Classic Records – Rock, Pop, Vocals, etc.

Labels With Shortcomings – Classic Records – Rock, Pop, Vocals, etc.

Today’s Bad Heavy Vinyl Pressing Is… Aqualung!

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

An audiophile hall of shame pressing and another Classic Records rock LP badly mastered for the benefit of audiophiles looking for easy answers and quick fixes.

By the time the guitars at the end of the title track fade out you will be ready to take your heavy vinyl Classic Record pressing and ceremoniously drop it in a trashcan. (Actually, the best use for it is to demonstrate to your skeptical audiophile friends that no heavy vinyl pressing can begin to compete with a Hot Stamper from Better Records. Not in a million years.)

We Was Wrong on All Counts

Over the course of the last 25 years we was wrong three ways from Sunday about our down-and-out friend Aqualung here.

We originally liked the MoFi from the early 80s. Wrong. Proof positive that in the early 80s I didn’t have good reproduction or know much about records — but I sure thought I did!

When the DCC 180g came along in 1997 we liked that one better. Wrong again. It didn’t have MoFi’s usual midrange suckout and sloppy bass, but it was bad in so many other ways that it is hard for me to believe I ever liked it. But I did, to some degree anyway.

Back then I was a DCC believer, a mistake I would come to recognize once a few more years had passed. See here and here.

And a few years back I was briefly enamored with some original British imports. Wrong for the third time.

After playing more than two dozen pressings of Aqualung in our recent [circa 2010] shootout, it’s pretty clear that the right early Reprise pressings KILL any and all contenders. Forget all the Green Label Chrysalis pressings. Forget the reissues. Forget the imports. It’s original domestic Reprise or nothing when it comes to Aqualung.
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More Bright and Harsh Sound from Classic Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

Ridiculously bright and harsh, sounding nothing like the good pressings we sell.

We are proud to say this was one of the Classic Records Led Zeppelin releases that we refused to carry back when we were selling Heavy Vinyl (along with II and Houses, both of which stink to high heaven).

You will find very few critics of the Classic Zep LPs outside of those of us who work for Better Records, and even we used to recommend three of the Zep titles on Classic: Led Zeppelin I, IV and Presence.

Wrong on all counts. Live and learn, right?

Since then, we’ve made it a point to review many of the Classic Zeps, a public service from your friends at Better Records. We don’t actually like any of them now, although the first album is by far the best of the bunch.

Is this pressing of III the worst version of the album ever made?

There may be too much competition to make that claim – in our experience, most pressings of Zep records tend to be poorly mastered, barely hinting at how well recorded their albums really are — but it is certainly a record no audiophile should want anything to do with.

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More of the Same Heavy Vinyl Trash from Classic Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jimi Hendrix Available Now

One of the worst things those dummies at Classic ever did. The mono mix is just plain awful.

Their reissue of the mono mix is flat and dry with practically no Tubey Magic whatsoever.

It positively screams “CHEAP REISSUE.” That two word description reminds me of this record, although to be fair the sound is quite a bit worse on the Hendrix.

Is it the worst version of the album ever pressed? It almost has to be, doesn’t it?

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Direct Hits – Not Bad on Track, Awful on Classic Heavy Vinyl

More of The Who

This is a very nice looking original Track Black Label British Import LP. As anyone who knows the Who’s back catalog can attest, most of these songs were poorly recorded. Like all compilations, the sound here varies from track to track. Side two definitely has the better sound.

We guarantee that this pressing sounds better than the Classic reissue, which was so bad we never carried it.

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The Who Sell Out to Classic Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now

UPDATE 2026

In 2005 I think it was the stereo version we played of the Classic Heavy Vinyl pressing, not the mono. Both were mastered by Chris Bellman, one of our least favorite mastering engineers.

Most of the records he’s cut for Bernie Grundman Mastering have such poor sound quality that they end up going into our hall of shame, which is exactly where they belong. If you have any of his badly-remastered vinyl in your collection, now is the time to pull it out, play it and see for yourself just how far off the mark this guy’s records are.

At this point, it’s no longer astonishing to us that there are still audiophiles who defend his work. Naturally, these include self-styled audiophile reviewers who are obviously in the wrong business and too clueless to know it.

We find it hard to say anything good about the man except this: he did an excellent job cutting Brothers in Arms on two discs. (Our review for that pressing has been delayed since 2022 but it is coming one of these days, I swear on a stack of records.)

Our review from 2005:

Not our idea of good sound.

The only Classic Who record we ever carried was Who’s Next, which is actually pretty good — we gave it a B back in the day.

I suspect it would earn a poorer grade now. We had lower standards for Heavy Vinyl back then.

(Which is the understatement of all time. We had lower standards for every kind of record back then.)

We have since discussed how wrong we were about a great many records, including the Classic Records reissue of The Who’s Masterpiece, and in the case of that title more than once.

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Another Classic Record Is Shown the Out Door

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

After finishing our first shootout for In Through the Out Door in 2007, our faces were positively red with shock and embarrassment. Once again we found smeared with egg on our faces.

We used to think the Classic version that came out in 2001 was pretty decent, one of the three we’d liked and recommended back in the day when we were selling Heavy Vinyl, but now we know that the best originals slaughter it.

We’d never done a shootout for this album before 2007. We didn’t feel up to the challenge, because most pressings tend to be miserable — gritty, grainy, hard sounding, with congested mids, dull, and so on.

The best pressings of this album sound amazing, but they are few and far between.

The test any copy of the album must pass is an easy one — a copy that makes you want to turn up the volume is likely a winner. The Classic fails that test.

One reason the turn up your volume test is such a great test is this: as problems in the sound get louder, they become harder and harder to ignore. Records that have edgy vocals and an upper midrange boost cannot be played at realistic levels without their artificiality inducing a palpable sense of discomfort in the listener. Isn’t listening to music supposed to be fun? Not when it sounds like this.

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Who By Numbers on Classic Records Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now

It’s not just bass that separates the real thing from the Classic Reissue. It’s weight, fullness, the part of the frequency range from the lower midrange to the upper bass, the area spanning roughly 150 to 600 cycles.

It’s what makes Daltry’s voice sound full and rich, not thin and modern.

It’s what makes the drums solid and fat the way Glyn Johns intended.

The good copies of Who’s Next and Quadrophenia have plenty of muscle in this area, and so do the imports we played.

But not the Classic. Oh no, so much of what gives Who By Numbers its Classic Rock sound has been equalized right out of the Heavy Vinyl reissue by Chris Bellman at BG’s mastering house.

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Balalaika Favorites on Classic Records Is Unpleasantly Hard and Sour

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Recordings Available Now

It’s been quite a while since I played the Classic pressing of SR 90310, Balalaika Favorites, but I remember it as unpleasantly hard and sour.

Many of the later Mercury reissues pressed by Columbia had some of that sound, so I was already familiar with it when Classic’s pressing came out in 1998 as part of the just-plain-awful-sounding Mercury series they released.

I suspect I would hear it that way today. Bernie Grundman could cut the bass, the dynamics, and the energy onto the record. Everything else was worse — not just worse, but wrong — 99% of the time.

The fast transients of the plucked strings of the Balalaikas was just way beyond the capabilities of his colored and crude cutting system.

Harmonic extension and midrange delicacy were qualities that practically no Classic Records Heavy Vinyl pressing could claim to have.

Or, to be precise, they claimed to have them, and whether they really believed they did or not, they sure fooled a lot of audiophiles and the reviewers who write for them.

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A Question for Classic Records – What Did You Do to My Beloved Hot Rats?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Frank Zappa Available Now

Second question: This pressing of Hot Rats is analog?

You could’ve fooled me.

And somebody’s been messing around with the drums on the new version — a certain Mr. Frank Zappa no doubt. He really did the album a disservice. If you know the album well, and I know it very well, having played it literally hundreds of times, the Classic is positively unlistenable. (The reworked CD of Ruben and the Jets is even worse.)

Bernie’s version for Classic beats a lot of copies out there — the later Reprise pressings are never any good — but it can’t hold a candle to a good one.

What’s wrong with the Classic?

Well, to my ears it just doesn’t sound natural or all that musical. Sure, it’s a nice trick to beef up those drums and give them some real punch, but does it sound right? Not to these ears.

The other quality that the best copies have going for them and the Classic has none of is Tubey Magic. The Classic is clean, and at first that’s a neat trick since the originals tend to be a bit murky and congested.

But it’s clean like a CD is clean, in all the wrong ways. 

The overall sound of the best originals is musical, natural and balanced. The Classic has that third quality — it’s tonally correct, no argument there — but musical and natural? Not really.

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When I Wrote this Years Ago I Was Being Far Too Charitable

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chet Atkins Available Now

It’s been quite a while since I played the Classic pressing, but I remember it as nothing special. Like a lot of the records put out by this label, it’s tonally fine but low-rez and lacking space, warmth and, above all, Tubey Magic.

When I wrote that years ago I was being far too charitable.

A remastered pressing of a Chet Atkins recording from 1959 that lacks Tubey Magic is one that is failing fundamentally to understand why it has any reason to exist.

The premise of the modern Heavy Vinyl pressing, as its legions of defenders constantly remind us, is to allow the listener to hear the music as it was meant to be heard — with two added bonuses: better vinyl, and affordable, non-collector prices.

(The dirty little secret of the mid-fi collector market is that affordability, not sound quality, is at the heart of it. The knock on our records is that they are expensive, but how is that relevant to the sound quality of the pressings we offer? A better sounding pressing is a better sound pressing, regardless of its price.)

These newly remastered pressings are meant to offer the music lover the opportunity to hear the true sound of the master tape. This elusive holy grail they will stop at nothing to acquire can be summed up in three words: Master Tape Sound. Or so they think.

(The fact that vanishingly few audiophiles have ever heard a master tape or would know oen if they heard one is an inconvenient truth that must not be allowed to interfere with their righteous desire to own whatever pressing purports to offer it.)

But I digress. Back to Chet Atkins in 1959. Let me sum up my position this way, with a nod to the Brits:

A Living Stereo recording that lacks Tubey Magic is one that has completely lost the plot.

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