Lower Sound Quality Pressings

The Original Jazz Classics Series Got Off to a Bad Start with Concorde

Here Are Some Potentially Good Sounding OJC Pressings

OJC-002! Fantasy’s second release in the series, but not a very good one.

The copy (or copies; who can remember?) we’ve auditioned in the past did not impress us sonically, so don’t expect to see Hot Stampers of this title on OJC coming to the Better Records website any time soon.

The music might be wonderful — we unreservedly follow the maxim de gustibus non est disputandum — but the sound of this pressing is not likely to be of audiophile quality.

There may be great sounding pressings of the album – how could we possibly know there aren’t without playing every version ever pressed — but we’re pretty sure the OJC pictured here will always fall short of the mark.

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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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Always wanted to have a Plum and Orange pressing? Here’s your chance!

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

We should have titled this one “here was your chance” since this pressing sold very quickly.

Over the years most Plum and Orange pressings were disposed of by us on ebay for the benefit of collectors and those audiophiles who might be ill-informed enough to think that early British pressings would have the best sound for Led Zeppelin III.

They do not. They can, however, sound reasonably good in some cases with the proper cleaning.

However, they are not even Double Plus (A++) good, which sounds like something from the novel 1984 but is in fact a Very Good grade and guaranteed to trounce any and all copies of the album you have ever heard.

No, the best Zeppelin album we have played to date with the early label in this case earned a grade of Single Plus to Double Plus, which we describe as “[a] wonderful sounding side with many impressive qualities, notably better than a Single Plus copy. A big step up from the typical pressing.”

UPDATE:

We do not even offer Single Plus copies on the site anymore. Although their faults would be less obvious to anyone who went through the shootout process with the album, such faults are much too bothersome to us precisely because we did go through that process.

Once you know what is right, it’s very easy to spot what is wrong.

This is the foundational principle of Hot Stampers.

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Mahler / Symphony No. 4 – Another Disappointing Shaded Dog

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Pressings Available Now

UPDATE 2026

The Decca recording with Solti from 1961 on London (CS 6217) is still the king on this title, as far as we know.

The review below is for a White Dog pressing of the Reiner performance that we’d played way back in 2007.

We’ve played others over the years, but nothing has impressed us all that much, so we are still going through the process of acquiring more copies of the London and have yet to do a shootout for them.

Our 2025 notes for LSC 2364 on Shaded Dog is that it is rich, but the strings are somewhat shrill and it has an unfortunate tendency to become more congested than we would like in the louder passages.

The sound is passable I suppose, but it’s hardly the pressing you want to play when it comes time to hear the music properly performed, and with top quality sound. This is of course the service we offer — the actual pressing that has audiophile sound with a performance to match — so we hope to see Hot Stamper pressings of the London coming to the site in 2026.

Fun Fact

Note that this recording from 1961 was rereleased on London in 1971 with a different catalog number (CS 6781) and a different cover, as well as notably inferior sound. Audiophiles would do well to avoid it.

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FM Radio Sound on Blue Vinyl, Courtesy of a Mr. Gene Thompson

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

Here is how we described a recent Shootout Winning copy of 1967-1970:

This vintage import 2-LP compilation set boasts STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on all FOUR sides. These pressings are rich, smooth and sweet, with plenty of Tubey Magic and little of the grain and grunge of most Brits (and don’t get us started on the domestics).

You get clean, clear, full-bodied, lively and musical ANALOG sound from first note to last. Like most compilations, some songs sound better than others, but “Don’t Let Me Down” and “Come Together” are two that really stand out here. For those of you out there who have never tried one of our Hot Stamper Beatles records, this may be the best sound you’ve ever heard from them. The CDs — even the new ones — sure don’t sound like this!

We are on record as finding the British pressings of 1967-1970 too bright; certainly most of them are anyway. The original domestic pressings, as anyone who has ever played one can attest, mastered at Sterling no less, are absolutely godawful.

Allow us to add one more to that group of pressings to avoid, the blue vinyl domestic pressings mastered by Gene Thompson. Based on how awful this pressings sounds, it would probably be wise to avoid his work in general.

The only artists who have earned the honor (ahem) of having their very own page on this blog are The Beatles. For those of you interested in learning more about their often amazing recordings, feel free to dig in to your heart’s delight.

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These Two Return to Forever Albums Didn’t Make the Grade

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Rock Fusion Albums Available Now

Pictured are two Return to Forever albums we auditioned at some point — who knows when? — and found wanting (especially at the prices we charge).

Without going into specifics — our notes are long gone at this point — we’ll just say these two albums suffer from weak music, weak sound, or both, and therefore do not deserve a place in most audiophile collections — unless that audiophile happens to be a huge fan of the band.

My guess is that if these two records are sitting in your collection, they have not been played in many years, if ever. If you own either of these two albums, pull them out and play them. You may find that making more room on your shelves for records you actually enjoy is easier than you thought.

Our Pledge of Service to You, the Discriminating Audiophile 

We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a free service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.

Having the wherewithal to audition so many records puts us in a unique position to help audiophiles looking for higher quality sound. (Or, more accurately, that small subset of audiophiles looking for the highest quality pressings who also have a great deal of disposable income to devote to them.)

Yes, we have the obvious resources that would be needed, the staff and the budget.

More important than either of those, we came up with a new (sort of) and much more successful (definitely) approach.

We’ve learned through years of experimentation that there is no reliable way to predict which pressings will have the best sound for any given album.

The impossibility of predicting the sound of pressings is something that we’ve learned to accept as axiomatic. As a scientifically-oriented person and a born skeptic, this was a concept I was quick to embrace.

The more time I spend in this hobby, the more I realize it is beyond dispute. Like it or not — and, based on what I read on forums and such, there are apparently a goodly number of audiophiles who don’t like it — it is the undeniable reality underlying the nature of vinyl pressings.

Our Seven Step Program

With that in mind, finding better sounding pressings of any given recording can be achieved by following these seven steps:

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Take Our Advice and Skip the Original of The Stone Poneys

More of the Music of Linda Ronstadt

The originals from 1967 have never impressed us much.

Click on the links below for more records that sound best to us on the right reissue pressing 

Here are some Hot Stamper pressings that we think sound their best on the right reissue (the ones we sell, obviously; there are plenty of reissues that don’t have good sound, but the ones we offer handily beat the originals we’ve — and no doubt you’ve — heard).

Here are all the titles we’ve reviewed to date that have the potential to sound their best on the right reissue

On this album the sound varies quite a bit from track to track.

The best tracks are rich, tubey and clear; the worst thin, bright and hard. 

The first track on side one rarely stayed clean when loud, but here for the most part it does. It’s a good test for whether or not you have a copy with high quality, low distortion mastering.

Listen for the least amount of smear and congestion and the most resolution.

The second track is richer and tubier – it proves that side one is mastered correctly.

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How Do the The Mastering Lab Pressings of Sticky Fingers Sound?

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

A listing for an early domestic Hot Stamper pressing for Sticky Fingers will typically be introduced like this:

If you have never heard one of our Hot Stamper pressings of the album, you (probably) cannot begin to appreciate just how amazing the sound is.

A landmark Glyn Johns / Andy Johns recording, our favorite by the Stones, a Top 100 Title (of course) and 5 stars on Allmusic (ditto).

After hearing so much buzz about it, we finally broke down and ordered a German TML pressing about a year ago. Having played scores of phenomenally good sounding copies of the album over the past fifteen or so years, we were very skeptical that anyone could cut the record better than the mastering engineers who inscribed Rolling Stones Records into the dead wax on the early pressings. (I could find no mastering engineers credited.)

Well, the results were not good. As we suspected would be the case, we were not impressed in the least with what The Mastering Lab — one of the greatest independent cutting houses of all time, mind you — had wrought.

Their version is not really even good enough to charge money for. It might have earned a grade of One Plus, just under the threshold for a Hot Stamper that we would put on the site these days. Decent, but not much more than that.

Wait, There’s More

We subsequently learned that it is the British TML pressings that are supposed to be the best.

So we got one of those in, an A3/B4 copy.

Better, but good enough? Barely.

Here are the notes for the copy we played. For those who have trouble reading our writing, I have transcribed the notes as follows:

Side One

Track one:

Weighty, a bit veiled or smeary. Backing vox kinda lost.

Track three:

Very full, rockin’ but not the sparkle/space.

Kinda compressed.

Not as huge.

Side Two

Track two:

Not as rich, clear.

A bit pushy/dry vox.

No real space.

Thick drums

Track one:

This works better.

A bit hard, but full and lively.

This Sound?

Is this the sound audiophiles are raving about?

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Why Are the Earliest Stampers on 461 Ocean Boulevard So Bad Sounding on Side Two?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Eric Clapton Available Now

The UK pressings with the side two stampers shown below have not done well in our shootouts for a number of years now. If you own a copy with B-1 stampers on side two, the good news is that we can get you a much better sounding copy of 461 Ocean Boulevard than you have ever heard.

Stamper numbers are not the be-all and end-all in the world of records, a subject we discuss below, but after hearing too many copies with these stampers and substandard sound, from now on we are going to focus our attention on the stampers that do well and avoid copies with the B-1 marking on side two.

Bilbo cut the A-3 side one and did a great job; his side one won our most recent shootout.

Whoever cut side two really screwed it up, as you can see from our notes for our last two shootouts.

When it comes to stampers, labels, mastering credits, country of origin and the like, we make a point of revealing very little of this information on the site, for a number of good reasons we discuss here.

The idea that the stampers are entirely responsible for the quality of any given record’s sound is a mistaken one, and a rather convenient one when you stop to think about it. Audiophiles, like most everybody else on this planet, want answers.

In the world of records, there aren’t many, but B-1 for side two of this album is a clear exception to the rule that the stamper numbers are one part of a multi-faceted puzzle. In this case, B-1 is awful and is best avoided at all costs.

The Biz

Being in the shootout business means we have no way to avoid such realities, which is why it is so easy for us to accept them.

The amateurs and professionals alike who review records for audiophiles want there to be clear-cut answers for every album they write about. Uncertainty and trade-offs upset them no end.

We recognized twenty years ago that the empirical pursuit of record knowledge, practiced scientifically, must be understood as incomplete, imperfect, and provisional.

That is not going to change no matter how upsetting anyone may find it.

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Soultrane Sucks on the Early OJC

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

The early OJC reissues from 1982 of this title are awful.

And whatever Heavy Vinyl they’re churning out these days is probably every bit as bad, but — I’m guessing, never played one so don’t hold me to it — in the opposite way.

The OJC is thin and bright, and the modern reissue (I’m assuming, based on playing scores of them) is probably thick, veiled, overly smooth, lacking in space and boosted in the bass — because that’s the sound that audiophiles record buyers seem to like these days.

Without the excellent sounding 60s and 70s reissues that we are still able to find in audiophile playing condition, all that we would have available to buy for our shootouts would be the originals. 

At the big bucks those records go for nowadays, shootouts would be impossibly expensive.

So our thanks go to Rudy for doing a good job on these later pressings!

UPDATE 2025

We were surprised to find that the right stampers on the new OJC pressings can have very good sound. Click on the link below to that Soultrane has joined the group of good sounding modern OJC pressings.

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