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.

Shoot Out The Lights – Loud Versus Live Versus The Heavy Vinyl Reissue

thompshoot_1503_1_1282591967Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Richard Thompson Available Now

Here’s a thought: if 180 gram records are supposed to be an improvement over the original pressings, why is it that they NEVER sound big and bold like our best Hot Stamper pressings?

And I do mean never; I’ve played hundreds of them over the years and have yet to hear this kind of sound on any of them. At this point I would have to conclude that it is simply not possible.

If you have big speakers, a large listening room and like to play your records loud, there is no modern reissue that will ever give you the thrill that a vintage pressing like this can. (Of course, to fully appreciate the effect it obviously helps if you have a White Hot Stamper copy to play.)

Heavy Vinyl

Years ago, about the time that I was becoming disenchanted with Heavy Vinyl in general and Four Men With Beards in particular, that label released a modern reissue of the album. I could never work up the energy to bother to play it. The chances of it sounding like one of our Hot Stamper pressings are slim to none and much closer to none.

UPDATE 2024

I have now played the remastered Shoot Out the Lights and it’s very good!  It might be at best a low level Hot Stamper, maybe 1.5+, but for Heavy Vinyl that is indeed exceptional.

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Can Anybody Tell Me What’s Wrong with Sweet Baby James on Warners-Rhino?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of James Taylor Available Now

There is one obvious and somewhat bothersome fault with this new pressing of Sweet Baby James, an EQ issue. Anybody care to guess what it is? Send us an email if you think you know.

Hint: it’s the kind of thing that sticks out like a sore thumb, the kind of obvious EQ error I can’t ever recall hearing on an original pressing, as bad as many of those tend to be.

Our review for the Steve Hoffman remastered pressing follows.

This Warner Brothers 180g LP is the BEST SOUNDING Heavy Vinyl reissue to come our way in a long long time. Those of you who’ve been with us for a while know that that’s really not saying much, but it doesn’t make it any less true either, now does it? Let’s look at what it doesn’t do wrong first.

It doesn’t sound opaque, compressed, dry and just plain dead as a doornail like so many new reissues do. It doesn’t have the phony modern mastering sound we hate about the sound of the new Blue. (We seem to be pretty much alone in not liking that one, and we’re proud to say we still don’t like it.)

The new Sweet Baby James actually sounds like a — gulp — fairly decent original.

The amazing transparency and dynamic energy of the best originals will probably never be equalled by an audiophile pressing like this. (It hasn’t happened yet and we remain skeptical of the possibility.) Considering that this pressing is sure to beat most reissues, imports and such like, we have no problem heartily recommending it to our customers, especially at the price.

Hoffman and Gray can take pride in this Sweet Baby James.

It’s some of the best work I’ve heard from them to date. If more DCC and Heavy Vinyl reissues sounded like this, we wouldn’t be so critical of them. Unfortunately they don’t, and there are scores of pages of commentary on the site to back up that statement for those of you interested in the subject.

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Beck – Mutations

More Beck

More Psych Rock

  • Both sides of this superb pressing of Beck’s 1998 Grammy Award Winning release boast solid Double Plus (A++) grades
  • A shockingly well-recorded album that sounds surprisingly analog for 1998 – there’s real Tubey Magical Richness here
  • This is one of our favorite albums from the 90s – if you don’t already have a favorite Beck album, this one should fit the bill
  • 4 stars: “Beck is not only a startling songwriter — his best songs are simultaneously modern and timeless — he is a sharp record-maker, crafting albums that sound distinct and original…”

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The Classic Pressing of Beethoven’s 4th Can Have Very Good Sound

More of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven

Somehow we managed to have a Classic Records pressing on hand to play in our most recent shootout for the Beethoven Symphony No. 4.

We knew all the way back in 1997 that Classic had done a good job with the record — we recommended it as one of the best Classic Records pressings in our catalogs at the time — but we sure didn’t expect it to do as well as it did, earning 2 pluses on one side and close to that on the other.

Years ago we wrote:

Here is the kind of sound that Classic Records could not ignore, even though the original was only ever made available as part of RCA’s budget reissue series, Victrola.

Don’t let its budget status fool you — this pressing puts to shame most of what came out on the full price Living Stereo label. (And handily beats any Classic Records reissue ever made.)

The top and bottom are wrong to varying degrees on both sides of the Classic, as you can see from our notes, which read:

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Our Search for Shootout Winning Sound on Modern Vinyl Finally Pays Off

Our (Incomplete) List of Potentially Very Good Sounding OJC Pressings

It has finally come to pass. A modern pressing has won a shootout.

Having auditioned more than a dozen modern (post-2000) OJC pressings and having had them fall far short of the mark again and again — when they weren’t just plain awful — we have now discovered one that can win a shootout.

As you imagine, this came as quite a shock.

We weren’t sure precisely which of the many OJC pressings our shootout winner was until we looked up the stamper numbers on Discogs. To our surprise, it had clearly been made sometime in the the 21st century.

That Never Happens

This has never happened before. No record made since 2000 has ever won a shootout against a vintage pressing of the same title.

Modern records range from awful to very good, but one quality they have never had is the ability to be the best of the best.

Now one has.

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Albeniz / Suite Espanola – Speakers Corner Reviewed

More of the music of Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909)

Years ago we wrote the review you see below. Not sure we would still find the record as good sounding as we did back then, in the ’90s, so take it for what it’s worth. (What I couldn’t hear on my system back in those days may be of interest to some of you.)

If you can pick one up for cheap, it’s probably a good record for the price.

One of the better Speakers Corner Deccas! Excellent sound and lovely music. This pressing also sounds much better than the Super Analogue pressing of the same music.

When you get the right original pressing — London or Decca — they’re even better, but they sure are hard to find on quiet vinyl.

That last part we definitely agree with.

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Midnight Sugar on Two 45 RPM Discs

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

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.

The following notes were added in 2023. The original review can be seen just below them.

We should point out that the original Japanese pressings are clearly better sounding than any of the Super-Cut Analogue Disks that were pressed at RTI, regardless of the cutting speed.

I remember auditioning the 33 RPM recut that had been done in 1995. I was a big fan of the album in those days, and I had at least one and maybe more than one authentic Japanese pressings of the album in my collection. I still own the Three Blind Mice CDs of a number of titles as well.

It was no contest, the early pressings were obviously better in every way. I was selling heavy vinyl back then, and that’s what I had to sell, so I raved about the sound of the RTI-pressed reissues and sold plenty of them. I never bothered to point out that they were not as good as the originals. They were good and that was pretty much all I was going to say about them.

The authentic Japanese pressings were expensive to buy and very hard to find. Although they were better sounding, anyone buying the new pressings was likely to be happy with them, and that was good enough for the business model of Better Records at the time.

What accounts for the fall-off in sound quality from the earlier pressings to the reissues, remastered in Japan and then pressed at RTI, is anyone’s guess.

Some of that reduction results from the substandard sound that virtually all RTI pressings tend to have, a subject we discussed in some detail in this commentary from years back.

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Schubert / The Trout Quintet – Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Decca Available Now

Sonic Grade: B?

One of the better Speakers Corner Deccas. We were impressed with the Speakers Corner pressing when it came out back in the day. We’ve come to learn that it is such an exceptional recording that even their second rate remastering of it was still capable of resulting in a very good sounding record. 

One of the ways you can tell how great a recording this is is simply this: as soon as the needle hits the groove you are immediately involved in the music, listening to each of the lines created by the five preternaturally gifted players, all the while marveling at Schubert’s compositional skills.

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Led Zeppelin – A Classic Records LP that Will Beat Most Pressings (!)

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

Considering how bad (or at best mediocre) the average copy of the first Zep album sounds, let’s give credit where credit is due and say that Bernie’s remastered version on Heavy Vinyl is darn good (assuming you get a good one, something of course that neither I nor you should assume).

It’s without a doubt the best of all the Classic Zeppelin titles, most of which we found hurt our delicate ears.

Our Thinking Circa 2010 

[The last time we played a copy.)

We like the Classic, albeit with reservations. It’s without a doubt the best of all the Classic Heavy Vinyl reissues of the Zeppelin catalog, most of which are not very good and some of which are just awful.

Why is this one good? It’s tonally correct for one thing, and the importance of that cannot be stressed too strongly.

Two, it actually ROCKS, something a majority of pressings we’ve played over the years don’t.

Three, it’s shockingly dynamic. It may actually be more dynamic than any other pressing we have ever played.

UPDATE 2023

It might have been back in the day, but it’s highly unlikely we would agree with that assessment in 2023. Much like this record, we had a lot of R&D ahead of us before we could know just how dynamic this recording could be.

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L.A. Woman – Rhino Heavy Vinyl Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Doors Available Now

The Rhino pressing we auditioned from the Doors Box Set was surprisingly good. It’s rich and smooth with an extended top end — tonally correct, in other words — and there’s lots of bass.

This is all to the good. For the thirty bucks you might pay for it you’re getting a very good record, assuming yours sounds like ours, something we should really not be assuming, but we do it because there is simply no other way to write about records other than to describe the sound of the ones we actually have played.

What it clearly lacks compared to the best originals is, first and foremost, vocal immediacy.

Jim Morrison seems to be singing through a veil, an effect which becomes more and more bothersome over time, as these kinds of frustrating shortcomings have a habit of doing.

A bit blurry, a bit smeary, somewhat lacking in air and space, on the plus side it has good energy and better bass than most of the copies we played. All in all we would probably give it a “B.” You could do a helluva lot worse.

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