Decca/London (rock, pop, jazz, etc.)

Decca/London (rock, pop, jazz, etc.)

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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The Moody Blues – In Search Of The Lost Chord

More of the Music of The Moody Blues

  • Incredible sound throughout this early UK pressing, with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “jumping out of the speakers”…”big and tubey”…”sweet and breathy vox”…”weighty and rich”…”much more transparent and detailed” (side two)
  • Chock full of Moodies Magic: warm, full-bodied, rich and smooth, with tremendous space and plenty of rock energy
  • The first Moody Blues album to feature their trademark mellotron arrangements, and what a glorious sound that is when it sounds like this
  • “…the album on which the Moody Blues discovered drugs and mysticism as a basis for songwriting and came up with a compelling psychedelic creation, filled with songs about Timothy Leary and the astral plane and other psychedelic-era concerns.”

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The Moody Blues – Days of Future Passed

More of the Music of The Moody Blues

  • With two INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides or close to them, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this vintage UK import
  • According to my notes, the last White Hot stamper copy went up in 2022 (!)
  • The sonics are huge, rich and lively throughout – you need this kind of space for the orchestral parts to work their Moody Magic
  • An album experience beyond practically anything that had come before (Sgt. Pepper excluded)
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Days of Future Passed became one of the defining documents of the blossoming psychedelic era, and one of the most enduringly popular albums of its era.”
  • If you’re a fan of the Moodies, this vintage UK pressing from 1967 surely belongs in your collection
  • 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,” but with the accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life

This album is more than 50 years old, for god’s sake! In those 50+ years I’d forgotten how good it is.

“Tuesday Afternoon” is the Perfect Pop Song, with the whole of side two flowing effortlessly from it as each song (each day) is linked by means of the surrounding orchestrations until it reaches its zenith with the climax of “Nights in White Satin.”

The sound is very much a part of the entire experience. The strings of the orchestra sound as sweet as any Decca, the soundstage wide and deep as a symphony. For those of you who still think Mobile Fidelity is the king on this one, here’s a record that demonstrates what a real orchestra sounds like.

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The Rolling Stones – No. 2

More of The Rolling Stones

  • With KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them from top to bottom, this vintage copy of The Stones’s sophomore LP could not be beat
  • This British MONO pressing (made from the mono tapes) will show you the real, honest sound of the early, early Stones
  • Both of these sides have the Midrange Magic that’s surely missing from whatever 180g reissue has been made from the tapes (or, to be clear, a modern digital master copied from who-knows-what-tapes)
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… [No. 2 includes] one of the group’s best blues covers, their version of Muddy Waters’ “I Can’t Be Satisfied,” which wasn’t released in America until 1973 and features some killer slide playing by Brian Jones.”

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The Rolling Stones – Aftermath

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones


  • Killer Tubey Magical 60s British sound throughout this vintage UK Decca pressing, with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • “Lady Jane,” “Under My Thumb” and “Mother’s Little Helper” are three of the best sounding tracks – all are lively and solid here on this amazing side one
  • 5 stars: “… the group began incorporating the influences of psychedelia and Dylan into their material with classics like ‘Paint It Black,’ an eerily insistent number one hit graced by some of the best use of sitar (played by Brian Jones) on a rock record. Other classics included the jazzy ‘Under My Thumb,’ where Jones added exotic accents with his vibes, and the delicate Elizabethan ballad ‘Lady Jane,’ where dulcimer can be heard…”

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The Moody Blues – A Question of Balance

More of the Music of The Moody Blues

  • With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides, this vintage UK pressing is doing practically everything right
  • Huge and spacious, as well as wonderfully Tubey Magical – to our way of thinking, if this isn’t exactly the way the band wanted to sound in 1970, we can’t imagine what would be
  • This pressing has some of the best Moody Blues sound we’ve ever heard – it’s a truly exceptional recording in their canon
  • Includes the big hit “Question,” one of the all time greats by the band, which sounds fantastic here of course
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you

Achieving just the right balance of “Moody Blues Sound” and transparency is no mean feat. You have to be using the real master tape for starters.

Then you need top end extension, a very rare quality on these imports, and finally, good bass definition to keep the bottom end from blurring and bleeding into the midrange.

No domestic copy in our experience has ever had these three qualities, and only the best of the British imports (no Dutch, German or Japanese need apply) manages to get all three on the same LP.

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The Rolling Stones – Beggars Banquet

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones

  • You’ll find INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides of this vintage London pressing of this surprisingly well-recorded Stones album from 1968
  • The long lost Tubey Magic of these early pressings has them sounding better than we ever thought possible with the audio equipment of the day
  • This is exactly the way you want Beggars Banquet to sound and it sure doesn’t take a pair of golden ears to hear it
  • One of a select group of Rolling Stones Must Own titles we prize above all others – Sticky Fingers and Let It Bleed round out the trio
  • 5 stars: “Basic rock & roll was not forgotten, however: ‘Street Fighting Man’… was one of their most innovative singles, and ‘Sympathy for the Devil’… was an image-defining epic.”
  • If you’re a Stones fan, this vintage pressing of their 1968 classic belongs in your collection

No Expectations, the second song on the first side, is one of the greatest Demo Tracks for Tubey Magical guitar reproduction we know of. The next year, Glyn Johns would pull off another acoustic guitar recording of that quality with Love in Vain on Let It Bleed.

Good pressings are certainly not easy to come by — this kind of rich, full-bodied, musical sound is the exception, not the rule. And there’s actual space and extension up top as well, something you certainly won’t hear on most of the vinyl that’s been pressed over the 50+ years since this album was released.

What sets the best copies apart from the pack is a fuller, richer tonal balance, which is achieved mostly by having plenty of bass and less upper midrange. Those are the copies that sound tonally correct to us, and you should have no trouble appreciating the difference.

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The Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides, here is an outstanding All Analog pressing showcasing the Stones at the peak of their rock and roll powers
  • “Love In Vain” is one of the best sounding Stones songs ever recorded – the acoustic guitar harmonics and the rich WHOMP of the snare prove indisputably that Glyn Johns is one of the engineering greats
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • Top 100, 5 stars – Jason McNeil wrote that Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed are “the two greatest albums the band’s (or anyone’s) ever made.” [Add Sticky Fingers to complete the ultimate Stones Trilogy.]
  • This is a Must Own album from 1969, one that should have a place in any audiophile’s pop and rock section

This is, in our humble opinion, the second or third best record the Stones ever made. (Sticky Fingers is Number One, and either this or Beggar’s Banquet comes in a strong second.) With this wonderful early domestic pressing we can now hear the power and the beauty of the recording itself, a fact that we consider the very definition of a Hot Stamper.

Killer Stones Sound

Both sides have more ambiance, more life, and more presence than you probably dreamed possible. Take the sound of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” to pick just one example. The breathtaking transparency of this copy allows you to pick out each voice in the intro. The vocals on the other songs are no less present, full-bodied and breathy.

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How Good Are the Domestic Pressings of Days of Future Passed?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Moody Blues Available Now

If you’ve ever done a shootout between domestic pressings of the Moody Blues and the good early imports, you know that the imports just murder the American LPs.

Domestic pressings are cut from sub-generation tapes, so they tend to sound dubby and smeary, yet strangely they’re also thinner and more transistory than the UK imports, and overall have a fraction of the Tubey Magic that make the good imports such an engaging listening experience.

Moody Blues albums on import are typically murky, congested and dull. Listening to the typical copy you’d be forgiven for blaming the band or the recording engineer for these problems. But the properly mastered copies are none of these things.

The cutting engineers who cut the pressings for the U.S. market thought they knew exactly how to fix the problem. When the album came out in America in 1968, leaner and cleaner were in and rich and tubey were out.

Of course the album is never going to have the kind of super-clean, high-rez sound some audiophiles prize, but that’s clearly not what the Moody Blues were aiming for.

It isn’t about picking out individual parts or deciphering the machinery of the recording with this band.

It’s all about lush, massive soundscapes. In our experience only the best UK pressings can give you the sound.

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The Moody Blues – Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

More of The Moody Blues

  • With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them from top to bottom, this copy is one of the BEST we have ever heard – unusually quiet vinyl too, about as quiet as we can find them
  • With a wonderful combination of Tubey Magical richness and clarity, this UK Threshold pressing will be practically impossible to beat
  • Full-bodied and lush, yet not veiled or distant, this is the sound that brings the Moodies magic to life
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The best-realized of their classic albums, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour was also the last of the group’s albums for almost a decade to be done under reasonably happy and satisfying circumstances — for the last time with this lineup, they went into the studio with a reasonably full song bag and a lot of ambition and brought both as far as time would allow…”

This copy had the big, rich, lush British sound that can only be heard on the better Moody Blues pressings.

Great sounding Moody Blues albums don’t show up on our site too often — they’re just not that easy to come by. Dull, veiled, boring sound is the rule, and big, rich, clear sound like this the exception.

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