Top Artists – Cat Stevens

Thinking About the Tubey Magical Acoustic Guitars of Bread and Cat Stevens

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

UPDATE 2025

This commentary was written years ago in an effort to promote the mostly forgotten and certainly overlooked qualities of Bread‘s superb recordings.

We are rarely able to do shootouts for their albums these days, due to a lack of interest on our customers’ parts, at least at the prices we tend to charge for great sounding pressings of their classic releases. More’s the pity.

Although we were able to do Manna in 2024, and The Best of Bread in 2025, our last shootout for On the Waters was way back in 2012.

Instead, we recommend you pick up some early pressings of Bread’s albums at your local record store and see if the wondeful analog sound Armin Steiner achieved in the studio makes you a fan of the band the way it did me.

More on Armin Steiner and Bread here.

In many ways On the Waters is a Demo Disc recording.

Listening to the Tubey Magical acoustic guitars on the best copies brings back memories of my first encounter with an original Pink Label Tea for the Tillerman. Rich, sweet, full-bodied, effortlessly dynamic — that sound knocked me out thirty-odd years ago, and here, on an album by the largely-forgotten band Bread, is that sound again.

Looking back, 1970 turned out to be a great year for rock and pop, arguably the greatest.

I’ve always been a sucker for this kind of well-crafted pop. If you are too, then a Hot Stamper copy of any of their releases will no doubt become a treasured Demo Disc in your home as well. 

Audiophiles with high quality turntables literally have an endless supply of good recordings to discover and enjoy.

No matter how many records you own, you can’t possibly have even scratched the surface of the vast recorded legacy of the last sixty years. 

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“KEV” Didn’t Have a Clue How to Master Teaser and the Firecat

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

In 2025, in preparation for a new shootout, we ordered a copy of Teaser from overseas that supposedly had the right stampers — we know what they are and we are only interested in copies with the right ones — and were sent this “KEV” pressing by accident.

Accident is right — whoever KEV is, he sure has no business mastering records if the one we played is anything to go by.

Discogs has an entry for it, current price around $10. (Apparently the word got out about the sound of this miserable pressing.)

  • This release is the pink ring Island Label. No Sterling etchings. (KEV) in matrix.
  • Side 1 has 9514 hashed out and 9154 etched above
  • Matrix / Runout (A-side runout. etched): ILPS 9154A-1K 1 KEV B
  • Matrix / Runout (B-side runout. etched): ILPS 9154B-1K 1 KEV B

Our notes read:

  • Loud, congested and hot.
  • Big, wonky bass.
  • Opaque and so compressed that it pumps.

And the best line of all:

  • Not too different sounding from the 2021 remaster that’s on Spotify. (!)

I looked up that 2021 release, mastered at Abbey Road Studios, and it appears they remixed it for some reason, as those who work at Abbey Road are wont to do, the result of which seems to be one disaster after another.

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Cat Stevens – Teaser & The Firecat

More of the Music of Cat Stevens

  • A Teaser and The Firecat like you’ve never heard, with solid Double Plus (A++) grades throughout this vintage Island Pink Rim pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Here are the 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 but only the right pressings have the potential for Demo Disc quality sound
  • 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…)

Cat Stevens – Catch Bull At Four

More of the Music of Cat Stevens

  • An original UK Island pressing that was doing practically everything right
  • It’s bigger, more dynamic, more lively, more present and just plain more exciting than most of what we played
  • This British pressing can show you the sweeter, tubier Midrange Magic that is the hallmark of all the best Cat Stevens records
  • CBAF is an exceptionally well recorded album full of wonderful tunes, one that we feel should definitely be more popular with audiophiles
  • “Though some of the lyrics retain Cat’s fanciful imagery… he shows a new emotional directness, especially on side two, the albums ‘down’ side. This is reflected in Cat’s singing, which becomes more assured and more emotive with each album.” – Rolling Stone
  • This has been a title in which one stamper wins our shootouts for more than a decade, but this time around we found another stamper for side one, a pleasant surprise I must say

If you’re familiar with what the better Hot Stamper pressings of Tea for the Tillerman, Teaser and the Firecat or Mona Bone Jakon can sound like — amazing is the word that comes to mind — then you should easily be able to imagine how good the better copies of Catch Bull At Four sounds.

All the ingredients for a Classic Cat Stevens album were in place for this release, which came out in 1972, about a year after Teaser and the Firecat. His wonderful guitar player, Alun Davies, is still in the band, and Paul Samwell-Smith is still producing as brilliantly as ever.

There’s no shortage of deep, well-defined bass either, allowing the more dynamic songs to really come alive. The ones that get loud without becoming hard or harsh are the ones that tend to get everything else right at the lower volumes.

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).

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Can the Brightness Problem on the UHQR of Tea for the Tillerman Be Fixed?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

Can adjusting the VTA for the heavier weight vinyl of the UHQR fix its tonality problems?

[This subject also came up in a discussion of the remastered pressings of Scheherzade.]

Probably not. VTA is all about balance.

Adjusting for all the elements in a recording involve tradeoffs. When all the elements sound close to their best, and none of them are “wrong,” the VTA is mostly right.

Try as you might, you cannot fix bad mastering by changing your VTA.

Tea for the Tillerman on UHQR

When I first got into the audiophile record business back in the 80s, I had a customer tell me how much he liked the UHQR of Tea for the Tillerman.

This was a record I was selling sealed for $25. And you could buy as many as you liked at that price!

I was paying $9 for them and could order them by the hundreds if I’d wanted to. Yes, I admit I had no shame.

I replied to this fellow that “the MoFi is awfully bright, don’t you think?” (My old Fulton system may have been darker than ideal, but no serious audio system can play a UHQR as bright as this one without someone noticing the paint has started to peel.)

His reply: “Oh no, you just adjust your VTA until the sound is tonally correct.”

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

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

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. (Emphasis added.)

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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Cat Stevens – Mona Bone Jakon

More of the Music of Cat Stevens

  • Incredible sound throughout this UK Island pressing of Cat Stevens’s brilliant third album, with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them
  • So transparent, open, and spacious, nuances and subtleties that escaped you before are now front and center
  • When you play “I Wish, I Wish” and “I Think I See The Light” on this vintage pressing, we think you will agree with us that this is one of the greatest Folk Rock albums of them all
  • One of the most underrated titles on the site – you owe it to yourself to see just how good the album that came out right before Tillerman can be when it sounds this good
  • 4 stars: “A delight, and because it never achieved the Top 40 radio ubiquity of later albums, it sounds fresh and distinct.”

So many copies excel in some areas but fall flat in others. This side one has it ALL going on — all the Tubey Magic, all the energy, all the presence and so on. The sound is high-rez yet so natural, free from the phony hi-fi-ish quality that you hear on many pressings, especially the reissues on the second label.

Right off the bat, I want to say this is a work of GENIUS. Cat Stevens made three records that belong in the Pantheon of greatest popular recordings of all time. In the world of Folk Pop, Mona Bone Jakon, Teaser and the Firecat and Tea for the Tillerman have few peers. There may be other Folk Pop recordings that are as good but we know of none that are better.

Mike Bobak was the engineer for these sessions from 1970. He is the man responsible for some of the best sounding records from the early ’70s: The Faces’ Long Player, Rod Stewart’s Never a Dull Moment, The Kinks’ Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One, (and lots of other Kinks albums), Carly Simon’s Anticipation and more than his share of obscure English bands (of which there seems to be a practically endless supply).

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

Yes, For Some Records There Is Only One Set of Magic Stampers

Hot Stamper Pressings of Music on Island Records Available Now

As is sometimes the case, there is one and only one set of stamper numbers that consistently wins our Catch Bull at Four shootouts.

We stumbled upon an out-of-this-world copy of the right pressing in 2016, a copy took the recording to a level we had no idea could even be possible. (We were going to give it Four Pluses, and probably should have, but cooler heads prevailed.)

Since then we have had many copies come in, but none that could compete with the Magic Stamper pressings.

And the best part of this story is that, no, the best stampers are not 1U, or 2U, or even 3U.

As a matter of fact, they are far from the stampers found on the earliest pressings. That’s one reason it took us so long to discover them, because they are much less commonly found than pressings with the earlier stampers. By the time these later pressings were mastered, pressed and released, the album’s biggest selling days were over.

For all we know this cutting may have been done just to keep the record in print, possibly undertaken many years after its initial release.

Who knows? Who cares? What difference does it make?

Well, it does serve to make a point near and dear to our hearts: that the idea (and operational premise of most record collectors) that the originals are always better is just a load of bunk. It might be and it might not be.

If you want better sounding records, you had better open your mind to the idea that some reissues have the potential to sound better than even the best original pressings.

These, for starters, and there are hundreds more you can read about here on the blog.

Of course this is nothing but bad news for the average audiophile collector, who simply does not have the time or money to go through the hassle of buying, cleaning and playing every pressing he can get his hands on.

But good news for us, because we do.

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Bob and Ray Were Not Enough – We Needed the Tillerman Too

Bob and Ray Throw a Stereo Spectacular is my all time favorite test disc, the one test that every change to the system must pass: by making The Song of the Volga Boatmen sound better.

The danger in making the bulk of your sonic judgments using only one record is that you never want to optimize your system for a single record, only to find out later that it now sounds better but others you play now sound worse.

Here is the story of how I made that mistake long ago (and apparently did not learn my lesson): In 2005, I fell into a exactly this kind of audiophile trap.

The Right Way

So the right way to go about testing and tweaking is to get all your hardest test records out and start playing them, making notes as you tweak and tune your system, setup, room and whatever else you can think of.

This may take a long time, but it is time well spent when you consider that, once you are done, all — or nearly all — of your records will sound better than they did before.

In my review of the 45 RPM Tillerman, I noted the following:

Recently I was able to borrow a copy of the new 45 cutting from a customer who had rather liked it. I would have never spent my own money to hear a record put out on the Analogue Productions label, a label that has an unmitigated string of failures to its name. But for free? Count me in!

The offer of the new 45 could not have been more fortuitous. I had just spent a number of weeks playing a White Hot pink label original UK pressing in an attempt to get our new playback studio sounding right.

We had a lot 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 Repeated Our Mistake

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Letter of the Week – “I wouldn’t believe it if I weren’t hearing it!”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

Our good customer Joel not only loved our slightly noisy but amazing sounding Mona Bone Hot Stamper pressing, but he found it to be pretty darn quiet to boot. He says it’s the best $180 he’s ever spent on an LP. Seems like a lot of money for one record, but when the music and sound are this good who wants to argue with a happy man?

Some records can change your life, and it seems that this just might be the one that did it for Joel.

Hi Tom

I just spun the bargain tics and pops A+++ Mona Bone Jakon. I listened to this record hundreds of times growing up, but never like this! Silky smooth voices and guitars, so lifelike! Nice bass extension also… I have to laugh, because I think that the condition of this record is excellent.

Now I know how the other half lives! Listening to this hot stamper reminds me of my image of the rich man, eating only the center of the watermelon.

These hot stampers are amazing, I wouldn’t believe it if I weren’t hearing it!

Best $180 I’ve ever spent on an LP…

Joel

Joel, like it says in our commentary, we love Cat too. Thanks so much for your letter.

Enjoy one of the greatest folk rock records records of all time, finally sounding the way it was meant to.

Best,
TP

Live and Learn

When we said this album was not the sonic equal of Teaser and the Firecat or Tea for the Tillerman, boy, we was wrong and then some. Read all about it in this White Hot Stamper copy review below. (more…)