Top Artists – Cat Stevens

Cat Stevens – Tea For The Tillerman on the Island Pink Rim Label

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More Reviews and Commentaries for Tea for the Tillerman

 

  • This early Pink Rim Island UK pressing of TFTT, an album we consider the Pinnacle of British Folk Rock, boasts two stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sides – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • The emotional power of the songs is communicated completely on a pressing that sounds like this one – the experience will be like hearing the album for the first time, and how can you put a price on that?
  • Here’s your chance to relive the experience of hearing this groundbreaking album for the first time, but with much better sound than you ever thought possible
  • 5 stars on Allmusic, a stunning Demo Disc, and a permanent member of the Better Records Top 100

These Nearly White Hot Stamper pressings have top-quality sound that’s often surprisingly close to our White Hots, but they sell at substantial discounts to our Shootout Winners, making them a relative bargain in the world of Hot Stampers (“relative” meaning relative considering the prices we charge). We feel you get what you pay for here at Better Records, and if ever you don’t agree, please feel free to return the record for a full refund, no questions asked.

Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in exceptionally clean shape. Most of the will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG

Hearing this Hot Stamper is a privilege that affords the listener insight into Cat Stevens’ music that is simply not possible any other way.

This album, I hope it goes without saying, is one of the greatest Folk Rock recordings of all time, the kind of music that belongs in any collection. I’ve been playing this album for 40+ years and I can honestly say I’ve never once tired of hearing it. I do get tired of hearing bad copies.

Cat’s mixes are full of subtle elements that may require many listening sessions over the course of years, even decades, to recognize and appreciate. Consider them an extra reward for having played the record so many times. I’ve played hundreds of copies over the last thirty-plus years and never tired of it once. As every music lover knows, the best albums only get better with time.

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Cat Stevens – These Two Tracks Are Key

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More Reviews and Commentaries for Teaser and the Firecat

Just ran across the following in an old listing. We’re nothing if not consistent here at Better Records!

“And if you are ever tempted to pick up one of those recently remastered versions on heavy vinyl, don’t do it. There is simply no one alive today making records that sound like these good originals. Not to these ears anyway. We may choose to indulge ourselves in the audacity of hope, but reality has to set in sooner or later. After thirty years of trying, the modern mastering engineers of the world have nothing to show for their efforts but a ever-growing pile of failures. The time to call it quits has come and gone. Let’s face facts: when it comes to Teaser and the Firecat, it’s the Real Thing or nothing.”

If you’re looking for an amazing Demo Quality Rock Recording, you’ve come to the right place.

If you want a timeless Classic Rock Record, it’s here too.

They just don’t know how to make them like this anymore. Those of you waiting for audiophile vinyl reissues with the kind of magic found on these originals will be in your graves long before it ever comes to pass.

Analogue Productions tried and failed — more than once — to produce a good sounding Heavy Vinyl pressing of Tea for the Tillerman.

You can be sure of one thing: there is little chance they would have better luck with Teaser and the Firecat.

Changes IV 

On this song there is a tremendous amount of energy in the grooves. On a copy I had a while back it sounded good to start with, but an intense cleaning regimen made it sound so alive I could hardly believe my ears. Listen to it VERY LOUD (as it was meant to be played) and then notice how quiet the next solo guitar intro is, with lots of space between the notes. Never heard it like that before. That’s when audio is FUN.

It’s always a roller coaster ride around here, as one day the system is cooking, and the next it ain’t, and nobody knows why. But the night that Teaser sounded great is one I will remember for a long time. Those big bass drum thwacks and that high hat being slapped to the point of abuse way out in front of the mix just blew my mind.

Tuesday’s Dead

There is a good-sized group of singers behind Cat Stevens that back him up when he says “whoa” right before the line “Where do you go?”. What often separates the best copies from the also-rans is how clearly those singers can be heard, assuming the tonal balance is correct and there’s plenty of energy in the performances.

The most transparent copies make it easy to appreciate the enthusiasm of the individual singers; they’re practically shouting.

For twenty years Tuesday’s Dead has been one of my favorite tracks for demonstrating what The Big Speaker Sound is all about. Now I think I better understand why. Big speakers are the only way to reproduce the physical size and tremendous energy of the congas (and other drums of course) that play such a big part in driving the rhythmic energy of the song.

In my experience no six inch woofer — or seven, or eight, or ten even — gets the sound of the conga right, from bottom to top, drum to skin. No screen can do it either. It’s simply a sound that large dynamic drivers reproduce well and other speaker designs do not reproduce so well.

Since this is one of my favorite records of all time, a true Desert Island Disc, I would never want to be without a pair of big speakers to play it, because those are the kinds of speakers that play it well.

Further Reading

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Two Minutes that Shook My World – “But I Might Die Tonight”

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More Reviews and Commentaries for Tea for the Tillerman

After building our new studio a few years ago, we soon found out we had a whole host of problems.

We needed to work on electrical issues. We needed to work on our room treatments. We needed to work on speaker placement.

We initially thought the room was doing everything right, because our Go To setup disc, Bob and Ray, sounded super spacious and clear, bigger and more lively than we’d ever heard it. That’s what a 12 foot high ceiling can do for a large group of musicians playing live in a huge studio, in 1959, on an All Tube Chain Living Stereo recording. The sound just soared.

But Cat Stevens wasn’t sounding right, and if Cat Stevens isn’t sounding right, we knew we had a Huge Problem.

Some stereos play some kinds of records well and others not so well. Our stereo has to play every kind of record well because we sell every kind of record there is. You name the kind of music, we probably sell it. And if we offer it for sale, we had to have played it and liked the sound, because no record makes it to our site without being auditioned and found to have excellent sound.

But I Might Die Tonight

The one song we played over and over again, easily a hundred times or more, was But I Might Die Tonight, the leadoff track for side two. It’s short, less than two minutes long, but a lot happens in those two minutes. More importantly, getting everything that happens in those two minutes to sound not just right, but as good as you have ever heard it, turned out to be a tall order indeed.

I could write for days about what to listen for in the song, but for now let me just point the reader to one of the most difficult parts to reproduce correctly.

At about 50 seconds into the track, Cat repeats the first verse:

I don’t want to work away
Doing just what they all say
Work hard boy and you’ll find
One day you’ll have a job like mine, job like mine, a job like mine

Only this time he now has a multi-tracked harmony vocal singing along with him, his own of course, and he himself is also singing the lead part louder and more passionately. Getting the regular vocal, call it the “lower part,” to be in balance with the multi-tracked backing vocal, call it the “higher part,” turned out to be the key to getting the bottom, middle and top of the midrange right.

When doing this kind of critical listening we play our records very loud. Live Performance level loud. As loud as Cat could sing, that’s how loud it should be when he is singing his loudest toward the end of the song for the final “But I might die tonight!” If he is going to sing loudly, I want my stereo to be able to reproduce him singing as loud as he is actually singing on the record.

No compression.

No distortion.

All the energy.

That’s what I want to hear.

The last fifteen seconds or so of the song has the pianist (Cat himself) banging out some heavy chords on the piano. If you have your levels right it should sound like there is a real piano at the back of the room and that someone is really banging on it. It’s a powerful coda to the song.

A Labor of Love

It has been my experience that not many systems can play as cleanly and loudly as our system can, while still maintaining the highest levels of resolution, spatiality and depth. Having worked on the same stereo system for more than twenty years, trying to get it to do all of those things, I don’t have any problem appreciating that our stereo really does succeed at sounding dramatically more like live music than others I have heard.

It is the main reason it is easy for us to do the work we do. (There is a link at the bottom of this review with more information on our equipment for those who are interested.)

After many weeks and scores of times running through the different parts of the song, it was clear we had the damn thing sounding better than any of us had ever heard it.

The energy was there, the breathiness and Tubey Magical richness to Cat’s voice was present, the bass was huge and tight, the piano solid and sitting well back to the right and rear of the stage — in short, the presentation of each element seemed correct and in balance with all the others in the recording.

More changes were to come, but they were refinements to a sound that was at least 90% correct already. Having reached that milestone, we knew we owed practically all of our progress to the endless days we spent playing that one song over and over.

For the record, I would like to stipulate that But I Might Die Tonight, all two minutes of it, is a song I now know inside and out. Like an expert witness called into court, I can demonstrate that I have earned the right to judge any stereo playing this song. Likewise I am confidant in my ability to judge the quality of any version of the song, whether on vinyl, CD, or any other media you care to name.

I bought my first Pink Label Island pressing in a used record store sometime in the ’80s. Even though it has a bad scratch on the first track, I think it’s still here somewhere, probably sitting on our Reference shelf. I even left the $3.99 price tag on it. It’s a good pressing but it’s no match for some of the killer copies we have come across since, all 3U/3U and cut by Lee Hulko.

And modern cleaning technologies take everything to a level we could never have begun to imagine back in the day.

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Cat Stevens – The World of Cat Stevens

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More Folk Rock

  • Cat Stevens 1970 compilation album returns with outstanding sound from start to finish and British Decca vinyl that is about as quiet as we can find it
  • These sides are doing most everything right — the sound is rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical, Cat’s vocals are present, and there is plenty of studio space on the recording
  • Everything you want in a Folky Pop Star recording are here
  • Not an easy record to find in audiophile playing condition with top quality sound – it took us years to get this shootout going

Tubey Magical Acoustic Guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this recording. Simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum, along with richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and especially from modern remasterings). (more…)

Cat Stevens Wants to Know How You Like Your Congas: Light, Medium or Heavy?

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More Reviews and Commentaries for Teaser and the Firecat

During the shootout for this record a while back [the late 2000s would be my guess], we made a very important discovery, a seemingly obvious one but one that nevertheless had eluded us for the past twenty plus years (so how obvious could it have been?). It became clear, for the first time, what accounts for the wide disparity in ENERGY and DRIVE from one copy to the next. We can sum it up for you in one five letter word, and that word is conga.

The congas are what drive the high-energy songs, songs like Tuesday’s Dead and Changes IV.

Here is how we stumbled upon their critically important contribution.

We were listening to one of the better copies during a recent shootout. The first track on side one, The Wind, was especially gorgeous; Cat and his acoustic guitar were right there in the room with us. The transparency, tonal neutrality, presence and all the rest were just superb. Then came time to move to the other test track on side one, which is Changes IV, one of the higher energy songs we like to play.

But the energy we expected to hear was nowhere to be found. The powerful rhythmic drive of the best copies of the album just wasn’t happening. The more we listened the more it became clear that the congas were not doing what they normally do. The midbass to lower midrange area of the LP lacked energy, weight and power, and this prevented the song from coming to LIFE the way the truly Hot Stampers can and do.

Now I think I better understand why. Big speakers are the only way to reproduce the physical size and tremendous energy of the congas (and other drums of course) that play such a big part in driving the rhythmic energy of the song.

In my experience no six inch woofer — or seven, or eight, or ten even — gets the sound of the conga right, from bottom to top, drum to skin. No screen can do it either. It’s simply a sound that large dynamic drivers reproduce well and other speaker designs do not reproduce so well.

Since this is one of my favorite records of all time, a true Desert Island Disc, I would never want to be without a pair of big speakers to play it, because those are the only kinds of speakers that can play it well.

The sound of the congas on many of the records we audition is a good test for some of the most important qualities we listen for: energy, rhythmic drive, presence and weight.

Congas, Drums and Pianos

Congas, like drums and pianos, are good for testing records. If these instruments get lost in the mix, or sound smeary or thin, it’s usually fairly easy to hear those problems if you are listening for them. Most of what you will read on this blog is dedicated to helping you do that.

The richness of analog is where much of its appeal lies. Lean congas and pianos are what you find on bad CDs.

All three of these instruments are also exceptionally good for helping you to choose the right kind of speakers to buy.

Teaser and the Firecat checks off a few of our favorite boxes:

Cat Stevens – Teaser & The Firecat

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More Reviews and Commentaries for Teaser and the Firecat

  • This vintage Island Pink Rim pressing was doing pretty much everything right, earning seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades throughout – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Here are sides that will rock your world with their size, richness, clarity and energy, the likes of which you may have never experienced on vinyl
  • A Brilliant Classic Folk Rock recording – the right pressings offer Demo Disc Quality sound and then some
  • 5 stars and a Top 10 album – in some ways it’s surely the Best Sounding record Cat Stevens ever made
  • This Folk Rock Masterpiece from 1971 is one that belongs in every audiophile’s collection
  • “Tuesday’s Dead,” “Morning Has Broken,” “Bitterblue,” “Moonshadow” “Peace Train” – and that’s just side two! What side of any album has five songs of such quality?

Before I get further into the sound of this record, let me preface my remarks by saying this is a work of GENIUS. Cat Stevens made two records which belong in the Pantheon of greatest popular recordings of all time. In the world of folky pop, Teaser and the Firecat and Tea for the Tillerman have few peers. There may be other recordings that are as good but there are no other recordings that are better.

When you hear The Wind, Changes IV, or If I Laugh on this copy, you will be convinced, as I am, that this is one of the greatest popular recordings in the history of the world. I don’t know of ANY other album that has more LIFE and MUSICAL ENERGY than this one. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “It almost seems as if it is another recording altogether, so much more alive and dynamic.”

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More Reviews and Commentaries for Teaser and the Firecat

Our good customer Roger likes doing his own shootouts, having acquired many of the so-called audiophile recommended pressings over the years.

Like us, he knows firsthand that those recommended records have little hope of standing up to the real thing, the real thing of course being an old record we charged him a lot of money for, or, to put it another way, a Hot Stamper. Can it possibly be worth the three hundred clams it cost him?

Let’s hear from Roger on that subject.

Hi Tom,

Just the usual note to let you know of my latest LP shootout: Cat Stevens Teaser and the Firecat. Since you recommend this recording so highly, I was looking forward to comparing your Super Hot Stamper (SHS) to a British Sunray pressing I had and my Mobile Fidelity Anadisq. Since I had previously found, as you have, that the MFSL version was thin and bright, I bought a UK pressing, finding it much more full, warm, and dynamic, and my recent comparison confirmed that.

The MoFi is hideously bright and edgy, making guitars sound like zithers and Cat’s voice thin and reedy, like he had a head cold. Yep, that about sums it up, Cat Stevens and His Zither Band. It makes me wonder whether the ear-damaged MFSL engineers ever heard a good pressing of this record–even the UK was leagues better.
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Fittingly, Teaser and the Firecat Was the First Hot Stamper We Offered for Sale

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More Reviews and Commentaries for Teaser and the Firecat

This listing for our first ever Hot Stamper was written in 2004, the year we officially made Hot Stamper pressings available through our website. It’s a fairly accurate reflection of our understanding of the album at the time. In the ensuing years we would learn a great deal more about Teaser and the Firecat and overturn many of our mistaken beliefs from 2004.

We felt the need to address some issues at the time, notably the price of the record. (More on pricing here.)

Before we start discussing this record, let’s talk about the price for a moment. I have never put a used rock record on this site at this price. I’ve sold other records directly to my best customers for this kind of money, but this is the first $500 rock record of its kind to go on this website. This is the result of three factors.

First, it’s the best sounding copy of this record I have ever heard (on side two anyway).

Second, this is Teaser and the Firecat, one of the most important recordings in the history of popular music.

Third, it’s amazingly quiet. The confluence of these three factors makes this copy practically unique.

For years I have been telling people that one day I would put up on the Web site some Hot Stamper copies of Cat Stevens greatest albums. Today is that day.

Before I get further into the sound of this record, let me preface my remarks by saying this is a work of GENIUS. Cat Stevens made two records which belong in the Pantheon of greatest popular recordings of all time. In the world of folky pop, Teaser and the Firecat and Tea for the Tillerman have few peers. There may be other recordings that are as good but there are no other recordings that are better.

The above comments were written for the last Hot Stamper which went up early in 2005, and of course, my sentiments have not changed. Not only do I think this record can’t be bettered, I have now found copies that are superior to even the best pressing I had heard back then.

Of course, I own a much better stereo than I did in 2005. I’m now using the Dynavector 17D3 cartridge, which is more correct than the 20X I had before. Also, I’ve improved phono stages quite a bit, incorporating the EAR 834P (and a very special vintage tube complement which makes ALL the difference in the world) into the system, balancing tubey magic with the speed and dynamics of the best transistor systems.

I’ve been acquiring and evaluating copies of this album for a couple of years now, waiting for just the right time and the right stereo to shoot them out with. The changes I mention above gave me the confidence to tackle this project.

I can tell you in all honesty that I have NEVER heard better sound than I heard last night while doing these comparisons. It is my contention that there is no audiophile pressing on the face of the Earth that can compete with the best sounding original Teaser and the Firecats. Of ANY music. This is a sound I simply don’t experience when playing modern mastered records. There is a magic in these grooves that seems to be impossible to recapture. Perhaps one day I’ll be proven wrong, but that day is not upon us yet. Until then, this is the king.

Last night I listened to at least fifteen of the best pressings of this album that I had available to me — we’re talking some heavy hitters here, all top quality British and American original pressings — and this pressing took top honors. In my opinion, it’s one of a handful of the best records we have EVER put up on the site. It is without a doubt the best sounding record I have ever played. (more…)

Cat Stevens’ Albums / Lee Hulko Cut Them All – Good, Bad and Otherwise

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Reviews and Commentaries for Pink Label Island Pressings

This commentary was written many years ago, circa 2005 I would guess. In 2005, doing Hot Stamper shootouts was much more difficult than it is now.

Is the Pink Label Island original pressing THE way to go? That’s what Harry Pearson — not to mention most audiophile record dealers — would have you believe.

But it’s just not true. And that’s good news for you, Dear (Record Loving Audiophile) Reader.

Hot Stamper Commentary for John Barleycorn

Since that’s a Lee Hulko cutting just like Tea here, the same insights, if you can call them that, apply.

Here’s what we wrote:

Lee Hulko, who cut all the Sterling originals, of which this is one, cut this record many times and most of them are wrong in some way. A very similar situation occurred with the early Cat Stevens stuff that he cut, like Tea & Teaser, where most copies don’t sound right but every once in a while you get a magical one.

Lee Hulko cut all the original versions of this album, on the same cutter, from the same tape, at the same time.

Some of them went to England to be pressed and given pink labels, some of them stayed right here in America to be pressed and were given orange and black labels. People that collect records based on their labels are not paying attention to information that differentiates individual pressings, which of course involves stamper numbers and pressing plants.

The famous Pink Label Island Tea For The Tillerman is a case in point. As good as that record is, I have a Brown Label A&M that is noticeably better. Why shouldn’t it be? Like John Barleycorn, it’s cut by the same guy, from the same tape, around the same time. Is there some reason LH can’t cut a good record for A&M? Of course not!

Hot Stamper Commentary for Tea for the Tillerman

Brown Label versus Pink Label

This is a superb sounding original Brown Label A&M pressing. If you didn’t know better you might think you were listening to a Pink Label copy: it’s that good! In fact, having just played a Pink label Island 3U/3U original, I’m going to say that this pressing actually sounds better on side one than that famous import. This will no doubt shock many of you. But I have known of a better sounding brown label domestic pressing for close to 10 years. I even played it for Steve Hoffman once, who remarked that it clearly had less harmonic distortion than the Pink label copy we were doing the shootout with.

But what surprised me in this case was that these particular stampers are different from the domestic original that I discovered all those years ago. This is an entirely new finding. Dropping the needle on side one of this record and hearing the delicate strumming of the guitar and the smoothness and sweetness of the vocals, I knew immediately that I was hearing a Hot Stamper. A VERY Hot Stamper. Listening to it all the way through a few times and playing some other copies convinced me that indeed it was As Good As It Gets. On side one anyway.

Side two is excellent, but the bass is not quite as well defined and there is a slight loss of transparency in comparison to the best copies I have heard. The song Father and Son can be a bit sibilant. On the ultimate copies the sibilance is under control. This one has a little more of that sibilance than the best stampers I have heard. It’s not bad, but it’s not the equal of the best pressings.

Another track I like to play on side two is Into White. With this song, you hear into the music on the best copies as if you were seeing the live musicians before you. The violinist is also a key element. He’s very far back in the studio. When he’s back where he should be, but the sound of the wood of his violin and the rosin on the strings is still clearly audible, without any brightness or edginess to artificially create those details, you know you are hearing the real thing.

Stop the Presses!

Brown Label versus Pink Label, Part 2

I have to admit that I was dead wrong when I said that the best copies of this album were the Brown Label A&M pressings. I see now how I made this error. We played four pink label copies and our best A&M LP is better than three of them.

But it sure isn’t better than this one! I’ve heard a good dozen or so Pink Labels and this is the first one that ever blew my mind. I thought I knew this record, but this copy changes everything.

Including our previous pricing structure. No non-audiophile record on our site has ever been priced above $500. When we put the $500 price on Teaser and the Firecat a while back, we ended up selling five of them — because we could FIND five copies that sounded like $500 records.

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Traveling Back in Time with Cat Stevens on Mobile Fidelity

In order to Hear It on Vintage Equipment

Our good customer Roger wrote us a letter years ago about his Tea for the Tillerman on Mobile Fidelity, in which he remarked, “Sometimes I wish I kept my old crappy stereo to see if I could now tell what it was that made these audiophile pressings so attractive then.”

It got me to thinking. Yes, that would be fun, and better yet, it could be done. There are actually plenty of those Old School Audio Systems of the ’60s and ’70s still around. Just look at what many of the forum posters — god bless ’em — are running. They’ve got some awesome ’70s Japanese turntables, some Monster Cable and some vintage tube gear and speakers designed in the ’50s.

With this stuff you could virtually travel back in time, in effect erasing all the audio progress made possible by the new technologies adopted by some of us over the last 30 years or so.

Then you could hear your Mobile Fidelity Tea for the Tillerman sound the way it used to when you could actually stand to be in the same room with it.

My question to Roger was “What on earth were we hearing that made us want to play these awful half-speed mastered records? What was our stereo doing that made these awful records sound good to us at the time?”

In Search of a Bad Stereo

I know how you can find out. You go to someone’s house who has a large collection of audiophile pressings and have him play you some of them. Chances are that his stereo will do pretty much what your old stereo and my old stereo used to do — be so wrong that really wrong records actually start to sound right! It seems crazy but it just might be true.

Think about it. If your stereo has no real top end extension, then a boosted top end like the kind found on practically every record MoFi ever made is a positive boon.

Down low, if you don’t have good bass reproduction, the bad bass that pretty much all half-speeds evince won’t bother you, it’ll sound bad the way the bass on all your records sounds: bad. And the boosted bass you get on so many MoFi pressings works to your benefit too.

How about those sparkling guitars? For systems that are incredibly opaque and low-resolution, the kind we all used to have, the kind that sound like we added three or four grilles to the front of the speaker, the MoFi guitars actually might start to cut through the veils and may sound — gulp! — right.

Homey Don’t Play That

But we don’t own stereos like the ones we used to have. I’m on record as saying that the more audiophile pressings you own, the worse your stereo must be. When you get your collection to the point that practically no audiophile records are playable without their faults staring you in the face, you will no doubt have made an awful lot of positive changes to your playback system.

It happened that way for me, it happened that way for Roger, and it can happen for you (and may have already). We sell the stuff that can help your stereo reveal the shortcomings of audiophile pressings, and we have lots of advice on how to get the most from your system in order to do the same. Which means that all your best regular records will sound dramatically better too.

This is a good thing, since you already own them. And you can sell your audiophile pressings for big bucks to some poor shmuck whose stereo is from the stone age. It’s a Win Win all around!

Roger’s Letter

Hi Tom,

Just a note on another hot stamper shootout I recently did, this time on Cat Stevens Tea for the Tillerman. It was interesting comparing it to the regular MFSL half-speed, the MFSL UHQR pressing, and a UK Pink Island 3U pressing, which was my all-time champ.

The regular MFSL was up first and I now remember why I don’t like this pressing: the guitars are entirely too bright, forward, and stand too proud of the rest of the mix, completely overwhelming the other instruments and voices.

When I had a detail-challenged stereo 25 years ago, I recall thinking that MFSL really improved the detail on the guitars and the highs were more crystalline, but with a vastly improved stereo I can see what MFSL was doing in artificially hyping the details.

After taking this ear-bleeding pressing off my turntable and replacing it with the UHQR, I was actually relieved that the UHQR was not as annoying as the regular half-speed, although the UHQR had its faults also. The tonal balance was weird, thin and bright, and dynamics were suppressed, the worst of the four pressings I had. Also, the bass on both MFSL versions, as you often say, was an amorphous blob with little dynamics, speed, and extension.

Sometimes I wish I kept my old crappy stereo to see if I could now tell what it was that made these audiophile pressings so attractive then.

So anyway, I tried the UK Pink Island next and its tonal balance was much more natural and the recording no longer sounded like Cat Stevens and his Zither Band. Instruments and voices were weightier and had good texture, and the bass was quicker and more extended, making the recording a lot less lightweight than the MoFi versions. I sometimes wondered how much better this pressing could be since my Pink copy had quite a bit of surface noise.

Well, I found out why another of your customers proclaimed Tea to be his new reference recording when I heard the US A&M hot stamper pressing. Wow! I was astonished at how much better this version was. I have never heard this pressing sound quite like this. There was a huge wall of sound and instruments and voices had real body, bass was absolutely titanic, and dynamics made me wonder whether my speakers would be damaged. This thing is a monster, one of the best recordings in my 10,000 LP collection.

So as usual, back on the shelf go the expensive MFSL versions, hopefully gaining value but never to be played again. Yes, the Tea hot stamper is a new reference, definitely. And a US pressing, go figure.

Thanks.

Roger, thanks for your letter.

The domestic pressings can indeed sound amazing, something we have been saying for decades and that we took the time to write about back when we first started doing shootouts for the album.

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