Top Artists – Led Zeppelin

Can Houses of the Holy Get Any Better? Apparently It Can

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

Wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling Led Zeppelin power – our most recent Shootout Winning copies of Houses of the Holy knocked us out with their Demo Disc sound.

The Tubey Magical acoustic guitars here should be a wake up call to everyone that any attempt to remaster this album — to outdo Robert Ludwig and his awesome tube compressors and hi-rez transistor cutting equipment — is bound to fail.

This kind of sound is gone and it is never coming back.

Here are our notes for the top two copies from our recent shootout, each of which had one Shootout Winning side and one that came close but did not quite earn the top grade.

Side One

Track Three (Over the Hills and Far Away)

  • Upfront and detailed and breathy
  • Spacious
  • Big and wide when it kicks in

Track One (The Song Remains the Same)

  • Huge and rich and weighty
  • Vocals are less veiled
  • Richest, with the most extension high and low

Note that we played both a rocker as well as a quieter, more acoustic track. This is standard operating procedure. Both of these very different sounding songs have to sound their best.

Side two had a few problems which kept it from doing as well as side one.

Side Two 

Track One (Dancing Days)

  • Clear and lively
  • Has some weight but a little flat and veiled

Track Two (D’Yer Mak’er)

  • Solid but not quite as huge
  • Pretty tubey and weighty

If you had never heard a side one that sounded as amazing as this side one, how would you know the sound on side two was a little flat and veiled and not quite as huge?

You wouldn’t. That is precisely what shootouts are for, so that you can learn how good the sound can get in order to judge how good each side is relative to the others, on a curve, which is the only meaningful way it can be done.

Anyone hearing side two of this copy would be very likely be knocked out by it. But we know that side two can be even better sounding, because the copy below showed us sound that we simply could not find fault with.

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Led Zeppelin – The Song Remains The Same

More Led Zeppelin

More Live Recordings of Interest

  • Amazing sound for this Zep live album, with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on sides one, two and four, and seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound on side three
  • Insane live rock and roll energy like nothing you have ever heard – the sound is full-bodied and reasonably smooth, making it possible to get the volume up good and high where it belongs
  • An incredibly tough album to find with the right sound and audiophile surfaces – this is one of the best copies for both
  • Packed with Zep classics, including “The Song Remains The Same,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Stairway to Heaven,” and more

It’s exceedingly rare that we come across a copy that sounds this good. Most we’ve played sound like bad, second-generation bootleg cassettes. We still pick them up every time we see them — hey, it’s Zep, man — but we weren’t sure we’d ever hear a decent copy. We dropped the needle on this one and were blown away by how hard it rocked.

It’s got the big sound that you look for on a Zep LP — great bass, huge drums, and immediacy to the vocals. The sound is silky up top, punchy down low, and very transparent.

Turn this one way up and you might just find yourself right in the middle of a killer live Zep concert.

The only song here that didn’t totally blow our minds was the version of “Dazed and Confused,” which sounded a bit compressed during the big jam. Other than that, all the big hits (“Rock And Roll,” “The Rain Song,” “No Quarter,” “Stairway,” etc.) sound Right On The Money.

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Jimmy Page’s Houses of the Holy Needed Tubes and Didn’t Get Them

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

We did not care for the newly remastered version of Houses of the Holy. It badly lacks the kind of mastering that Robert Ludwig brought to the sound, and by that we mean lots of lovely tubes in the mastering chain.

What tube equipment he used and how he used it is something we have been researching for years now, but rather than go down that rabbit hole for the moment, let’s just say the Tubey Magic that is all over the original cuttings of the album is hard to find on the new one, and that means it’s missing a quality that makes Houses of the Holy one of the most luscious audiophile listening experiences one can have, even for those of us who long ago gave up on tube equipment.

The notes for side one, track one (The Song Remains the Same) and track three (Over the Hills and Far Away), read:

  • Blary, but not as awful as I expected
  • Dry, top end is bright, big though

The notes for side two, tracks one (Dancing Days) and three (No Quarter), read:

  • A bit thick, tonally OK
  • Less space around the low end

Tubes are what the doctor ordered, precisely the medicine that was needed to cure many of this pressing’s problems, but tubes are not what Jimmy Page and his engineer, John Davis, brought to the project, and more’s the pity. Any good domestic original will show you exactly what is wrong with the sound of this version in under two minutes.

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Letter of the Week – “Finally – It’s alive!”

xxxMore of the Music of Led Zeppelin

Michael got a nice copy of Zep IV from us and took the time to tell us how he felt about it in a letter.

Well son of a bitch. Do you know how many tube combinations, cartridge adjustments, turntable adjustments, speakers, speaker placements, and other hocus pocus shit I’ve gone through after listening to a Led Zeppelin album I have where Bonham was barely present and Page’s guitar would wear my ears out within 2 songs thinking this can’t be the way they sounded… I know Bonham hit those drums hard.

Well, that ain’t the case with the Zeppelins I recently purchased from you. Shit man, finally. It’s alive! Thank you Tom.

Michael S.

Michael,

Glad to hear it! If you ever win the lottery we’ll get you a White Hot copy and REALLY blow your mind. About one out of ten with the right stampers gets When the Levee Breaks to sound the way you want it to.  When I finally heard it about two or three years ago [now more like ten] I could hardly believe it. Most pressings just plain suck.

When The Levee Breaks is rarely mastered properly and consequently rarely sounds the way it should. If the cymbals or the double-tracked harmonicas on your copy don’t get at least a little gritty, you probably have an overly smooth copy, and it’s even possible that it’s made from a second or third generation tape. On the best copies both are alive with presence and energy.

And the room around the drums is huge, as is that famous 26″ Ludwig bass drum.

The Classic Records reissue corrects this problem somewhat, but at a cost. They’ve completely robbed the song of all the Zep magic. It’s not as big, not as open, not as rich, not as lively, not as punchy, and so on — but the cymbals are clean. Is that a tradeoff we should be happy to live with? If you’re on our site you already know the answer.

We added this to an amended review of the Classic pressing after revisiting it not long ago:

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In 2008 We Had a Lot More R&D Ahead of Us

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

A classic example of live and learn.

In 2008 we simply had not done our homework well enough. I had been an audiophile for at least 33 years by then, and a professional audiophile record dealer for 21, but we still hadn’t cracked the code for Zep III.

Sure, by 2008 we had auditioned plenty of the pressings that we thought were the most likely to sound good: the original and later domestic pressings, the early and later British LPs, some early and later German pressings, maybe a Japanese import or two. In other words, the usual suspects.

We already knew the Classic Records Heavy Vinyl was unbelievably bad; no need to put that in a shootout. It earned an “F” right out of the gate for its bright and harsh sound.

The result? We were roughly in the same position as most serious record collecting audiophiles, if not actually in a better one: who do you know that has played at least ten different pressing Led Zeppelin III, or any other album for that matter?

We had auditioned a number pressings of the album and thought we knew enough about the sound to pick a winner. We thought the best original British Plum and Orange label pressings had the goods that no other copies could or would have. (Years later we would get hold of another one, clean it up and put it in a shootout.)

But of course, like most audiophiles who judge records with an insufficiently large sample size, we turned out to be quite mistaken.

Logic hadn’t worked. None of the originals would end up winning another shootout once we’d discovered the right reissues.

But in 2008, we hadn’t stumbled upon the best pressings because we hadn’t put enough effort into the only approach that actually works.

What approach is that? It’s trial and error. Trial and error would eventually put us on the path to success. We had simply not conducted enough trials and made enough errors by 2008 to find out what we know now.

We hadn’t made the breakthrough we needed to make in order to know just how good the album could sound.

Can you blame us? The pressings that have been winning shootouts for years are from the wrong country (not the UK) and the wrong era (not the original).

We reproduce below the commentary for the 2008 listing that gets it wrong.

The best British originals are good records, but none of them would win a shootout these days up against the superior import pressings we discovered around 2015 or so.

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The Drums and Cymbals Are Key to the Best Pressings of Presence

Hot Stamper Pressings of Led Zeppelin’s Albums Available Now

The drum sound on the best copies is punchy and huge, with prodigious amounts of studio space swirling around Bonham’s kit.

There’s real resonance to the toms, not the standard overdamped sound of a studio kit, which gives them a lively, realistic, natural quality that you rarely hear outside of Zep records.

And the cymbals crash and splash just like real cymbals do, which is yet another sound you rarely hear outside of the best Zep pressings. (The best copies of Zep IV have crashing cymbals on Black Dog and Rock and Roll like few records in the history of rock.)

We just finished a massive shootout for this album and were reminded just how hard this album rocks. Achilles Last Stand, For Your Life and Nobody’s Fault But Mine are all KILLER on a Hot Stamper pressing like this one. After cleaning and playing a pile of copies we are pleased to report that the best of them are full of The Real Zep Magic. The average LP may not be much of a thrill but our Hot Stampers sure are, with all the energy, dynamics, whomp, and presence (pun only slightly intended) you could hope for.

That is EXACTLY the kind of sound we love here at Better Records.

Hey Man, Turn It Up!

We’re hoping this copy ends up in the hands of someone who will play it good and loud because that’s the way it was meant to be heard. It’s the only way the mix works, which is a sure sign that that is clearly how the artists intended their records to be played.

Turn up the volume and play the midsection of For Your Life on side one or the entire Nobody’s Fault But Mine on side two to hear Zep rockin’ out in their prime.

Nobody did it better than these four guys. If you have Hot Stampers of their albums, you have some of the best sounding rock and roll records ever made, records that sound the way Zep wanted you to hear them as long as you play them at good loud levels.

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Led Zeppelin II on Classic Records – Seriously, What Could Be Sadder?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

An unmitigated disaster — ridiculously bright and ridiculously crude.

In short, a completely unlistenable piece of garbage, and, along with the MoFi pressing from 1982, one of the worst sounding versions of the album ever made.

Over the years we have done many Led Zeppelin shootouts, often including the Classic Heavy Vinyl Pressings as a “reference.” After all, the Classic pressings are considered by many — if not most — audiophiles as superior to other pressings.

What could be sadder?

In fact, you will find very few critics of the Classic Zep LPs outside of those of us (me and the rat in my pocket) who write for this Better Records, and even we used to recommend three of the Zep titles on Classic: Led Zeppelin I, IV and Presence when they first came out.

Wrong on all counts.

Since then we’ve made it a point to review most of the Classic Zeps, a public service of Better Records. We don’t actually like any of them now, although the first album is still by far the best of the bunch.

Below you will find our reviews of the more than 200 Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years.

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Letter of the Week – “The copy I bought from you 100% blew my mind, with no wiggle room….completely blown!”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing he purchased recently:

Hi Tom,
I’ve been waiting for the right time to play the RL WHS LZII. It finally happened last night. I do have a LZ II with RL on side 1, and I was previously quite happy with it. I did prefer it over all the other copies, both regular and audiophile.

However, the copy I bought from you 100% blew my mind, with no wiggle room….completely blown!

JB’s drum kit is coming right out of the speakers like there is no tomorrow. I think I lost my mind while listening to Heartbreaker, a song I like but never really fully enjoyed……until NOW.

The room is never big enough for this one. Those punches of sound were so punchy, like George Foreman hitting Ali… massive.

Side 2 of this album is nothing short of phenomenal. I’m not sure if I own another LP that rocks like this RL one does. No wonder you made a top ten list just so you could put this one on it.

Someone will ask me or comment…why on earth would you spend $2400 on a record? To that person I will say… I am not buying a record. I am buying an experience that I can repeat as many times as I like, over and over again. To me, listening to this music in this way is priceless.

I truly don’t have the words to express what utter joy my being felt while listening to this. Can’t wait to do it again.

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Letter of the Week – “While the loud parts rock in an unbelievable way, the quiet bits reveal the magic…”

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom,   

Wanted to say thanks for the Led Zep III, fantastic and beyond expectation. While the loud parts rock in an unbelievable way the quiet bits reveal the magic, the surreal presence, space and uncanny realism. Brilliant!

I have an OK copy of Led Zep IV and the first section of Stairway to Heaven is similar in that I love hearing the acoustic guitar and then the breathy recorders (oh those recorders) and then Plant’s voice seems to appear from nowhere right before your ears.

I am so lucky to have the Zep III so thanks again.

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Letter of the Week – “The most expensive record I ever bought but well worth the dough!”

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

I will share with you guys a few more observations.

You will not be surprised to learn that the Led Zep 2 WHS leads the pack. The most expensive record I ever bought but well worth the dough!

Your description says it all: Freakishly good! Firmly trounced my early UK plum and my German RL (side 1).

No disapointments regarding the sound whatsoever with all others. One has to understand though that a 3/3 is an absolute judgement but a relative one (Bruce Springssteen comes to mind) but if one follows you long enough the prices asked for give a bit of indication so that‘s fine with me.

Christian ended his letter with these thoughts.

You made my life better with your records. I keep learning a lot from you following your site everyday now, enhanced my listening skills and sometimes detect now my own HS (just listening and comparing my two early UK Track Who Tommy inspired by your listing yesterday) and am amazed by the quality but also differences from side to side).

Best.
Christian

Christian,

We are so happy to hear that we’ve made your life better with our records, who could ask for anything more?

It wasn’t hard for us to beat your UK and German pressings, the UK original is a joke next to the good RL pressings. I hope you had a chance to play our Hot Stamper against the Heavy Vinyl reissue. If you did, please let us know what you heard.

As for your copies of Tommy have side to side differences, we’ve been going on about that for three decades, but for some reason audiophiles and those who write for them never notice these things.

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