HV Win

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.

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.

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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.

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Mozart on Wonderful Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Mozart Available Now

Sonic Grade: B?

A fairly good Speakers Corner Decca reissue, probably.

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. 

One of the best of the Deccas. I raved about this one years ago when it came out. If I had to pick a record to demonstrate how wonderful Decca recordings are, musically and sonically, this would be an easy choice.

These wonderful concertos — some of the greatest ever composed — should be part of any serious classical collection.

Others that belong in that category can be found here.

Kenneth Wilkinson was probably the engineer for these sessions in glorious Kingsway Hall. It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording.

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Brahms / Piano Concerto No. 1 on Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Imports on Decca & London

UPDATE 2026

This review was written in the 90s, back in the days when we were selling Heavy Vinyl records. We had auditioned it and found it to be one of the better releases from Speakers Corner.

Based upon that very unreliable assessment from many, many decades ago, it might still be one of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings from the label. If you can pick one up for cheap, give it a try and see if we were right that it’s “good.”

Of course, the right London pressing would be a huge step up in sound quality for those who have the means to acquire one.

Our Old Review

One of the best of the Speakers Corner heavy vinyl reissues. As you may know they have gone way downhill lately. Haven’t played this LP in a while but I remember liking it quite a bit back in the day.

As a general rule, this Heavy Vinyl pressing will fall short in some of the following areas when played head to head against the vintage pressings we offer:

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Petrushka on Speakers Corner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Stravinsky Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This review was written in the 90s when we were still selling Heavy Vinyl records like this Decca reissue from Speakers Corner, which was one of the better releases.

Our current favorite recording of Petrushka for both performance and sound is the one Dorati recorded for Mercury in 1960.

Sonic Grade: B (I’m guessing)

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.

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Speakers Corner Has a “Winner” in Espana

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chabrier Available Now

Sonic Grade: B

One of the better Speakers Corner Deccas.

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. 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.

This is a Speakers Corner Decca 180 gram LP reissue of the famous Argenta performance, a recording which can sound positively amazing on the right original London, but only about 2 out of 10 copies actually do sound amazing.

And where in the world are you going to find 10 clean copies of a record that’s almost 40 years old?

This pressing gets you most of the way there, on reasonably quiet vinyl, for a lot less money.

UPDATE 2025

This Speakers Corner title may be good, but our Hot Stamper classical and orchestral pressings will be dramatically more transparent, open, clear and just plain REAL sounding, because these are all the areas in which Heavy Vinyl pressings tend to fall short in our experience.  For more on that subject, see here and here.

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Grieg / Piano Concerto – Speakers Corner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Edvard Grieg Available Now

We used to think this was one of the better Speakers Corner Deccas.

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. 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.

One of the best Deccas — superb sound and music that belongs in your life!

This performance also includes Franck’s “Variations Symphoniques” and Litolff”s “Scherzo from Concerto Symphonique, Op. 102”.

Our two favorite recordings of the Grieg Piano Concerto are the Decca with Lupu and Previn from 1973 and Rubinstein’s for RCA in 1962.

This Speakers Corner title may be good, but our Hot Stamper classical and orchestral pressings will be dramatically more transparent, open, clear and just plain REAL sounding, because these are all the areas in which Heavy Vinyl pressings tend to fall short in our experience.  For more on that subject, see here and here.

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Richard Thompson / Action Packed: The Best of the Capitol Years

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Richard Thompson Available Now

UPDATE 2025

Note that this review was written in 2001 when the record came out and we were still selling sealed new releases based on the audition of a single copy. (I had the play copy of this record in my personal collection for years and never got around to playing it, one of the downsides of having to play records all day to make money, resulting in little time to play the recordings of favorite artists that lack a customer base.

We have no idea what Action Packed would sound like these days on the much more revealing system we use now. I do know that the CD is very good. It’s probably the best way to approach the music initially. If you become a fan, consider the vinyl.

We would love to do a shootout for this title, but at a hundred bucks or more a pop it’s hard to imagine that a decision to devote the resources to such a project would be wise on our part.

We already do plenty of shootouts for records that are hard to sell, of titles that should be more popular with audiophiles but for some reason just aren’t.

Our Review from 2001

Another top outing on TWO clear vinyl LP’s from the master of modern electric folk music. It doesn’t get any better than this.

The sound is excellent and the music is some of the best Richard Thompson has ever made. If I had to choose one later Richard Thompson album, this would probably be it.

Almost every one of these pressings is very slightly dished, but this should not have any effect on the sound, which is excellent.

Thompson’s lovely duet with his son on Persuasion is worth the price of the album.

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Jack Sheldon / Unreleased UHQR Test Pressing – Reviewed in 2007

More Hot Stamper Pressings of Digital Recordings with Audiophile Quality Sound

UPDATE

2007 was a long time ago, so please take that into condideration when reading this review.

This is a practically brand new UHQR JVC test record.

I’m SHOCKED at how good this record sounds.

It has AMAZING live jazz sound. 

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Mozart / Symphonies Nos. 40 & 41 on Speakers Corner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Mozart Available Now

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. 

Transparency

What is lost in these newly remastered recordings? Lots of things, but the most obvious and bothersome is TRANSPARENCY.

Modern records are just so damn opaque. We can’t stand that sound. It drives us crazy. Important musical information — the kind we hear on even second-rate regular pressings — is simply nowhere to be found. That audiophiles as a group — including those that pass themselves off as champions of analog in the audio press — do not notice these failings does not speak well for either their equipment or their critical listening skills.

It is our contention that no one alive today is capable of making records that sound as good as the vintage ones we sell.

UPDATE 2025

The guy who cut this pressing sometime this century did a great job — it sounds like a vintage record, and better than any of the vintage pressings of the title we have ever played — but we don’t know who it is because he wasn’t credited on the jacket for his mastering!

Perhaps we should be more clear and say that it is the Big Name mastering engineers who can’t seem to cut a good record these days,

Once you hear our Hot Stamper pressings, those 180 gram records you own may never sound right to you again. They sure don’t sound right to us, but we are in the enviable position of being able to play the best properly-cleaned older pressings (reissues included) side by side with the newer ones.

This allows the faults of the current reissues to become much more recognizable, to the point of actually being quite obvious. When you can hear the different pressings that way, head to head, there really is no comparison. (more…)