Records by Label 2

“A very rewarding day spent visiting a remarkable piece of music.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Gustav Holst Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing of The Planets he purchased many years ago:

Hey Tom, 

I spent the day today shooting out various interpretations and sonics of the above, and, I must admit, the Previn leads the field. More decay, transparency, sweetness, magic and imagination than the Mehta, Stokowski and numerous others. If you have an amazing copy, especially re side two, please put my name on it and let me know. [We do this shootout regularly and will be glad to hold the next killer copy for you.]

A very rewarding day spent visiting a remarkable piece of music. The Previn should be used for proper setup of a big system because it does everything right and demands the same of your system.

Best,
Phil
And thank you.

You are preaching to the choir on that one, loved it for at least the last ten years and can find nothing to compare with it.

I was very fortunate to see the work performed at Disney Hall.

No record can come close, but some can come closer than others. (more…)

Jimi Hendrix – Hendrix In The West

More of the Music of Jimi Hendrix

  • Both sides of this early UK import were giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This is a fun live album with stellar performances by Jimi – the best of his many posthumous releases
  • The awesome version of “Little Wing” is just killer on this copy – it’s Jimi’s best performance of the song
  • 4 stars: “…it’s a hodge-podge, made of live tracks largely from 1969 and 1970. But it’s a bunch of great live tracks, including some real rarities… In the West is a great sampling of Hendrix’s late-period live material (and his sense of humor) making its long awaited appearance.”

We’re still surprised at how well recorded the album is. It takes a pressing like this to really show you the live Jimi Hendrix magic Eddie Kramer got onto tape. Drop the needle on “Little Wing” and you are going to be floored.

The size and space here are really something, miles beyond most. The resolution and clarity of the open live sound of this copy bring out all the instrumental textures and details of the recording like few we played. More importantly, the extended top keeps the highs from getting hard or harsh the way they do on so many pressings we’ve played.

As these performances are culled from different concerts, the sound varies a bit from track to track, but every track on here sounds good and the best tracks sound amazing.

Almost Famous

It’s hard to understand why this album isn’t more widely known. The performances are great and the sound is excellent for a vintage live recording.

Naturally not every copy sounds as good as this one. We heard a lot of pressings with too much grit and grain, and many that badly lacked presence. When I play a live album, I want to feel like I am there at the show (and to do that I set the volume accordingly, of course) but with most copies that just isn’t possible.

Thanks to Eddie Kramer’s amazing engineering, this album will have Jimi playing live in your listening room, and what a thrill it is to hear it all these years later (and on dramatically better equipment).

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Roger Waters – The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking

More of the Music of Pink Floyd

  • Boasting two INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides or close to them, this original UK pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other The Pros and Cons… you’ve heard
  • Like the recordings of Floyd, the sound is big, with lots of energy, excellent midrange presence and real weight down low
  • A tough album to find with this kind of sound, which is why so few copies have ever hit the site
  • 4 stars: “The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking continues to showcase Waters’ unprecedented knack of addressing his darkest thoughts and conceptions in a most extraordinary fashion.”

Let me tell you, it is no walk in the park to find a copy of The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking that sounds as good as this one and plays as quietly. Those of you who like Floyd’s The Final Cut will probably get a lot out of the album. (more…)

The Zombies – The World of The Zombies

More Rock and Pop

  • This early Decca import pressing was doing practically everything right, with both sides earning KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Big, rich, energetic, with an abundance of analog Tubey Magic, this UK copy has the right sound for this music
  • Copies of the album on the original label, in audiophile playing condition, are getting more expensive and more difficult to find every year, but what a great record – it’s a classic example of just how amazingly well-recorded some mid-60s Tubey Magical pop was
  • “The Zombies’ obvious appreciation for adeptly crafted melodies and rich vocal harmonies likewise made them favorites of pop fans as well as more discerning listeners.”

The World of the Zombies is for all intents and purposes a reissue of their 1965 debut album, Begin Here, with a few track changes, the most important of which is the addition of “Tell Her No.”

The drums here are clear and punchy and the bottom end is solid.

The vocals do not get too bright as they have a tendency to do on some copies.

When you get a Tubey Magical copy like this, that Hammond B-3 sound is glorious.

Smooth sweet vocals and dead on tonality complete the sonic picture here.

Just for fun sometime go to popsike.com and check out what the original first Zombies record on Decca sells for. Try $1500 and up! And people think our prices are high — we ain’t never charged that kind of bread.

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Gerry Mulligan – Gerry Mulligan ’63

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone

 

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it throughout this original Verve All Tube Chain Stereo pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • This copy is hard to fault – big, open, clear, with space and three-dimensionality that modern pressings fail miserably to reproduce (particularly on side one)
  • “With originals by Bob Brookmeyer, Gary McFarland and the baritonist/leader (in addition to the standards ‘Little Rock Getaway’ and ‘My Kind of Love’), this is a high-quality if rather brief program. Trumpeter Clark Terry and guitarist Jim Hall co-star with Mulligan in the solo department. It is a pity that this orchestra could not prosper; all five of its recordings are worth getting.”

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Madonna – Like A Virgin

More Rock and Pop

  • Here is an original Sire pressing with very good Hot Stamper grades from start to finish – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • We guarantee there is more space, richness, presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard or you get your money back – it’s as simple as that
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…there’s no discounting the best songs on the record, the moments when her grand concepts are married to music that transcends the mere classification of dance-pop. These, of course, are ‘Material Girl’ and ‘Like a Virgin,’ the two songs that made her an icon, and the two songs that remain definitive statements.”

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Is the OJC Pressing of Jazz Giant Really 100x Worse?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This commentary is from many years ago. The OJC’s can be decent on this title, but some of them, like the one we played and discuss here from way back when, can be awful sounding.

However, we played a copy of OJC-167 in our most recent 2026 shootout. It earned grades of 1+/1.5+, almost good enough to qualify as a Hot Stamper, which simply means it has the potential to be decent but, based on our experience, you are more likely to get a bad one than a good one.

Our notes in 2026 read:

  • Veiled and dry
  • Not natural

Still, not a bad sounding copy, better than nine out of ten Heavy Vinyl pressings we play these days. They rarely earn even one plus.

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Grover Washington, Jr. – All The King’s Horses

More of the Music of Grover Washington

  • An early Kudu pressing of Washington’s sophomore release with a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side one
  • There’s so much life in these grooves – the sound jumps out of the speakers and right into your lap
  • Credit must go to Rudy Van Gelder for recording and mastering this album so well, and to Bob James for his brilliant big group arrangements
  • We cannot recommend this album highly enough – if you have the big speakers a big group of musicians need to perform live in your listening room, his record is going to be nothing less than a thrill
  • 4 stars: “. . . this set has assumed its proper place in Washington’s catalog: as one of his more ambitious and expertly performed sessions.”
  • This is a Must Own jazz album from 1972, one that deserves a place in any audiophile’s collection

Both sides of this original Kudu pressing are OUT OF THIS WORLD. The sweetness and transparency of Grover Washington Jr.’s breathy sax went beyond any copy we’ve ever played. Who knew it could sound like this? We sure didn’t!

It’s spacious and full of life with virtually no distortion. Of special note, this copy has amazingly articulate bass which brings out the undeniable funkiness of the music in a way that no other copy did.

The early 70s were a good time for Rudy Van Gelder. All the King’s Horses from 1972 is an amazing Demo Disc for a large group. But it only sounds good on the copies that it sounds good on, on the pressings that were mastered, pressed and cleaned right, a fact that has eluded most jazz vinyl aficionados interested in good sound.

But not us. We’ve played the very special pressings that prove the album can sound amazing.

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Minnie Riperton – Perfect Angel

More Soul, Blues, and R&B

  • This early Orange Label Epic pressing boasts two very good Hot Stamper sides
  • It’s richer and fuller than the average copy, with notably more presence, and that will be especially true when you compare it to whatever godawful Heavy Vinyl pressing may be currently available
  • This is true of even our lowest-priced, lowest-graded copies – they are guaranteed to sound much better than any pressing you can find on the market today, as well as any pressing you may already own
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Perfect Angel is the best Minnie Riperton album, and still the closest she came to stardom.”

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Pros, Cons and the Celebration of a Milestone

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now

UPDATE 2022

In 2012, according to some old notes we had from an early shootout, perhaps our first, we auditioned a copy of Massenet’s Le Cid with what we thought was a suboptimal side two, a side two that we thought suffered from screechy string tone.

Since that time we’ve made a number of improvements to our cleaning regimen and playback system, and the result has been that our last couple of shootouts went off without a hitch, showing us string tone that was virtually free of screechiness.

(The Greensleeves reissues never had a “screechy strings” problem as they tended to be mastered with a smoother EQ. They are more forgiving of second-rate playback in that respect, but they can also never win shootouts with that overly smooth sound.) [1]

Problem solved! The records were fine, we just couldn’t play them back then as well as we can now.

Our Review from 2012

In 2012, twelve years ago, I had been selling records to audiophiles professionally for 25 years. I had owned what I considered to be a State of the Art system for 37 years.

But I knew I still had plenty to learn, and I kept at it.

After a decade’s worth of tweaking and tuning, the strings of this recording started to sound the way Stuart Eltham and his fellow engineers undoubtedly wanted them to.

This is how you chart your audio progress, by challenging yourself with difficult to reproduce recordings and building on the improvements you continue to make as the years and decades go by.

If you’re in the market for records that can show you that there is still plenty of work left to be done in this crazy audio hobby we’ve chosen, we have scores of them on the Better Records site for sale .

If we can get them to sound better, so can you.

[1] Our latest preoccupation here on the blog is to point out as often as we can that the Modern Heavy Vinyl remaster is too often just too damn smooth.

The remastered box sets of The Beatles (see: Pepper, Sgt.., etc.) are the poster boys for making records sound more “analog” by boosting the bass and smoothing the treble, like your old 70s system used to do. (Those of you who were in the hobby back then know exactly the sound I am talking about. For those who would like to know more, we wrote this overview.)

The Beatles records that we sell as Hot Stampers have nothing in common with that absurdly artificial approach. Mid-Fi systems may benefit from more bass and less top end, but Hi-Fi systems worthy of the name will not, hence our distaste for this kind of EQ overreach. More examples of overly smooth modern records can be found here, with more to be added as time permits.

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