Domestic=Best

The right domestic pressings of these albums have the potential to sound better than even the best imports.

This may strike you as contrary to the received wisdom of most record collectors, but we have the superior sounding copies of these titles to back up everything we say.

Art Pepper – Winter Moon

More of the Music of Art Pepper

  • A Winter Moon like you’ve never heard, with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them throughout this vintage Galaxy pressing
  • The sound here is rich and Tubey Magical, which is the only way this music makes any sense on record
  • You’d be hard-pressed to find a copy that’s this well balanced, big and lively, with wonderful clarity in the mids and highs and Pepper’s sax front and center
  • Rosiny string texture is key to the best pressings – the ones that have the highest-resolution strings with the most sheen tend to do the best in our shootouts
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Pepper sounds quite inspired performing seven strong compositions highlighted by Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Winter Moon,’ ‘When the Sun Comes Out’ and a clarinet feature on ‘Blues in the Night.'”
  • If you’re a fan of Art’s, this is an excellent title from 1981 that belongs in your collection.

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Little Feat – The Last Record Album

Hot Stamper Pressings of Personal Favorites Available Now

  • Here is a vintage copy with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides – this is the best studio album the band ever recorded
  • The drums are rich and fat and deliciously analog, a perfect match for the sound of the album as a whole
  • Consistently strong songwriting with dramatically more emotionally powerful tracks than their other releases
  • Features great songs like “All That You Dream,” “Long Distance Love,” “Mercenary Territory” and more

The Last Record Album is one of our favorite Little Feat albums. The recording, by the estimable George Massenburg (working with Dave Hassinger), has many outstanding qualities. Among them is amazing bass; the bass goes really deep in places (“Long Distance Love”) and it’s big, punchy, rich and well up in the mix throughout the album.

The problem has always been an overly smooth top end, combined with congestion, smear, and a serious lack of presence. The good news is that if you clean enough copies with the advanced cleaning techniques we’ve developed, and you make enough improvements to your stereo, room, etc, with the right copy you can actually get this album to sound clear and rich.

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Alice Cooper – School’s Out

More of the Music of Alice Cooper

  • This early Green Label pressing boasts solid Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom
  • Surprisingly rich and full-bodied, the better copies really rock with big bass and punchy drums – just the right sound for Alice Cooper’s brand of hard-rockin’ chaos
  • The beloved title track remains the most-performed song in his concert history, and the presence on this copy will put the band right there in your listening room
  • 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
  • 4 1/2 stars: “School’s Out catapulted Alice Cooper into the hard rock stratosphere, largely due to its timeless, all-time classic title track.”
  • If you’re a fan of the band, this title from 1972 is clearly one of their best

Yet another impossible-to-find record in clean condition with good sound has made it to the site, and those of you who are fans should scoop it up because it takes us about four years to find enough copies to do this shootout. Check back with us in 2024 if this one is sold by the time you get to the end of this sentence!

We had poor luck with the second and third label copies on this AC title. It seems that, unlike so many records we play, the originals are the only way to go on School’s Out. (more…)

Roberta Flack – Feel Like Makin’ Love

More of the Music of Roberta Flack

  • Incredible sound throughout this vintage Atlantic pressing, with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more space, richness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market
  • This is a lot of money for a somewhat noisy copy, but the sound is so awesome and quiet pressings of the album so hard to come by that we hope someone will take a chance on it and get the thrill we did from hearing it sound right for once
  • “Capping off a string of early-70s hits with this album’s title track, Roberta Flack would soon take a sabbatical from the spotlight in 1975. And while she would return to the stage and studio, Flack never quite hit the heights of this and the handful of other MOR soul releases from the first half of the decade… Feel Like Making Love will still please the singer’s dedicated fans.”

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Badfinger – Straight Up Is Back!

More Classic Rock

  • With outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom, this early Apple pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Straight Up you’ve heard
  • The sound here just jumps out of the speakers, which is exactly what the better copies of the album are supposed to (but rarely) do
  • If you like your Rock and Pop with minimal audio processing and the most natural, raw and real sound, the hottest of the Hot Stamper pressings we offer will sound exactly the way you want them to
  • If you’re a fan of the band – or Power Pop in general – this is the Straight Up you’ve been waiting for
  • Straight Up is one of the hardest albums to find with audiophile-quality playing surfaces (as these sides can attest to), which is the main reason our last shootout was more than ten years ago (!)
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, but once you hear just how superb sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…Here, there’s absolutely no filler and everybody is in top form. Pete Ham’s ‘Baby Blue’ is textbook power-pop — irresistibly catchy fuzz riffs and sighing melodies — and with its Harrison-esque slide guitars, ‘Day After Day’ is so gorgeous it practically aches. ‘Perfection’ is an unheralded gem, while ‘Name of the Game’ and ‘Take It All’ are note-perfect pop ballads.”
  • If I had to compile a list of my Favorite Rock and Pop Albums from 1971, this album would definitely be on it

This is Power Pop, plain and simple. The basics are what count: punchy drums, grungy guitars, present vocals, clear but full bass lines — just the meat and potatoes of rock, no fancy sauces.

For this music to work, all the elements need to be in balance, with correct timbre for the relatively few instruments that make up the arrangements.

Opacity, smear or grit instantly destroy the whole point of having a straightforward production, which is to be able to have all the parts laid out cleanly and clearly.

The idea is to get the production out of the way and just let the music speak for itself.

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Eric Dolphy – Out There in 2026

More Saxophone Jazz

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER throughout this vintage Prestige stereo recording pressed on OJC vinyl
  • This copy (the first to hit the site in over four years) was doing just about everything right: it’s rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical yet still super open and spacious
  • 5 stars: “A somber and unusual album by the standards of any style of music, Out There explores Dolphy’s vision in approaching the concept of tonality in a way few others – before, concurrent, or after – have ever envisioned.”

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Brahms – 16 Hungarian Dances / Dorati

More of the Music of Brahms

  • Dorati and the LSO’s dynamic performance of these 16 Hungarian Dances debuts on the site with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound throughout this early Mercury pressing
  • These sides are doing everything right – they’re rich, clear, undistorted, open, spacious, and have depth and transparency to rival the best recordings you may have heard
  • You’d be hard-pressed to find a copy that’s this well balanced, yet so big and lively, with such wonderful clarity in the mids and highs
  • This title is almost always noisy, which is why you will rarely find it for sale on our site

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Astrud Gilberto – I Haven’t Got Anything Better To Do

More Bossa Nova

  • Astrud’s 1969 release appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it from first note to last
  • It’s rich, warm and natural with wonderful transparency, loads of ambience and – this is key – plenty of Tubey Magic (particularly on side one)
  • There are some bad marks (as is sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs) on “If (The Biggest Little Word)” but once you hear just how superb sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and just be swept away by the music
  • 4 stars: “Mistakenly considered a minor entry in the Gilberto canon, I Haven’t Got Anything Better to Do is instead a minor masterpiece.”

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John Coltrane – Bahia

More of the Music of John Coltrane

  • Bahia appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER on both sides of this early Prestige stereo pressing
  • The sound is everything that’s good about Rudy Van Gelder‘s recordings – it’s present, spacious, Tubey Magical, dynamic and, most importantly, alive in that way that modern pressings never are
  • Full-bodied, energetic, and tonally correct from top to bottom, this copy is guaranteed to bring Coltrane’s music to life – it’s possible that you may not own any Coltrane record that sounds as good as this one
  • The notes for our Shootout Winning copy talk about what is amazing about every aspect of the sound and how well each instrument is recorded – expect to see them on the blog before long
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings, but once you hear just how superb sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • It’s hard to imagine that any list of the best jazz albums of 1965 would not have John Coltrane’s Bahia on it. The sound is out of this world on the best copies.
  • Just make sure you have an early stereo pressing on Prestige, mastered by RVG. Accept no substitutes.

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Van Morrison – Saint Dominic’s Preview

More of the Music of Van Morrison

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them from top to bottom, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this vintage Green Label pressing
  • It’s unusual (to say the least) to find copies of Moondance or Astral Weeks that sound anything like the better copies of Saint Dominic’s Preview (or His Band and Street Choir, an equally good recording)
  • One of the better sounding Van Morrison albums, thanks to the superb engineering skills of Donn Landee at Wally Heider’s and elsewhere
  • 5 stars in Rolling Stone: “The coexistence of two styles on the same record turns out to be very refreshing; they complement each other by underscoring the remarkable versatility of Van’s musical imagination… the best-produced, most ambitious Van Morrison record yet released.”

We’ve been huge fans of this album for ages and don’t understand why it doesn’t get more respect. This is the album that comes right after Tupelo Honey and His Band And The Street Choir, so that should tell you something.

The piano has real weight, the bottom end is solid, and the brass sounds lively and rich, never squawky. (more…)