Top Artists – Bob Dylan

What To Listen For on Blood on the Tracks

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bob Dylan Available Now

UPDATE 2026

Many years ago we reviewed a Hot Stamper pressing of Blood on the Tracks and has this to say about it.

Many copies have no bass, while other copies are bright, a combination which ruins the sound of the acoustic guitars that dominate the album. On the better Hot Stamper pressings, the bass will be deep and well-defined and the tonal balance will be correct.

The copies that fared the best in our shootouts were rich, warm, tubey and full-bodied — in other words, analog sounding. 

It’s nice when the copy in hand has all the transparency, space, layered depth and three-dimensionality that makes listening to records such a fundamentally different experience than listening to digitally-sourced material, but it’s not nearly as important as having that rich, relaxed tonal balance.

A little smear and a lack of resolution is not the end of the world on this album. Brightness, along with too much grain and grit, can be. 

What To Listen For — Side Two

The harmonica on the second track is devilishly difficult to get right. If there is any aggressiveness or grit in the sound of your copy, you will have no trouble recognizing it when that harmonica starts to play. (more…)

Bob Dylan – Blood on the Tracks

More of the Music of Bob Dylan

  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this vintage pressing
  • Why this title is so often pressed on bad vinyl is hard to fathom, but it is a fact nevertheless, which is why you see so few copies make it to the site and even fewer on quiet vinyl
  • For tonally-correct, un-hyped acoustic guitars and vocals, the sound of this album is tough to beat in Dylan’s catalog
  • Note that some tracks are clearly better sounding than others throughout the album, and those are the tracks we tend to listen to in our shootouts
  • The better copies are rich, warm, tubey and full-bodied – in other words, they are exactly what’s good about the vintage analog pressings we offer to the discriminating audiophiles who appreciate the difference
  • 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
  • 5 stars: “…it’s an affecting, unbearably poignant record, not because it’s a glimpse into his soul, but because the songs are remarkably clear-eyed and sentimental, lovely and melancholy at once. Dylan made albums more influential than this, but he never made one better.”

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“I love Blood On The Tracks, I have 6 copies of it and none of them come near yours”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bob Dylan Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

Received the LP a few days ago, and thank you. I love Blood On The Tracks. I have 6 copies of it and none of them come near yours. I can stop looking now. Thank you.

Arun,

We love it when our customers take the time and make the effort to do their own shootouts, especially when we win, which is what happens about 98-99% of the time.

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Highway 61 Revisited – Not So Good on Sundazed in Mono

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bob Dylan Available Now

I don’t think mono works for this Highway 61, so we never carried this Sundazed pressing, and we certainly would not have recommended it back in the days when we were still selling Heavy Vinyl, which we officially stopped doing in 2011).

Stick with the 360 stereo pressings for the best sound. (Other 360 pressings that win shootouts can be found here.)

To see our current selection of Hot Stamper pressings that sound better in mono, click here.

Dylan Discography

Here you will find his albums through 1989, after which you are on your own. The later recordings have never sounded right to us and we have no plans to do shootouts for any of them.

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Bob Dylan – Slow Train Coming

More of the Music of Bob Dylan

  • Slow Train Coming returns to the site on this early Columbia pressing with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish
  • These sides are bigger, more natural, warmer and more solid than those of any other copy you’ve heard or your money back
  • The big hit here is “Gotta Serve Somebody” – Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits is featured throughout
  • I doubt this is anyone’s very favorite Dylan album, but it’s sure a lot more enjoyable when you have sound like this

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Letter of the Week – John Wesley Harding Has Playback Issues

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bob Dylan Available Now

UPDATED 2026

In reply to the letter below, I say only about one out of every five hundred records we’ve sold has ever been returned to us more than once.

I gave this more thought and I honestly cannot remember any record coming back more than once for substandard sound quality other than this very album. It was returned twice, and both times,after we played it again, it sounded fine to us.

Once a record has been returned, we tag it as a returned record so that if it ever does come back again, we know to check it extra carefully upon its return. We’ve been following this procedure for a while now, and, at least to my knowledge, no record has come back twice.

Our Older Commentary

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing of John Wesley Harding he purchased a while back:

Hey Tom,   

So many great records in this batch, but some solid misses too — details coming. John Wesley Harding for example sounds great but has some serious distortion through much of side two; a bit ’too vintage’, in spite of the sound it seems once to have had.

Dear Sir,

Definitely check your front end setup on this one, there is no actual distortion on the record, just sound that may be hard to reproduce.

My advice would be to make sure you have replaced your cartridge recently.

Carts that get old have a problem with records like these. We know, we replace our cartridge every three months when hard-to-play records start to sound strained or congested and gritty.

The sheen of massed strings, a sound critical to the orchestral recordings we play, are impossible to reproduce correctly with an older-than-it-should-be unit. A fresh cartridge can make all the difference in the sound of  difficult to reproduce records.

Keeping a cartridge installed for too long is a mistake made by 100% of the audiophiles I have ever known.

The other explanation could be that our microfine tip is playing deeper in the groove and missing whatever damage is encoded above it, damage which may have been caused by the older cartridges of the day that were used to play the record by the previous owner or owners. We can’t say it doesn’t happen.

We can say that if you bring this record back, the next person to buy it has a roughly 98% chance of keeping it. Maybe one out of five hundred or so ever come back a second time. At least that’s how it has worked out over the last twenty-five years.

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Bob Dylan – Real Live

More of the Music of Bob Dylan

  • An original copy (only the second to hit the site in years) with a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Forget that critical listening stuff and just notice that these Hot Stamper copies are simply more relaxed, musical and involving than anything you’ve heard – guaranteed or your money back
  • Glyn Johns produced Real Live, so its sonic credentials are certainly in order
  • “… if it doesn’t capture a historically significant tour, as Hard Rain did with the Rolling Thunder Revue, this is a better record all the same… it’s a good, solid live album, his best live album since Before the Flood…”

This vintage Columbia pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of Real Live Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

  • The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
  • The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes even as late as 1984
  • Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
  • Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
  • Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

Standard Operating Procedures

What are sonic qualities by which a record — any record — should be judged? Pretty much the ones we discuss in most of our Hot Stamper listings: energy, vocal presence, frequency extension (on both ends), transparency, spaciousness, harmonic textures (freedom from smear is key), rhythmic drive, tonal correctness, fullness, richness, three-dimensionality, and on and on down the list.

When we can get a number of these qualities to come together on the side we’re playing, we provisionally give it a ballpark Hot Stamper grade, a grade that is often revised during the shootout as we hear what the other copies are doing, both good and bad.

Once we’ve been through all the side ones, we play the best of the best against each other and arrive at a winner for that side. Other copies from earlier in the shootout will frequently have their grades raised or lowered based on how they sounded compared to the eventual shootout winner. If we’re not sure about any pressing, perhaps because we played it early on in the shootout before we had learned what to listen for, we take the time to play it again.

Repeat the process for side two and the shootout is officially over. All that’s left is to see how the sides of each pressing match up.

It may not be rocket science, but it’s a science of a kind, one with strict protocols that we’ve developed over the course of many years to insure that the results we arrive at are as accurate as we can make them.

The result of all our work speaks for itself, on this very record in fact. We guarantee you have never heard this music sound better than it does on our Hot Stamper pressing — or your money back.

What We’re Listening For On Real Live

  • Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
  • Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
  • The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
  • Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
  • Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
  • Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
  • Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Side One

Highway 61 Revisited 
Maggie’s Farm 
I And I 
License To Kill 
It Ain’t Me, Babe 
Tangled Up In Blue

Side Two

Masters Of War 
Ballad Of A Thin Man 
Girl From The North Country 
Tombstone Blues

AMG Review

… if it doesn’t capture a historically significant tour, as Hard Rain did with the Rolling Thunder Revue, this is a better record all the same, capturing a working band — a working band featuring ex-Stones guitarist Mick Taylor, no less — on a pretty good night. That means there are few revelations — though diehards will certainly revel in “Tangled Up in Blue,” which has several brand-new (not necessarily better) verses — but it’s still pretty good all the same, providing lean, relatively muscular renditions of Dylan’s great songs. This isn’t an important, necessary Dylan record, but it’s a good, solid live album, his best live album since Before the Flood, even if it’s hardly as monumental as that.

Bob Dylan – At Budokan

More of the Music of Bob Dylan

  • Here is an excellent copy (only the second to hit the site in over three years) with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER on all FOUR sides
  • The sound here is huge, full-bodied, punchy and relatively smooth throughout, with real space and ambience around the vocals and instruments
  • “The fire and brimstone are behind Dylan, [but] this hardly means the fight has gone out of him: Bob Dylan at Budokan is a very contentious effort—and, for the most part, a victorious one.” – Rolling Stone

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Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited

More of the Music of Bob Dylan

  • Dylan’s 1965 release, here solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on both sides of this vintage Stereo 360 pressing
  • In the same way Sgt. Pepper changed music a mere two years later, Highway 61 Revisited left all of Dylan’s contemporaries behind, scrambling to keep up with the standard he set
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 5 stars: “Dylan had not only changed his sound, but his persona, trading the folk troubadour for a streetwise, cynical hipster … it proved that rock and roll needn’t be collegiate and tame in order to be literate, poetic, and complex.”

We had a big stack of 360s and Red Labels with good stampers to compare for this shootout. On the better copies, the bottom end was punchy with real weight and the soundfield was open, spacious and so transparent.

Of course, the music is GENIUS. What separates the best copies from the also-rans is more than just rich, sweet, full-bodied sound. The better copies make Dylan’s voice more palpable — he’s simply more of a solid, three dimensional, real presence between the speakers. You can hear the nuances of his delivery more clearly on a copy like this.

What separates the best copies from the also-rans is more than just rich, sweet, full-bodied sound. The better copies make Dylan’s voice more palpable — he’s simply more of a solid, three dimensional, real presence between the speakers. You can hear the nuances of his delivery more clearly on a copy like this.

Now it should be noted that some songs here definitely sound better than others. Do not expect “Tombstone Blues” to become a favorite demo track. It’s upper midrangey here because that’s the way they wanted it. One must assume that the songs sound the way Dylan wanted them too, because every other track has a slightly different tonal balance, and that change in tonality seems to be a conscious choice designed to bring out the best in each song.

Or not. Who’s to say?

The 360 label pressings are a mixed bag, running from mediocre to mindblowing. Most of the time they are too trashed to even consider playing on an audiophile turntable. Many of the later pressings are sterile, congested, and lean.

On a typical pressing of this record, the harmonica can be shrill and aggressive, but on the best copies, it will sound airy and full-bodied (for the most part). There are times on every copy we’ve ever played where the harmonica solos get to be just a bit much.

The best tracks have fat, meaty, oh-so-analog drums and bass. There’s a certain amount of opacity that modern mastering engineers would be tempted to fix by boosting the highs. This is a very bad idea. Brighter, in this case, is going to destroy what’s good about the sound of the album.

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Bob Dylan & The Band – Before The Flood

More of the Music of Bob Dylan

  • With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on all FOUR sides, these vintage UK Island pressings could not be beat
  • Dylan and The Band team up for exuberant versions of many classics from each of their repertoires – a copy like this lets you appreciate just how wonderful the performances are
  • “Dylan reworks, rearranges, reinterprets these songs in ways that are still disarming, years after its initial release… “
  • “Without qualification, this is the craziest and strongest rock and roll ever recorded. All analogous live albums fall flat.”
  • There are some bad marks (as is sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs) on “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” but once you hear just how killer sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and just be swept away by the music

One of the great Live Classic Rock albums of all time in stunning Hot Stamper form!

The version of “Ballad Of A Thin Man” that closes out side one is simply monstrous. Live rock and roll just don’t get much better than that, my friends!

We played a ton of these and found that many copies were too boring to earn our Hot Stamper grade. Some lacked energy, even more never opened up, and most of them were too thin-sounding. We had to play a huge stack of copies to come up with a few good ones, and on a double album like this, that’s a ton of work.

Finding, cleaning and critically evaluating a dozen-plus copies is a lot of work on a single album, so you can imagine how time-consuming it is when we have to double those efforts just for one album.

These ’70s LPs have the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern pressings barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back.

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