who’s Next, but it doesn’t. Why I have no idea. The overall sound is thin, so thin that we immediately knew there was no point in carrying it. (The only Classic Who record we ever carried was Who’s Next; the rest of them are dreadful, some of the worst sounding reissues out there.) Not when there’s a very fine Heavy Vinyl pressing already around. You guessed it: the Simply Vinyl pressing, the one from that label that some reviewer thinks is “screwing up the market.”

Who’s Screwing Whom?

We invite all our readers and listeners to do the shootout for themselves. Both versions of Tommy are in print and widely available. [Woops, not any more, both are long out of print.]

If you do find the Classic to be more to your liking, we simply ask that you send us your copy with a note as to the tracks you compared and what you found, so that we can hear it for ourselves. As you know from reading about Nirvana Nevermind, no two records, not even new audiophile ones, sound the same, so if you managed to get hold of a hot copy of the Classic, we want to hear it too!

After we have picked our jaws up off the floor we will happily send it back to you.

Rachmaninov / Piano Concerto No. 2 – Speakers Corner Reviewed

More of the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

Sonic Grade: Unknown

In the late ’90s, we described the sound of this pressing this way:

“Outstanding Rachmaninoff, dark and rich. Highly recommended.”

Since we have not played a copy of the album in over ten years [now 20], we have taken down our previous Sonic Grade of B as we have no idea how the record would fare today on our much-improved system.

For all we know it may have been recut, which is another problem with our older reviews of records we used to like: the new version could have very different sound from the one we played (and that’s not even taking into account the pressing variability, which we all know is sometimes huge).

The Body and Soul of Freddie Hubbard on Speakers Corner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Freddie Hubbard Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This is a very old review, probably from the 90s, and one we would likely no longer agree with. It’s been a long time since we played any Speakers Corner record and thought it much better than passable.

An outstanding Freddie Hubbard straight ahead jazz album on Speakers Corner vinyl that belongs in any jazz lover’s collection. 

Further Reading

Here are some of our reviews and commentaries concerning the many Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years, well over 200 at this stage of the game.

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The Nutcracker on Speakers Corner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

Sonic Grade: B?

Not sure if we would still agree with what we wrote back in the ’90s when this record came out, but here it is anyway.

Superb! New records just don’t sound any better! This is the complete Nutcracker Ballet as conducted by Ansermet for Decca, a record that sets a standard of performance and sound that is unlikely ever to be equaled, and almost certainly not to be surpassed.

For those of you on a budget, if you can get your hands on one of these for a reasonable price, the Heavy Vinyl reissue would not be a bad way to go.

That’s assuming the copy you buy sounds at least good, similar to the one I played all those years ago, something that cannot be assumed.

But it would make for a good jumping off point.

A Must Own Classical Record (on Vintage Vinyl)

Ansermet breathes life into this ballet as only he can, and the Decca engineering team led by Kenneth Wilkinson do him proud.

It’s an Orchestral Spectacular that should have a place of honor in any audiophile’s collection.

Others that belong in that category can be found here.

Mozart / Symphonies Nos. 40 & 41 on Speakers Corner

Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca and London Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This was our take on the record way back in 1998 when we first started to carry it. This is our current favorite performance on record, but of course we prefer the vintage pressings of the recording as they clearly sound better. We prefer the best Decca pressings, but the Londons can be quite good as well, just not as good. In other words, they can’t win shootouts, but they will easily beat whatever other pressing you may have of the recording. (More on Decca Vs. London here.)

This is one of the better Speakers Corner Deccas. When they released this title on Heavy Vinyl in 1998, it became one of the few Speakers Corner classical recordings we carried and recommended. 

We knew it sounded good, but up until recently [recently being 2010 or so], when we started collecting and playing the better vintage Deccas and Londons, we sure didn’t know it could sound as good as the best of those pressings do.

Below are some thoughts from a recent classical listing that we hope will shed light on our longstanding aversion to the sound of these modern remasterings. 

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Shoot Out The Lights Is a Four Men with Beards Heavy Vinyl Winner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Richard Thompson Available Now

Sonic Grade: B

Hey, this is a surprisingly good sounding pressing! Our Hot Stampers are clearly bigger and more lively, but for a Heavy Vinyl reissue this pressing is surprisingly good.

You won’t get the effect we describe below on the Heavy Vinyl pressing that we heard on our best Hot Stamper original pressings, but you will get a very good sounding record.

With constant improvements to the system Shoot Out is now so powerful a recording that we had no choice but to add it to our Top 100 list in 2014, but we would go even further than that and say that it would belong on a list of the Top Ten Best Sounding Rock Records of All Time.

The guitars are HUGE — they positively leap out of the speakers on the title cut, freeing themselves from a studio that seems already to be the size of a house. (more…)

Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac – A Simply Vinyl Winner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now

UPDATE 2026

We’ve wrote this review shortly after this pressing of the band’s debut came out on Simply Vinyl in 1997.

Sonic Grade: B

This 160 gram Simply Vinyl pressing has excellent sound. This is the early, bluesy Mac, about as far from Rumours as you can get. The sound here dark and smooth like a good British Blues album should be.  Simply Vinyl did a superb job here.

Correction: an unnamed mastering engineer at the label that owns the tape did a superb job.

Simply Vinyl isn’t in the business of mastering or remastering anything. They leave that up to the pros at the record labels.

Sometimes those guys screw up and sometimes they get it right. (more…)

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.

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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.

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