Pre-Shootout Reviews

Reviews from our (mostly) pre-shootout days.

Sibelius / Violin Concerto / Ricci

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jean Sibelius Available Now

This is a wonderful sounding London Stereo Treasury pressing featuring one of our favorite violinists, Ruggiero Ricci, performing the Sibelius Violin Concerto in D Minor.

The tone of the violin on side one is just right — every nuance of Ricci’s bowing can clearly be heard.

While the violin sounds amazing on side one, the orchestra lacks a bit of weight.

This side is also not quite as Tubey Magical as it could be. In our opinion, however, the violin tone and the incredible dynamics are more than enough to make us want to award this record a fairly high grade.

Side two actually has a bit more fullness, but this also seems to rob the violin of some of its presence. 

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Otis Redding – Good To Me / Live at the Whisky A Go Go Volume 2

Hot Stamper Pressings of Soul, Blues, R&B, etc. Available Now

This Stax British Import is a Better Records highly recommended recording. If I had to choose one Otis Redding record to keep, this would be the one! As good as his studio albums are, the guy was MAGICAL live.

If you’re an Otis Redding fan, this live album released in 1992 surely belongs in your collection.

The complete list of titles from 1992 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

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Shostakovich / Cello Sonata / Shafran

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Shostakovich Available Now

UPDATE 2026

In 2004, before we started doing shootouts for records like this Living Stereo, LSC 2553, we had this to say about a copy we played.

Fabulous! A beautiful record!

These sell for a fortune now, so there is almost no chance we will be able to do a shootout for this album. If you see one at a good price, pick it up!

Performed by Daniel Shafran, Cellist, and Lydia Pecherskaya, Pianist. This performance also includes Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata.

Discogs Pricing Statistics

  • Lowest: $50.00
  • Median: $399.99
  • Highest: $1,000.00

1961 just happens to be one of the truly great years for top quality analog recordings, as can be seen from this amazing group of albums, all recorded or released that year.

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Khachaturian – Spartacus & Gayneh

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now

UPDATE 2024

This is a very old review. The last time we sat down to play a number of copies of this recording, we were underwhelmed by all of them There may be some great sounding pressings out there, but we did not have any on hand and don’t want to commit the resources that would be needed to find them.

Our favorite recording that we stock, for both sound and performance, is the Mercury with Dorati from 1961.

It is guaranteed to give your system a real workout, especially if you can play it something approaching live levels in order to get the tympani and bass drum sounding right.

Our Old Review

This is a Decca In The Box British Import LP featuring Spartacus on side one and Gayaneh on side two with the Vienna Phil.

Side Two is the BEST EVER! Just play the Sabre Dance! This famous TAS List LP has a very good side one as well, 90 to 95% the best. This is a record that deserves its Super Disc ranking. It IS a Super Disc! 

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Beethoven / Symphony No. 7 / Reiner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Ludwig van Beethoven Available Now

UPDATE 2025

This is a very old review of a White Dog pressing with decent sound.

We did a massive shootout for the work in 2025 and determined that the best combination of sound and performance could be found on the best pressings of Karajan’s 1959 recording for RCA.

However, although the Soria originals, LDS 2348, have the best sound, their vinyl on side two is consistently defective.

The later Shaded Dog pressing, LSC 2536, was good sounding, but not as good as we hoped, with a side two that was rich but bright. The best copy earned a grade of 2+/1.5+.

Of the seven copies we cleaned and played, only two made the cut for sound and vinyl, none earning even 2+/2+ grades.

This was an expensive shootout to get off the ground when you consider the seven we bought and the other pressings we auditioned in order to find the best of the best for performance and sound.

We proably lost more than a thousand dollars after all was said and done.

It may be unfortunate, but there are times when it will be unavoidable. These are the costs we must be willing to bear if we are to bring our customers top quality pressings of the most important works by the greatest composers who ever lived.

Finding good sounding records is a crap shoot. We get paid to dig deeper than other vintage record dealers — that’s the job we have chosen for ourselves, and not only do we not have any regrets, we much prefer doing things the way we do them, mostly because we actually enjoy testing records — but success is never assured.

You win some and you lose some, and if we’re not fine with results that don’t go our way, we should do what our competitors do and sell records based on, e.g., the established skills of the mastering engineers, supposedly superior production methods, original tape sources, higher quality vinyl, and who knows what else — in other words, everything but their actual sound quality.

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Jimmy Smith / Any Number Can Win

More of the Music of Jimmy Smith

  • Any Number Can Win is back on the site for the first time in years, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides of this early Verve pressing
  • With richness, clarity, space and timbral accuracy, this is guaranteed to be one of the best sounding big band jazz records you’ve heard in a while
  • Another top jazz recording from Rudy Van Gelder (among others) – big, bold and lively, just the right sound for this music

This is one of Rudy Van Gelder’s triumphs and one of the best Jimmy Smith albums we’ve ever heard. All of side one and the last cut of side two sound stunning! This is dynamic, big speaker sound.

Lots of old Verves weren’t mastered right, but this one was. It’s as good as it gets — it’s right up there with Bashin’.

RVG did not record this entire album. Some songs are recorded by other engineers and don’t have the dynamic slam that his do but the best tracks are amazing.

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Richard Thompson / Action Packed: The Best of the Capitol Years

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Richard Thompson Available Now

UPDATE 2025

Note that this review was written in 2001 when the record came out and we were still selling sealed new releases based on the audition of a single copy. (I had the play copy of this record in my personal collection for years and never got around to playing it, one of the downsides of having to play records all day to make money, resulting in little time to play the recordings of favorite artists that lack a customer base.

We have no idea what Action Packed would sound like these days on the much more revealing system we use now. I do know that the CD is very good. It’s probably the best way to approach the music initially. If you become a fan, consider the vinyl.

We would love to do a shootout for this title, but at a hundred bucks or more a pop it’s hard to imagine that a decision to devote the resources to such a project would be wise on our part.

We already do plenty of shootouts for records that are hard to sell, of titles that should be more popular with audiophiles but for some reason just aren’t.

Our Review from 2001

Another top outing on TWO clear vinyl LP’s from the master of modern electric folk music. It doesn’t get any better than this.

The sound is excellent and the music is some of the best Richard Thompson has ever made. If I had to choose one later Richard Thompson album, this would probably be it.

Almost every one of these pressings is very slightly dished, but this should not have any effect on the sound, which is excellent.

Thompson’s lovely duet with his son on Persuasion is worth the price of the album.

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Now, There Was A Song! Sounds Bad to Us Now

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Johnny Cash Available Now

UPDATE 2024

We got a couple of nice copies of this record in recently and they sounded terrible.

We suspect we were being too generous with our previous review. Buy this one for the music of you like, but don’t expect it to have audiophile quality sound.

This very nice looking original Columbia Stereo 360 Label LP has that authentic early Johnny Cash sound. We put this through our cleaning process and took a listen. The EQ on his vocals is a little bit brighter than we like but overall the album has LOTS OF TUBEY MAGIC!

“This is an outstanding album of covers of old country songs, from the familiar (Ernest Tubb, Hank Williams, George Jones) to lesser-known gems. ” AMG

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French Overtures with Ansermet Had One Awfully Good Sounding Side in 2009

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jacques Offenbach Available Now

Reviewed back in 2009 in our pre-shootout days.

This Minty London Blueback LP has a WONDERFUL Tubey Magical Super Hot Stamper side one.

I have never heard this music sound better. Of course Ansermet is exactly the right conductor for these light and colorful orchestral pieces; the performances are uniformly superb.

But as audiophiles we want to make sure the sound is what it should be, and here side one does not disappoint. The string tone is perfection. I defy anyone to find a Heavy Vinyl reissue with string tone even remotely as good. In my experience there is simply no such record.

With vintage classical records there are always trade-offs of course. Here the loudest passages suffer from some mild compressor distortion, so common on these early pressings. A small price to pay for sound this lovely I say.

The Zampa overture by Herold is probably the best sound on the album — it’s gorgeous!

Side two is not quite as good. We rated it A Plus, with real weight and energy but a bit too much compression and distorton in the loud passages to be completely satisfying.

UPDATE 2025

Nowadays we would never list a record for sale as a Hot Stamper pressing with a grade of 1+ on either side.

And, more importantly, the grades we awarded these two sides were just estimates.

We did not put this copy in a shootout with a batch of similar pressings.

We played the record, liked what we heard on side one, liked what we heard on side two a bit less, and offered it to our customers with the description of the strengths and weaknesses you read about.

We could not have begun to conduct a shootout for this early London. Back in those days we simply could not find enough copies of such a rare title to make such a thing happen.

As for the compressor distortion on side one that we heard, it’s entirely possible that with better cleaning and better playback that the distortion we thought we heard would disappear. Blaming the record is rarely the ideal approach for making progress in audio.

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Shelly Manne & His Men / At The Blackhawk, Volume 2

More of the Music of Shelly Manne

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from first note to last, this early Contemporary stereo pressing will be very hard to beat
  • This is West Coast Jazz at its best, and if anyone can capture the realism of a live jazz club, it’s the engineers and producers at Contemporary
  • Each instrument here sounds right – the piano is weighty and percussive; the drums are punchy; and the brass has lovely leading edge transients
  • 4 stars: “These lengthy performances (“Vamp’s Blues” is over 19 minutes long) give trumpeter Joe Gordon, the cool-toned tenor-saxophonist Richie Kamuca, pianist Victor Feldman, bassist Monty Budwig and the leader/drummer a chance to really stretch out. Fine 1950s bebop.”

Wonderful sound and music! This is West Coast Jazz at its best. The sound is superb — airy, open, and spacious with a stunningly good bottom end. You won’t believe how alive the bass sounds — the depth and definition are out of this world! Each instrument here sounds just right — weighty, percussive piano; punchy drums; and lovely leading edge transients on the brass. Contemporary got live nightclub jazz sound down to a “T” here.

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