Top Artists – Crosby, Still, Nash and (sometimes) Young

A Tale of Two MoFi Deja Vu’s

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and (Sometimes) Young

UPDATE 2026

A commentary from a long time ago about two different MoFi pressings of the same title, Deja Vu. We stopped playing Mobile Fidelity records like this a long time ago and the only ones we play these days are ones that are sent to us for free from customers or friends. Mobile Fidelity made some good records back in the old days. As I wrote not long ago, I owe them a debt of gratitude.

But the records we’ve auditioned that they’ve been making more recently had me asking: How is this company still in business?

Sonic Grade: F (or not!)

Just for fun about 10 years ago [make that 20] I pulled out a MoFi pressing of Deja Vu I had laying around. I hadn’t played their version in a long time. I could have gone a lot longer without playing it, because what I heard was pretty disappointing. Playing their record confirmed all my prejudices. The highs sizzled and spit. The heart of the midrange was recessed and sour.

Know what it reminded me of? A bad Japanese pressing.

(Since most of them are pretty bad I could have just said a typical Japanese pressing, but that’s another story for another day.)

And if that’s not bad enough, the bass definition disappeared. Bass notes and bass parts that were clearly audible and easily followed on our Hot Stamper copies were murky, ill-defined mud on the MoFi.

If you own the MoFi you owe it to yourself to hear a better sounding version. You really don’t know what you’re missing.

But Then, A Few Years Later We Played This Copy…

Here is what we had to say at the time:

Hot Stamper Sound on the MoFi pressing of Deja Vu, can it be possible? I have NEVER heard the MoFi sound this good, not even close. This just KILLS the other copies I’ve heard. I wrote a scathing review of their badly mastered pressing which you can read below, and I still stand behind every word, because this copy is not your average MoFi. The average one still sucks. What we are selling here is a FLUKE. Here is the story from our Hot Stamper shootout we just did.

This week we picked up a very clean looking MoFi pressing and decided to throw it in the shootout just for fun. We were shocked — this one actually sounded good! Not as amazing as our best Hot Stampers, but much better than we had expected. We checked our old copy and heard the same bad sound described above. 

Pressing variations exist for audiophile records as well, and here was another example. It just goes to show that nothing short of playing a record will tell you how it sounds — except for reading our website. Who besides us could spend so much time playing so many bad records? It’s a dirty job, but we’re happy to do it. Hearing one amazing record makes up for playing 10 bad ones, so we’ll keep at it.

Keep in mind that the only way you can never be wrong about your records is to simply avoid playing them. If you have better equipment than you did, say, five or ten years ago, try playing some of your MoFi’s, 180 gram LPs, Japanese pressings, 45 RPM remasters and the like. You might be in for quite a shock.

It’s all good — until the needle hits the groove. Then you might find yourself in need of actual Better Records, not the ones you just hoped were better.

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Listening in Depth to Replay

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills and Nash Available Now

UPDATE 2026

We stopped doing shootouts for this album many years ago after running into too many mediocre-at-best if not downright awful sounding copies. These notes are from about ten years ago.

Replay is a very handy record for setting your VTA. The end of Shadow Captain has loud vocals and punchy bass, which are a bit difficult to reproduce. (Forget trying to get this song to sound good if you don’t have an exceptionally good copy.) 

The next song is To The Last Whale, which starts with Nash and Crosby’s multitracked voices in a big hall. With the correct VTA, their voices should sound silky and sweet. If your arm is too far down in the back, they will get a bit dull. Too high, and they will lose that breathy, “fluffy” quality.

And once you get their voices to sound just right, make sure the ending of Shadow Captain is still punchy and dynamic.

Side One

Carry On 

A crappy remix, with added guitar, ugh. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “I will spare you the time to comment on my 1992 Analogue Productions Reissue…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Sonny Rollins’s Albums Available Now

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

Dear Tom and Fred

After having had the opportunity to listen to the next batch of 7 more records, here are my observations on the 40 records I have now bought from you.

First to my listening experience. After receiving the CSNY 4 Way Street and looking for my own record, I thought was a German press easy to beat I realized it was a white label promo first press and thought, oh, did I make a mistake to buy this for this kind of money from you guys, this may be a tough one to crack?

Not so, your SH Stamper clearly beat the WL promo, check!

Next up was the Miles Davis Sketches of Spain White Hot Stamper, one of my very top Miles favorites.

I did not recall that I had the six eye first press, and on side 2, with identical stampers (when your 3/3 WH show up, you do not have the time to check this but hurry :-since your WH 3/3s sell like hot cakes!).

So even more difficult to beat?? Promising start: your WH was clearly better on side 1, now to the identical stampers side 2: not as clearly but still just more transparent, better drums, less shrill on track 2, check!

But it certainly cannot get better than this 3/3 WH stamper, can it?

Next up is Sonny Rollins 3/3 WH Stamper [of Way Out West]. Hard to believe, but yes, even better than the great Miles 3/3 WHS, and I will spare you the time to comment on my 1992 Analogue Productions reissue which I always thought was quite decent.

And so it goes on…

Christian

Christian,

In less than a year you have acquired a large number of simply amazing sounding records. Congratulations.

As you point out about the stampers, you may have a pressing with the right stampers, but our copy will still beat it. How it was pressed and how it was cleaned are critical to the sound, and that is not something the stamper numbers can tell you. It’s a subject we discuss often. Here is a good place to start.

Here on the blog there are a great many examples of records with the same stampers that do not have the same sound.

As for your 1992 Analogue Productions Heavy Vinyl remaster, I honestly don’t know how anyone can listen to a record with sound like that and consider it acceptable, or, in your words, “quite decent.” I went into the long story of the album in this commentary.

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The Turn Up Your Volume Test – Almost Cut My Hair

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and (Sometimes) Young

The only time Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young actually sound like a real rock and roll band is on the track Almost Cut My Hair.

According to Stephen Barncard, one of the engineers on Deja Vu, the track was actually recorded live in the studio.

Boy, it sure sounds like it. The amount of energy the band generates on this one song threatens to exceed the energy of the entire first album put together. (Not really. The energy on 49 Bye-Byes, the last track on side two and my favorite on the album is off the charts and shows just how powerful there brand of Hippie Folk Rock could be given the right material. I defy anyone to name two albums from the period released back to back that are better. They have their equals, don’t get me wrong, but the idea of there being a pair of “betters” is a hard one to entertain once the pot smoke clears.)

The reason this song presents such a tough test is that it has to be mastered properly in order to make you want to turn it up, not just louder, but as loud as your stereo will play.

This song is not to be used as background music whilst sipping wine and smoking cigars.

It positively cries out to be played at serious volume levels on monstrously large speakers. Nothing else will do justice to the power of the band’s one and only live performance captured on the album.

Listen to Neil in the left channel wailing away like a man possessed. Imagine what his grunged-out guitar would sound like blasting out of a stack of Marshall amps the size of a house.

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Listening in Depth to Crosby Stills & Nash

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills and Nash Available Now

Now with bonus CD Advice.

Although millions of copies of CSN’s first album were sold, so few were mastered and pressed well, and so many mastered and pressed poorly, that only a ridiculously small number of Hot Stamper copies have ever actually made it to the site. A couple dozen would be my guess, compared to, for example, the Beatles albums, many of which have sold by the hundreds. To this day they are difficult to keep in stock, I assume because our customers seem to really like them.)

We wish that were not the case — we love the album — but the copies we know to have the potential for Hot Stamper sound are just not sitting around in the record bins waiting for us to scoop them up.

But of course that was never the really the case even back in the good old days, as the reissue we like was simply not produced in significantly large numbers the way the originals were. Finding the right reissues was always a matter of luck, with the odds stacked very much against us. I don’t remember ever finding more than one copy with the killer stampers in a single year.

Warning

Whatever you do, don’t waste your money on the Joe Gastwirt-mastered CD.

It couldn’t be any more awful. (His Deja Vu is just as bad.)

In-Depth Track Commentary

Side One

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes

What’s magical about Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young?

Their voices of course. It’s not a trick question. They revolutionized rock music with their genius for harmony. Any good pressing must sound correct on their voices or it has no value whatsoever. A CSN record with substandard midrange reproduction — like most of them — is a worthless record.

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Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Deja Vu

More of the Music of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) sides or close to them, this early pressing of CSNY’s magnum opus is doing just about everything right
  • The sound is huge throughout – lively, present and rich in a way that nothing you’ve heard can compete with (particularly on side two)
  • And that’s especially true if you own any audiophile pressing of any kind – none of the ones we’ve heard can begin to compete with the real thing we are offering here
  • One of our all-time favorite albums at Better Records and one that almost never sounds this good (unless you know exactly which stampers to buy, of course)
  • We find ten to fifteen RL Zep II’s for every Déjà Vu with the right stampers – we’ve only done three shootouts since 2020, if that tells you anything
  • 5 stars: “…this variety made Déjà Vu a rich musical banquet for the most serious and personal listeners, while mass audiences reveled in the glorious harmonies and the thundering electric guitars…”

If you play this copy at serious levels and have the kind of full range system that’s both loud and clean like live music, we guarantee you will be nothing less than gobsmacked at the size and power of the music on this album, the band’s inarguable masterpiece.

Both sides here are super high-resolution, tonally perfect, Tubey Magical and ALIVE. The vocals are silky and sweet with very little strain or grain (a very common problem in the loudest choruses). The highs are extended, the bass is deep and punchy, and the overall clarity is breathtaking.

Just listen to the guitars during the solos — you can really hear the sound of the pick hitting the strings. The rhythm guitars sound meaty and chunky like the best sounding copies of Zuma and After The Gold Rush. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “It murders my Pink Island original UK copies.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Hippie Folk Rock Albums Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he had purchased (emphasis added):

Hey Tom,  

I want to say a big THANK YOU for the Hot Stamper’s you sent to me. Two of them are now top ten titles in my collection: Cat Stevens Tea for the Tillerman.

I’m so amazed and lucky – I can’t describe it.

The sound is so natural and beat my expectations in many ways – it sounds out of this world. This copy has sweet, breathy vocals, well-defined bass (!!), stunning clarity, warmth and richness, immediacy, astonishing transparency (it burns direct in your DNA – I’ll never forget!) and loads of ambience and more.

It murders my pink Island original UK copies.

It was a privilege to be able to hear this copy – a HIGHLIGHT event. It’s a Demo Disc of the highest order. And it’s worth the price.

The other big winner is CSN’s first album. This is one of the few LP’s with sound that you won’t soon forget. I live since a week with this good feeling and I can’t hear or rate any other LP at this time (‘til Tillerman arrived).

Erik S. 

Erik,

Thanks for your letter. Both CSN’s first album and Tea for the Tillerman belong in any audiophile’s rock and pop collection worthy of the name.

I’ve made it my life’s work to find the best sounding pressings of both of these classics, and as you can now attest, that work has not been in vain. There can be no denying it: You have the Hot Stamper proof in your hands, on your turntable, or sitting on your record shelves as the case may be.

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Letter of the Week – “The vocal, dynamic range, space, punch, energy, detail … it was just a night and day difference.”

What’s It Like to Play a White Hot Stamper Pressing?

We’re happy to let our good customer Bill tell us all about his recent listening session with a couple of his fellow analog audio enthusiasts.

When it comes to the five amazingly well-recorded titles you see pictured, it’s clearly a very special experience, one he was lucky to be able to share with his friends, and what could be better than that?

Fred,

Several weeks ago, I hosted a Hot Stamper/heavy vinyl comparison for a couple of my friends. Both of my friends have spent most of their lives in the high-end music industry.

We started with Deja Vu. One of my friends had brought the 50th Anniversary deluxe edition, and warned me that it was amazing, and would be impossible to top. One of his clients had recommended it to him and raved about it. We played the first track of that edition, Carry On, and then played the same track on the Hot Stamper.

A few seconds into the Hot Stamper, when the harmonies kicked in, my friend’s mouth dropped. He managed to whisper “Glorious.” It was a revelation. And then we enjoyed several other songs on the album. It’s just great music, wonderfully recorded. As a result of this comparison, a few days later my friend bought a Super Hot Stamper of Deja Vu from you.

Next up was The Eagles debut album. This was not a straight-up comparison of albums, because I only had one copy of the album, and that was the Super Hot Stamper. But one of my friends had brought the DCC Greatest Hits album, which is widely recognized as being the best version of that album. [Not by us!]

We compared Witchy Woman on the two albums. And the contrast was even greater than the Carry On comparison. Everything was better on the Hot Stamper. The vocal, dynamic range, space, punch, energy, detail…it was just a night and day difference. Witchy Woman has become my favorite demo song.

The last of the comparisons was a White Hot Stamper RL Led Zeppelin 2 with the Classic Records version. We decided to focus on Bring it On Home and Moby Dick. You just couldn’t listen to the Classic at the same volume as the RL. It was painfully bright at loud volume. The RL was a joy to listen to.

And that harmonica on Bring it On Home—wow. It was in the room. And the drums on Moby Dick were as close to “live” as you could probably get. Gut-punchingly wonderful. So of course we listened to several more tracks just for enjoyment.

Wanting to hear more “blow your mind” rock, we listened to a White Hot Stamper of Who’s Next. We didn’t compare it to anything, we just listened. And were transported.

Finally, one of my friends said we had to call it a night, because he was jet lagged, felt a cold coming on, and was exhausted. As he got up to leave, he stopped and said “But wait. You said you just got a WH Stamper of Tapestry. Can I listen to that for a second? I’m wondering how it compares to the MoFi.”

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Crosby, Stills and Nash – Daylight Again

More of the Music of Crosby, Stills and Nash

  • With excellent Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides, this vintage copy is doing just about everything right
  • This is the embodiment of the classic CSN sound we love – rich, full-bodied, warm, punchy, dynamic and clear
  • Steven Barncard, one of our favorite recording engineers, no doubt deserves most of the credit
  • AllMusic on “Wasted On The Way” and “Southern Cross”: “Both were extracted as singles and became among the best-known tracks not only on Daylight Again, but also in the post-60s CSN canon.”

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Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young / 4 Way Street

More of the Music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

  • These early Atlantic pressings boast roughly Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades or close to them on all FOUR sides, just shy of our Shootout Winner (side four actually won the shootout) – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • This live album gives you the “naked” sound of the real thing – the real voices and the real guitars and the real everything else, in a way that would never happen again
  • Bill Halverson worked his magic, but only the better pressings let his genius shine the way it does here
  • This is a record we rarely do shootouts for, simply because reasonably quiet, unscratched copies are getting more scarce by the day – much of what we can find is not in good enough condition to pass audiophile muster
  • 4 1/2 stars: “4 Way Street, released in April of 1971: a live double-LP set, chock-full of superb music distilled down from a bunch of nights on that tour that more than fulfilled the promise of the group.”
  • Rolling Stone raves that “Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young are all performers of unquestionable talent, and mostly because they stay out of each others’ way, 4 Way Street must surely be their best album to date.”

If you want to hear Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young rock out live in your listening room, this copy will let you do it. It’s not easy to find good sound on even one side of this album, let alone all four!

The Naked Sound of Live Music

The song “Triad,” just to cite one example, presents us with a lone David Crosby and his acoustic guitar. It’s as real sounding as anything I’ve ever heard from the band. Listening to that natural guitar tone brings home the fact that their studio recordings (and studio recordings in general) are processed and degraded compared to what the microphones must have picked up.

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