Top Artists – Jethro Tull

Letters, reviews and commentaries for the music of Jethro Tull.

Why Own a Turntable if You’re Going to Play Mediocrities Like These?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Aja Available Now

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Available Now

Hot Stamper Pressings of Aqualung Available Now

This commentary was posted in 2007 and amended later with the statement that we would no longer be ordering new Heavy Vinyl titles. The thrill was gone and there was no sign of it ever coming back. It took a while to sell off the inventory, but by 2011 we had eliminated them completely from our site.

As it happens, 2007 turned out to be a milestone year for us here at Better Records.

If you bought any Heavy Vinyl pressing from us, ever, please accept our apologies.

Now is the perfect time to find out just how much a Hot Stamper pressing can do for your musical enjoyment. (You might consider taking the enthusiastic advice of these customers regarding that subject.)

Three of the Top Five sellers this week (8/22/07) at Acoustic Sounds are records we found hard to like: Aja, Aqualung and Blue. Can you really defend the expense and hassle of analog LP playback with records that sound as mediocre as the Rhino pressing of Blue?

Why own a turntable if you’re going to play records like these? I have boxes of CDs that sound more musically involving and I don’t even bother to play those. Why would I take the time to throw on some 180 gram record that sounds worse than a good CD?

If I ever found myself in the position of having to sell mediocrities like the ones you see pictured in order to make a living, I’d be looking for another line of work. The vast majority of these newly-remastered pressings are just not very good.

We Aren’t Walmart and We Definitely Don’t Want to Be Walmart

We leave that distinction to our colleagues at Acoustic Sounds, Elusive Disc and Music Direct (Walmart, Target and Sears perhaps?)

[Yes, Sears existed when I wrote this screed! Time flies.]

They sell anything and everything that some hapless audiophile might wander onto their site and find momentarily attractive, like shiny trinkets dangling from a tree, glittering as brightly as fool’s gold. They know their market and they know where the real money is.

(Hint: it ain’t records, dear reader, it’s equipment. If you haven’t seen one of their thick full-color catalogs lately, count how many pages of equipment you have to wade through at the front before you get to the “recommended recordings.”)

UPDATE

I would amend that to say that it probably is records now. Since 2007 they have become much more popular and profitable. Apparently you can cut the same title 16 different times and audiophiles will just keep buying it. Look at what is happening with reissues of The Beatles’ catalog.

The Hall of Shame

We had no business selling Neil Young’s Greatest Hits — the typical dead-as-a-doornail remastering job we’ve come to expect from Classic over the years — and now it can be found in our audiophile hall of shame, where it should have been from the start.

Which, by the way, has a new member: In Through the Out Door. We were doing a shootout in time for the mailer this week and decided to crack the Classic open to give it another listen, since my review was about five years old at this point, a lifetime in the world of audio. (My world of audio, anyway, and hopefully yours.)

Well, it turned out to be nothing but an absolute piece of crap. Tonally wrong from top to bottom, compressed, lacking presence, life, energy — an unmitigated disaster, joining the Classic pressings of II, III and Houses, three of the other worst sounding Zeppelin records I have ever had the misfortune to play. It’s a perfect we was wrong entry — watch for it soon — and we owe an apology to anyone who bought one from us. So sorry!

Further Reading

Today’s Bad Heavy Vinyl Pressing Is… Aqualung!

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

An audiophile hall of shame pressing and another Classic Records rock LP badly mastered for the benefit of audiophiles looking for easy answers and quick fixes.

By the time the guitars at the end of the title track fade out you will be ready to take your heavy vinyl Classic Record pressing and ceremoniously drop it in a trashcan. (Actually, the best use for it is to demonstrate to your skeptical audiophile friends that no heavy vinyl pressing can begin to compete with a Hot Stamper from Better Records. Not in a million years.)

We Was Wrong on All Counts

Over the course of the last 25 years we was wrong three ways from Sunday about our down-and-out friend Aqualung here.

We originally liked the MoFi from the early 80s. Wrong. Proof positive that in the early 80s I didn’t have good reproduction or know much about records — but I sure thought I did!

When the DCC 180g came along in 1997 we liked that one better. Wrong again. It didn’t have MoFi’s usual midrange suckout and sloppy bass, but it was bad in so many other ways that it is hard for me to believe I ever liked it. But I did, to some degree anyway.

Back then I was a DCC believer, a mistake I would come to recognize once a few more years had passed. See here and here.

And a few years back I was briefly enamored with some original British imports. Wrong for the third time.

After playing more than two dozen pressings of Aqualung in our recent [circa 2010] shootout, it’s pretty clear that the right early Reprise pressings KILL any and all contenders. Forget all the Green Label Chrysalis pressings. Forget the reissues. Forget the imports. It’s original domestic Reprise or nothing when it comes to Aqualung.
(more…)

Jethro Tull – Aqualung

More of the Music of Jethro Tull

  • Incredible sound for Jethro Tull’s fourth studio album, with a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two
  • The sonics are outstanding from start to finish – big, punchy, present, tubey and bursting with rock and roll energy
  • A Better Records Top 100 title that still floors us on the best copies, with sound that will jump right out of your speakers
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – those on “My God” are especially bad – but if you can tough those out, this copy is going to blow your mind
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… one of the most astonishing progressions in rock history… the degree to which Tull upped the ante here is remarkable… Varied but cohesive, Aqualung is widely regarded as Tull’s finest hour.”
  • We think Stand Up is musically an even better album, but it’s hard to argue with the big, bold sound of Aqualung

Folks, for hard-rockin’, Tubey Magical, 70s Arty Proggy Rock in ANALOG, it just does not get much better than Aqualung. You need the right pressing to bring it to life though, and this one is certainly up to the task.

(more…)

Letter of the Week – “I have to tell you that I was floored at the sound of the Hot Stamper Aqualung I just bought.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

This testimonial letter comes from our good customer Roger, who was blown away by the Hot Stamper pressing of Aqualung we sent him [many, many years ago].

Roger, as expected, did a thorough shootout of his own, comparing of our Hot Stamper against the audiophile usual suspects. The result? Another knockout for our Hot Stamper pressing.

Note that a well known audiophile reviewer did his own shootout for the album years ago, failing miserably, unlike our good customer Roger, who succeeded admirably.

Hi Tom,

I have to tell you that I was floored at the sound of the hot stamper Jethro Tull Aqualung I just bought. Darn you again and your hot stampers.

To give you some idea of how many times I have heard this album, backtrack to 1971 when it came out. On a Boy Scout trip a friend of mine had a portable 8-track tape player and this one tape, Aqualung. I remember sleeping on one of the seats in a car with the Aqualung tape on infinite repeat all night. In high school I had the 8-track and listened to this record hundreds of times.

Through the years after becoming an audiophile I bought many different copies looking for the ultimate-sounding LP, finally settling on the MFSL version, which I bought when it came out.

So I had a good time comparing 4 copies:

    1. the MFSL half-speed,
    2. the DCC version,
    3. the 25th anniversary digitally remastered copy,
    4. and the Hot Stamper.

First I tried the 25th anniversary and it was just as I remembered it — it sounds digital, like a CD. Lots of detail, but hard, hyped, edgy, flat soundstage, compressed dynamics. As digital usually sounds, guitars were harsh and jumped unnaturally out of the mix.

(more…)

Jethro Tull – Songs From The Wood

 More Folk Rock

  • This original UK pressing of Tull’s tenth studio album boasts INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades from top to bottom – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Both of these sides are amazingly big and full with wonderfully breathy vocals and deep punchy bass
  • No other copy in the shootout earned 3 pluses on any side other than this killer copy right here — this was a tough shootout!
  • Forget the domestic originals and reissues, they’re medicore at best and more than likely awful
  • Forget whatever dead-as-a-doornail Heavy Vinyl record they’re making these days too – if you want to hear Tubey Magic, huge size and powerful energy, a vintage UK pressing like this one is the only way to go
  • 4 stars: “Far and away the prettiest record Jethro Tull released at least since Thick as a Brick and a special treat for anyone with a fondness for the group’s more folk-oriented material.”

(more…)

Thick As a Brick on MoFi

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

Sonic Grade: D

Here you will find the same problems as the MoFi Meddle, released the previous year, 1984. Here is what we had to say about it back in the day when we were selling this kind of crap.

The MoFi is TRANSPARENT and OPEN, and the top end will be lush and extended. If you prize clarity, this is the one.

But if you prize clarity at the expense of everything else, you are seriously missing the boat on Meddle (and of course Thick As A Brick too).

The MoFi is all mids and highs with almost nothing going on below.

This is a rock record, but without bass and dynamics the MoFi pressing doesn’t rock, so why would anyone want to own it or play it?

The one thing these pressings have going for them is that they tend to be transparent in the midrange.

It sounds like someone messed with the sound, and of course someone did. That’s how they get those audiophile records to sound the way they do.

For some reason, some audiophiles like their records to sound pretty and lifeless with blurry bass.

The whomp factor on this pressing is Zero. Since whomp is critical to the sound of this album, it’s Game Over for us.

That is not our sound here at Better Records. We don’t offer records with shortcomings like these and we don’t think audiophiles should have to put up with records that sound the way this one does.

(more…)

Six Ways in Which Bad Sounding Remasters Get Approved

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

UPDATE 2026

The comments you see below for Stand Up were written in 2023.

Unfortunately, we rarely have any stock on Stand Up, or any of the other classic Tull releases for that matter. (There is a copy of Thick as a Brick on the site as of this writing, but it may have sold by the time you read this.)

In our commentary we discuss some of the reasons why a truly awful sounding Heavy Vinyl pressing — in this case the Analogue Productions’ remaster of Stand Up — could possibly have gotten released.

Our Commentary from 2023

Here’s how we think it might have gone down.

On whatever crappy audiophile system they are using to play these records, the new pressing beat the original Pink Label Island. Drinks all around.

Not knowing that the original pressings do not sound very good — really, not knowing all that much about records period — made their job seem a lot easier than it actually was.

They didn’t produce a good sounding record. They produced a record that was (perhaps) better than a bad sounding record. They unknowingly set the bar very low.

But unknowingly is how this label has been operating from the very beginning.

I’ve written extensively about many of their bad sounding records, starting all the way back in 1995 with Way Out West.

Not much has changed. You may remember from the Washington Post video years back that Geoff Edgers blind-tested me with two copies of Quiet Kenny, one from The Electric Recording Company (“this guy makes mud pies!”) and the other from Analogue Productions (‘it’s the best record they ever made, because it’s not terrible”), or words to that effect.

If I’d had a good copy of Quiet Kenny on hand, a record I think I know much better now that we have done a couple of shootouts for it, I could have elucidated all the shortcomings of the AP pressing in great detail. Instead I was stuck comparing a very bad pressing of the album to a copy that was not as bad.

(more…)

Thick as a Brick Marked a Milestone in 2007

jethrthick_1410_3_1192056381

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

Until about 2007, Thick as a Brick was the undiscovered gem (by me anyway) in the Tull catalog. The pressings we’d heard up until then were nothing special, and of course the average pressing of this album is exactly that: no great shakes.

With the advent of better record cleaning fluids and much better tables, phono stages, room treatments and the like — taking full advantage of the remarkable number of revolutions in audio that have occurred over the last two or three decades –some copies of Thick As A Brick have shown themselves to be truly amazing sounding. Even the All Music Guide could hear how well-engineered the album was.

Marking Two Milestones from the Past

The 2007 commentary you see below discusses the pros and cons of both the British and Domestic original pressings. With continuing improvements to the system, room, etc., it would not be long before we realized that the British pressings were simply not competitive with the best domestic ones.

You might say this record helped us mark two important milestones in the developing history of Better Records.

The first, around 2007, was recognized by the fact that we had improved our playback to a very high level, one high enough to reproduce the album with all the clarity, size and energy we were shocked to hear at the time.

The second milestone would result from the audio changes we continued to make for the next couple of years, from 2007 to 2010, which allowed us to recognize that the best British pressings, as good as they might be, were not in the same league as the best domestic ones. We broke down in detail exactly what we were listening for and what were hearing in this commentary, and the Brits were clearly not cutting it at the highest levels by 2010.

If you find yourself with one of more British copies of the album that you think have superior sound — any copies of the album, really — we would love to send you one of our Hot Stampers so you can hear what you are missing.

(more…)

Jethro Tull – Thick As A Brick

More of the Music of Jethro Tull

  • An early Reprise pressing that was doing just about everything right, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • One of the few copies we’ve found lately with audiophile sound and surfaces – most of the copies we find are just too noisy for the first few minutes, but this one’s intro held up nicely
  • A Top 100 title and the best sounding album Jethro Tull ever recorded – allow us to make the case
  • A stunning Demo Disc to rule them all – sure to be the best you’ve ever heard this band sound, assuming you have the kind of system it takes and a room big enough to hold it
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 1/2 stars: “A masterpiece in the annals of progressive rock – a dazzling tour de force, at once playful, profound, and challenging, without overwhelming the listener.”
  • “Whether or not Thick As A Brick is an isolated experiment, it is nice to know that someone in rock has ambitions beyond the four or five minute conventional track, and has the intelligence to carry out his intentions, in all their intricacy, with considerable grace.”
  • TAAB is also one of those albums that helped us dramatically improve our playback quality

The kind of tonal accuracy you hear on the better copies of this album practically disappeared from records over forty years ago, which explains why so many of the LPs we offer as Hot Stampers were produced in the 70s and before. That’s when many of the highest fidelity recordings were made. In truth this very record is a superlative example of the sound the best producers, engineers, and studios were able to capture on analog tape during that very decade.

Which is a long way of saying that the better copies of Thick As A Brick have pretty much everything that we love about vinyl records here at Better Records.

Furthermore, I can guarantee you there is no CD on the planet that will ever be able to do this recording justice. Our Hot Stamper pressings — even the lowest-graded ones — have a kind of Analog Magic that just can’t be captured on one of them there silvery discs.

The Best Sounding Jethro Tull Album Ever Recorded

  • The better copies are shockingly dynamic. At about the three-minute mark the band joins in the fun and really starts rocking. Set your volume for as loud as your system can play that section. The rest of the music, including the very quietest parts, will then play correctly for all of side one. For side two the same volume setting should be fine.
  • The recording can have exceptionally solid, deep punchy bass (just check out Barrie “Barriemore” Barlow’s drumming, especially his kick and floor toms. The guy is on fire).
  • The midrange is usually transparent and the top end sweet and extended on the better pressings.
  • The recording was made in 1972, so there’s still plenty of Tubey Magic to be heard on the acoustic guitars and flutes.
  • 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).
  • The better copies can be as huge, wide and tall as any rock record you’ve ever heard, with sound that comes jumping out of your speakers right into your listening room.
  • Unlike practically any album recorded during the 80s or later, the overall tonal balance, as well as the timbre of virtually every instrument in the soundfield, is correct.

(more…)

Thick as a Brick Is a Top Test Disc for System Accuracy

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

From 2009 to 2010 this was our single go-to record for testing and tweaking our system.

Although we now use an amazing copy of Bob and Ray (the big band version of The Song of the Volga Boatmen located therein has to be one of the toughest tests we know of), we could easily go back to using TAAB.

Artificiality is the single greatest problem that every serious audiophile must guard against with every change and tweak to his stereo. cleaning system, room, electricity and everything else.

Since TAAB is absolutely ruthless at exposing the slightest hint of artificiality in the sound of the system, it is clearly one of the best recordings one can use to test and tune with. Here are just some of the reasons this was one of our favorite test records back in the day:

Dynamics

The better copies are shockingly dynamic. At about the three minute mark the band joins in the fun and really starts rocking. Set your volume for as loud as your system can play that section. The rest of the music, including the very quietest parts, will then play correctly for all of side one. For side two the same volume setting should be fine.

Bass

The recording can have exceptionally solid, deep punchy bass (just check out Barrie “Barriemore” Barlow’s drumming, especially his kick and floor toms. The guy is on fire).

Midrange

The midrange is usually transparent and the top end sweet and extended on the better pressings.

Tubey Magic

The recording was made in 1972, so there’s still plenty of Tubey Magic to be heard on the acoustic guitars and flutes.

(more…)