Reprise/Bizarre

Frank Zappa – Weasels Ripped My Flesh

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Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Frank Zappa

  • This lively Zappa pressing boasts two excellent Double Plus (A++) sides – one of the better copies we played in our recent shootout!  
  • All Analog Tubey Magical sound from 1970, with a spacious, three-dimensional soundstage and a big bottom end
  • Clear, high-rez sound, crucial to making sense of this complex music – exceptionally QUIET vinyl too
  • “Zappa’s anything-goes approach and the distance between his extremes are what make Weasels Ripped My Flesh ultimately invigorating.”

The sound is big and bold throughout with excellent clarity, presence, and wonderful transparency.

If you’re not already a Zappa fan, be warned that experimental song structures, feedback, dirty lyrics, avant-garde jazz freakouts and gas mask solos (yes, you read that right) all figure into the mix here. I don’t know of anyone other than Frank Zappa who could shape that all into one amazing, fairly cohesive LP. (more…)

Fleetwood Mac / Mystery To Me

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Reviews and Commentaries for Fleetwood Mac

Here it is, folks — the best sounding copy of Mystery To Me to ever hit our site. This copy positively DOES IT ALL — it’s super open and spacious with tons of energy and incredible presence. The bottom end is just KILLER and there’s dramatically more richness and fullness than you get on most copies out there. 

It’s beyond difficult to find great sounding copies of this album, which is why it’s been about four years since we last had these on the site.

Mystery To Me is my All Time Favorite Fleetwood Mac album, and this White Hot Stamper copy has the sound that I always DREAMED this album could have, but didn’t — until now. This is just the second Hot Stamper shootout that we’ve been able to do, since clean copies with the right stampers are ridiculously hard to come by. I’m not kidding. I have spent the last ten years and more trying to find the right stampers for this record. I can tell you I was dead wrong so many times in the past that I had almost given up. Time and time again, just when I thought I had it figured out, I would go back and play my so-called “hot” copy, to find myself miserably disappointed all over again. (more…)

Duke Ellington – Ellington ’66

  • Shootout winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound throughout and the first copy to ever hit the site!
  • This Grammy award winning title features Ellington performing some of the biggest pop hits of the day: Red Roses For a Blue Lady, I Want to Hold Your Hand, All My Loving, and more 

The album won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance – Large Group or Soloist with Large Group. (more…)

Jimi Hendrix – Crash Landing

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TWO GREAT TRIPLE PLUS SIDES on this original Reprise pressing! This is one of those somewhat controversial posthumous Hendrix albums, but it’s hard to argue with the quality of the best tracks on here, like the great Message To Love. I’m not going to go out on a limb and say this is a must-own album, but Hendrix fans will certainly find much to like here. We played a big stack of copies and most of them weren’t worth our time; a copy like this one lets you appreciate Jimi’s craft without mediocre sound getting in the way.

The overall sound is both richer and cleaner than you get on the average copy., not to mention more musical and enjoyable. The bass is strong, there’s lots of presence to the vocals and guitar, and more depth to the soundfield as well.

Bottom line? If you’re a Hendrix fan who wants to hear some of these later songs sound good, this Hot Stamper pressing will get the job done. (more…)

The Kinks – The Kink Kontroversy

  • Here’s a rare one — a wonderful copy of an early Kinks album, in mono no less, with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout
  • Both sides here are clean, clear, full-bodied and dynamic with excellent bass and tons of energy 
  • Till the End of the Day was the big hit, and Where Have All the Good Times Gone is also a classic 
  • Allmusic raves, “The Kinks came into their own as album artists — and Ray Davies fully matured as a songwriter — with The Kink Kontroversy…

We discovered the hard way that mono is the only way to go for The Kinks’ third album. The stereo version may in fact be the worst sounding stereo record compared to the mono that we have ever played. (more…)

The Kinks – Kinks Kinkdom

  • This outstanding pressing of The Kinks excellent third album boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout 
  • This Reprise Pink and Green original mono pressing is lively, balanced and vibrant, with a healthy dose of the Tubey Magical Richness these tracks need in order to sound their best
  • Fairly quiet vinyl for a vintage Kinks record – they don’t come much quieter or sound much better than this one
  • “There are some terrific numbers here — not just ‘A Well Respected Man’ and ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion,’ but the exuberant ‘Who’ll Be the Next in Line’ and ‘I Need You,’ the menacing ‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else,’ and the haunting ‘See My Friends.'”

This original mono pressing has the kind of Midrange Magic that modern records cannot begin to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it ain’t 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 Tube Analog recordings are known for — this sound. (more…)

We Were Wrong About the Better Mix in 2018

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

In 2018 we described our Shootout Winner this way:

Amazing sound throughout for Neil’s self-titled debut – shootout winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides. Both sides are rich, full and Tubey Magical with a big bottom end and excellent resolution.

Surely one of Neil’s toughest to find with top quality sound – and only these early pressings with the original mix have the potential to sound as good as this one does.

Six years later, in 2024, we had acquired enough copies of Neil’s debut to do the shootout again. (Yes, it seems that you may have to wait until 2030 for a chance to buy a Hot Stamper pressing of the album from us. However, feel free to use the stamper information provided in the blog listing linked here to help you avoid some of the worst sounding stampers of them all, the earliest ones.

To be clear, some of the later label reissues that come in the second cover are even worse sounding than the first mix stamper pressings that come in the first cover.

(A great deal more on the superior sound of some reissues can be found at the bottom of this listing.)

UPDATE 2024

In our latest shootout, the original mix on multiple copies we played did poorly.

We were wrong and for that we apologize. Please ignore what we wrote about the album below back in 2018. The old mix definitely does not beat the new mix.

The Old Mix Beats the New Mix

We’ve always felt that this album was not nearly as well recorded as the albums that followed. Why that would be the case we do not pretend to know. It was a long time ago. Who on earth has the arrogance to think they know precisely what went wrong? (I could actually name a few people but the less said about them the better.)

It turns out the remixed pressings we’d been selling for years were not the way to hear this album at its best. Neil wanted his voice to sound clearer and more present than the first mix, but the approach the engineers took to increase the clarity and presence was simply to boost the middle and upper midrange, a boost that seriously compromises the wonderful Tubey Magic found in the rich lower midrange of the original mix.

Neil may have liked the sound of his voice better on the new mix, played back on whatever mediocre-at-best stereo he was using at the time, but we here at Better Records are of a decidedly different opinion. On a modern, highly-resolving system Neil’s voice will not sound the least bit “buried” on the original mix, not on the best pressings anyway. Of course, the best ones are the only ones we sell.

If you want to hear this album sound right, we strongly believe that the original mix is the only way to go. And if you want to hear this album sound really right, better-than-you-ever-thought-possible right, you need a copy that was mastered, pressed and cleaned properly, and that means a Hot Stamper from Better Records. (more…)

The Grand Wazoo – This Is One Crazy Tubey Magical Album

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Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Frank Zappa


  • DEMO DISC QUALITY – full-bodied, rich, spacious, BIG and PRESENT, with practically zero smear on the horns (nice!
  • The Tubey Magical keyboards found on the title cut are really something to hear, especially on this copy
  • The Grand Wazoo now gets my vote as the best sounding record Zappa ever made (along with Absolutely Free)

Wow – big, present and clear, with lots of lovely studio space, yet full-bodied. These sides about as right as any we’ve ever heard.

As noted above, the Tubey Magical keyboards at the start of The Grand Wazoo are amazing sounding here. How Zappa ever decided to go digital when he managed to record so well in analog (from time to time, let’s be honest) is beyond me. (more…)

Unquestionably the Best Sammy Davis Jr. Album We’ve Ever Played

Hot Stamper Pressings of Our Best Vocal Albums

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We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” with an accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life.

This album is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but would certainly benefit from getting to know better.

It’s one of the most emotionally rich and sublimely enjoyable collections of romantic ballads ever recorded.

Our Hot Stamper pressings are guaranteed to demolish the DCC CD (should you have one laying around, an admittedly unlikely proposition to be sure).

The sound is rich, warm and natural beyond expectation — assuming you’ve suffered through other of Sammy’s recordings from the ’60s, as we have, finding little of merit in their sound.

On most of them, at some point in the first track, the phony vocal EQ and heavy reverb would dash whatever hopes we might have had for the sound.

Soon enough the record would be consigned to the trade-in pile, perhaps to find a home where bad sound is not a deal-breaker (which means pretty much everywhere).

For us audiophiles, at least most of the time, it has to be.
(more…)