Country Advice

Which country produced the best sounding pressings for the albums linked below? Click on the listing to find out.

Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Islands Vs Cotillions

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Available Now

UPDATE 2020

This commentary was written many years ago, around 2010 I would guess.

It was updated in 2020 when we realized we were wrong about the domestic pressings being superior on side two. At one time we thought they were, and now, with many more shootouts under our belts, we are pretty sure they are not. But you never know!

The findings from the latest shootouts have shown us the error of our ways, yet another example of live and learn.

This is what we used to think:

The Brit copies may take top honors for side one (“sweetness, openness, tubey magic, correct tonality, presence without aggressiveness, well-defined note-like bass, extended airy highs”) but the Hot Stamper Cotillion copies KILL on side two. They really ROCK, with greater dynamic contrasts and seriously prodigious bass, some of the best ever committed to vinyl.

The Brits tend to be a bit too “pretty” sounding. They’re too polite for this bombastic music. This music needs the whomp down below and lots of jump factor to work its magic.

The Brits are super-low distortion, with a more open, sweeter sound, especially up top, but the power of the music is just not as powerful as it can be on these very special Cotillions.

We prefer the British pressings on both sides now. After years of improvement to our playback, they have shown themselves to be a step up over even the best domestic pressings. The Cotillions don’t win shootouts now and would be very unlikely to win one in the future. At best they tend to earn Super Hot Stamper grades.

A top copy might be described this way:

  • This UK Island Pink Rim pressing makes the case that ELP’s debut is clearly one of the most powerful rock records ever made, here with incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades from top to bottom – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Spacious, rich and dynamic, with big bass and tremendous energy – these are just some of the things we love about Eddie Offord‘s engineering work on this band’s albums
  • Analog at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • “Lucky Man” and “Take A Pebble” on this copy have Demo Disc quality sound like you won’t believe
  • Our White Hot pressing had a one half plus better grade on one side and sold for $849, making this copy a “relative bargain,” if there could ever be such a thing on this site – but what an amazing sounding record!

Without a doubt this record belongs in our Top 100 Rock and Pop section.

I’d even say it belongs in the Top Ten (which of course is where you can find it, where it belongs).

The organ on this album is wall to wall and floor to ceiling. The quiet interlude during “Take A Pebble” is about as quiet as any popular recording can ever be — the guitar is right at the noise floor. It’s amazing! (Which explains why so many domestic copies have groove damage. The record is just too hard to play for the average turntable. Hell, it’s hard to play with an audiophile turntable.)

Credit engineer Eddie Offord, who would later go on to enormous and entirely justifiable fame with Yes.

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Skip the Domestic Pressings of Business As Usual

In our opinion, Business As Usual is the band’s best sounding album, and probably the only Men at Work record you’ll ever need. Click on this link to see more titles we like to call one and done.

As a bit of background just in case you are not familiar with the album, the domestic pressings are horrendously bright. We have never played one that didn’t sound like the treble was jacked up to a level just this side of ear-bleed.

The only way to hear this album sound right is on Australian, Dutch, British and, more than a little surprisingly, even Japanese vinyl. Yes, we have heard them all.

We’ve liked about one out of every one hundred Japanese pressings we’ve played over the last twenty years. We were surprised to find that the Japanese copy of Business As Usual we played many years ago was pretty good, for what that’s worth.

(We can’t be sure that on our current system with our current ears we would feel the same.)

We tend to prefer the Brits but it seems that any import is worth a listen. The key, as always, is in the mastering and pressing.

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The Domestic Stampers of 10cc’s Masterpiece Had Us Fooled for Years

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of 10cc Available Now

I haven’t run into many audiophiles who own a copy of The Original Soundtrack, or any other 10cc album for that matter.

It’s the rare person who has the the kind of system that can play a recording with such explosive dynamics.

As I have an uncontrollable habit of saying, this is the kind of record that is guaranteed to bring any audiophile stereo to its knees. 

Since that is the case, and audiophiles who build the kind of big systems in heavily-treated custom rooms to meet the challenge such recordings present are thin on the ground — very thin it seems, as I am the only one I have ever known — it stands to reason that practically no audiophiles have ever experienced the size and power of the recording as it was meant to be heard.

I thought I was doing a very good job reproducing the sound of the album, but recent research has proved that, once again, I was mistaken. Previously I had written:

The recording itself is a tour de force, the main reason I’ve been demonstrating my stereo with it for more than thirty years. The extended suite that opens side one, One Night in Paris, has ambience, three-dimensional sound effects, and incredibly dynamic multi-tracked vocals at the climax that will leave you with your jaw on the floor.

All true. But I had been playing both domestic pressings and British pressings over the course of those thirty years, and I don’t remember clearly preferring one to the other.

With our latest shootout the British pulled away from the pack in a big way, with no British pressing being beaten by any domestic competitor.

The domestic pressings ranged from very good — 2+ on both sides — to passable at best — 1+ on both sides.

I honestly used to think they were close, that they would be hard to tell apart. Those days are gone. We are operating at a whole ‘nother level, and I am glad that we are. We want to give out only the most accurate information and sell only the best sounding records.  What I had thought was true ten years ago turns out to have been off the mark.

When reality turns out to be dramatically different from what you thought it was, and you can prove it — you actually have the physical records to back up your newer, more correct understanding — that’s audio progress.

You might try proving yourself wrong more often.

Most audiophiles I have run into like having their biases confirmed, but look where that has gotten some of them — stuck in a rut. Break out of that way of thinking and you may very well find that you have broken through to another level.

Because if you don’t go out of your way to prove yourself wrong, who will?

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This Original British Tarkus Had the Sound Most Audiophiles Can Only Dream Of

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Available Now

To be clear, audiophiles who buy a shootout winning White Hot Stamper pressing from us don’t have to dream, but practically everyone else does, because copies that sound as good as this one are few and far between.

It’s an amazing find, the kind of record we live for here at Better Records.

We described the sound of our most recent shootout winning copy this way:

This original UK Island pressing was doing everything right, earning killer Triple Plus (A+++) grades from top to bottom.

Our recent monster shootout produced this incredible sounding British pressing on Island (the only way we offer the title) and it is stone guaranteed to rock your world.

Eddie Offord‘s trademark Tubey Magic, energy, resolution, whomp factor and dynamics are all over this phenomenal recording, and this pressing captured it all.

Here are the notes that back up everything we said, and more. We can’t put all the qualities we rave about into every listing. Who would believe us?

No other copy offered this kind of sound. It’s what we used to call AGAIG — As Good As It Gets.

3+/3+ records like this one go in our Top Shelf section, which currently holds 32 titles.

Records with at least one 3+ side go in this section, and there are 143 of those as of today, almost five times as many.

Eddie Is The Man

Tarkus is clearly a Demo Disc for big speakers that can play at loud levels.

The organ captured here by Eddie Offord (of Yes engineering fame, we’re his biggest fans) and then transferred so well onto our Hot Stamper pressings will rattle the foundation of your house if you’re not careful. This music really needs that kind of megawatt reproduction to make sense. It’s Big Bombastic Prog that wants desperately to rock your world. At moderate levels it just sounds overblown and silly. At loud levels it actually will rock your world.

All but the best Brit pressings have a tendency to be a bit turgid and many of them lack the bottom end weight that music like this absolutely must have to work its magic. There are some good domestic copies — not in a league with the best Brits at all — but most of them have sub-generation sound that robs the instruments of their immediacy and texture (much the same way that Heavy Vinyl does, truth be told).

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I Robot Is a Tough Nut to Crack, Even If You Have Plenty of Early British Pressings to Play

Hot Stamper Pressings of Prog Rock Albums Available Now

Here is how we described a Hot Stamper pressing of I Robot that went up recently, our first in five years:

An early UK pressing (and the first copy to hit the site in years) with seriously good sound throughout.

Many copies tend to be overly smooth, but this one has the kind of clarity that allows the natural textures of the instruments to come through.

Transparency is key to the sound of the better copies, and that is precisely where the dubby domestic pressings fall apart.

Even many of the early British pressings fell short. Good luck finding top quality sound on this one. At the very least you are going to need a big budget — these early UK pressings are not cheap to find in audiophile playing condition.

As you can see, we weren’t kidding about those UK pressings falling short. Here’s two that did, with their stamper numbers posted for all to see.

Side two of the first copy is being held back by sound that is smeary, dry and hard.

Side one of the second copy is murky and hot (bright).

Note that these are early UK stampers, which some in-the-know audiophile collectors will tell you are clearly the best.

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On Reggatta de Blanc, Steer Clear of Bilbo

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Sting and The Police Available Now

A White Hot Stamper shootout winning copy went up on the site recently (4/2025) and this is how we described it:

With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish, this copy is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Regatta de Blanc you’ve heard.

Most of the stuff we manage to acquire from overseas is in far worse playing condition – these were popular records in their day, and they got played plenty, so this one came as a pleasant surprise.

Sting’s pulsing bass lines and the massive assault of Copeland’s kick really come to life here – you won’t believe how big and powerful the bass is on this record.

Along with Ghost in the Machine, we think this album captures The Police at their songwriting and performing peak.

However, many of the copies we played left much to be desired, as you can see from the notes we made for two of the copies we played (out of a total of nine):

Bilbo has cut many of our favorite records over the years, but for this album his side two is way too bright and therefore NFG.

Sheffield Labs Mastering (SLM) also cut many great sounding records, but for this album the sound was “very thin.” The grade of 1.5+ means the record is playable and enjoyable, but the top copies we offer will be dramatically better sounding.

Tone (not pictured) is a British mastering house that has mastered many excellent pressings. In the case of Reggatta they can be very good, but they never win shootouts.

British, Dutch or Domestic?

The first two can be good.

The domestic copies are consistently sub-par, as is the Half-Speed, and whatever Heavy Vinyl pressings are available are sure to be mediocre at best, as that has been our experience with the hundreds and hundreds of such pressings we have played to date.

Some of the most recent ones we’ve played were especially bad sounding. When it comes to Heavy Vinyl, devolution seems to be the operating principle.

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The True Test for Side Two (and How Wrong We Were about Domestic Pressings) of Backless

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Eric Clapton Available Now

During our shootout we discovered that the true test for side two was the second track, the old blues song Early In The Morning.

It’s by far the best sounding track on the album, with huge space, rich bass, a fat snare and Tubey Magic to die for. This is the kind of sound that the likes of Glyn Johns gets down on tape, live in the studio no doubt, and it made it easy to do the shootout for side two.

The bigger, the richer, the tubier, the more transparent the better. It’s THE track to demo with. 

Both sides have rich, smooth, clear sound. Listen for the guitars on the first track on side one; the grungier the better. Punchy bass too.

Turn It Up and Let It Rock

The typical pressing of Backless, much like the typical pressing of Slowhand, is just too thick, dull, compressed and veiled to be much fun.

At the very least you need to turn this album up good and loud to get it to do anything.

The copies that are solid and weighty love getting loud; the copies that are thin and bright only get worse as the level goes up, a sign that they leave a lot to be desired. This is a rock album after all.

We Was Wrong

We used to note the following regarding the country that produced the best sounding pressings:

We had top quality copies on both domestic and British vinyl. Both were cut here in L.A.. It makes sense that either can be good.

This should have been corrected a long time ago, as far back as 2017, perhaps earlier. The domestic copies, thought cut at The Mastering Lab, are not competitive with the British LPs also cut there and then sent to England for pressing.

Live and learn is our motto, and progress in audio is a feature, not a bug, of record collecting at the most advanced levels.

We may have liked the domestic pressings a long time ago, but with changes to the system and many shootouts under our belts, the sonic superiority of the Brits cannot be denied.

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What to Listen For on Birds of Fire

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz-Rock Fusion Albums Available Now

Birds of Fire as a recording is not about depth or soundstage or ambience.

It’s about immediacy, plain and simple.

All the lead instruments positively jump out of the speakers — if you are lucky enough to be playing the right pressing.

This is precisely what we want our best Hot Stampers to do. In most cases, the better they do it, the higher their grade will be.

The main problem with this record is a lack of midrange presence. If the keyboards, drums and guitars are not front and center, your copy does not have the presence it should. On the best copies the musicians are right in the room with you. We know this for a fact because we heard the copies that could present them that way, and we heard it more than once.

Which of course gets to the reason shootouts are the only real way to learn about records.

The best copies will show you qualities in the sound you had no way of knowing were there. Without the freakishly good pressings you run into by chance in a shootout you have no way to know how high is up. On this record up is very high indeed.

A True Demo Disc

Birds of Fire is one of the top two or three Jazz/Rock Fusion Albums of All Time. In my experience, few recordings within this genre can begin to compete with the Dynamics and Energy of the best pressings of the album — if you have the Big Dynamic system for it.

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Talk About Getting the Sound Wrong – What Was Decca Thinking?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

Even though we know that the UK Decca pressings have not done well in our shootouts for more years than I care to remember, if we see one for cheap locally you know we’re going to buy it and get it another chance at the brass ring no matter how many times it’s failed in the past.

As you can see from our shootout notes, the Decca import has once again let us down.

It’s bright, with no warmth or weight. It’s not musical like the London pressings with the right stampers are.

If a certain kind of audiophile were to play this record, the kind of audiophile who might be given to simplistic conclusions based on insufficiently small sets of data — which, in our experience, pretty much covers the entire audiophile record collector community, including, if not especially, the so-called expert reviewers — the conclusion such a person might reach is that Beggars Banquet is just not very well recorded.

If Decca pressings don’t sound good, what on earth would?

Or, to put it another way, if Decca, the label that the Stones recorded this album for, can’t figure out how to make Beggars sound its best, why would we assume that any other company could?

We would, naturally, assume that Decca did the best they could with the tape and the mediocre quality of the sound you hear — 1+/1.5+ is pretty much our definition of mediocre — is all there is.

The Option that Is Almost Always Wrong

Worse — if a new Heavy Vinyl pressing of the album came out with even halfway-decent sound, then it would prove beyond a doubt that some modern mastering engineer had finally figured out how to get Beggars to sound right.

But of course it would prove no such thing.

If all you have to guide you is conventional collector wisdom, then the one thing you can be sure of is that the Decca pressing from the UK should have better sound than any other, especially any record made in the states.

But it doesn’t. It’s possible I suppose – we haven’t played every pressing ever made – but it sure is unlikely based on the evidence presented to our ears over the course of the last twenty to thirty years or so.

If you would like to hear Beggars Banquet sound right, and have the hundreds of dollars we charge for a copy that is guaranteed to sound right or your money back, click on the link. It’s rare that we have one in stock, but you never know.

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Unlike the First Three Albums, on Security You Can Forget the Brits

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Peter Gabriel Available Now

The basics notes here were written in 2009, about the time we finished our album by album auditions of his early catalog.

On this title, forget the Brits. Every British pressing we played was badly smeared and veiled.

This took us somewhat by surprise because we happen to like the British PG pressings, but remember, So on British vinyl is awful too, so it’s clear (to us anyway) that the later PG records are bad on British vinyl and the early ones are better.

We are limiting our comments here to albums up through So. Anything after that is more or less terra incognita for us simply because we don’t care for the music he was making after 1986.

Plays Live, from 1983, takes the dark, overly-rich, overly-thick and way-too-smooth sonics of Security and lathers it over the material he had previouly recorded up through then. Some of it works well enough I suppose, but in my experience it usually isn’t long before the monotony of this approach grows tiresome.

What We Listened For

The best copies have sonic qualities that are not the least bit difficult to recognize:

  • Presence, putting PG front and center;
  • Dynamics, both micro and macro;
  • Energy, allowing the rhythmic elements to bring out the life in the music;
  • Transparency, so that we hear all the way to the back of the studio (where some of the many musicians that play in the densest parts no doubt had to stand); and
  • Ambience, the air that surrounds all the players and what instruments they played.

And of course we played the album VERY LOUD, as loud as we could. It’s the only way to get the massive druming to sound right.

The Music

This is one of the most important records in the Peter Gabriel canon, groundbreaking and influential on so many levels. The entire album is a wonderful journey; anyone with a pop-prog bend will enjoy the ride. Just turn the volume up good and loud, turn off your mind, relax and float along with PG and the band. You’re in good hands.

I’ve listened to this one more than other PG albums with the only exception being his second release, the one produced by Robert Fripp. That one is still clearly my favorite of the lot. I play it to this day and have never tired of it since I bought it way back in 1978.

Naturally, I would have originally picked up the domestic pressing, which is clearly made from a dub tape, but in 1978 what did I know about master tapes and imported pressings?

I was still a big Mobile Fidelity fan at that time, which is a simple way of saying that it’s clear that I had a very long way to go in this hobby and a great deal left to learn!

Nothing Peter Gabriel released after So did much for me so I resigned myself to the first five albums. Five excellent albums from one artist is plenty in my book.

If you like the albums after So, to each his own and more power to you. It’s my opinion that their appeal is limited, such that doing a shootout for them is not likely to be in the cards.

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