
More of the Music of Willie Nelson
Reviews and Commentaries for Stardust
One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:
Hello team,
I’ve been a little distracted here, I got married over the weekend! So, haven’t done as much listening over the past couple of weeks. However, I did have a chance to listen to Stardust and Love Is The Thing. They were both different than their Classic Records and Analogue Productions counterparts. Willie sounded a little smoother, more organic, and more integrated.

The strings on Love Is The Thing were very different, more pronounced and emotional, but Nat’s voice, and the sound overall, sounded a little strident, maybe “too” hot.
I’d like to send them both back to you, and if you have a chance to send back the discs I sent to you I’d very much appreciate it. All told, the two big sets of Better Records are really incredible, and only serve to make my want list grow. Here’s to you and the next set!
Doug,
We now have the update for those two titles.
I, along with the two other guys in our listening panels, sat down to play the Heavy Vinyl you sent us, and the long and short of it is that we were astonished that records that sound as bad as those two actually were approved for release.
Nat is wrong six ways from Sunday, and Willie is not so much wrong as just not very good.
Nat: “F”, one of the worst heavy vinyl disasters of all time, and Willie: “D” sound, more like a bad CD than a record. There are many pressings of this album that are not good, but this version is probably worse than most of them, hence the D grade.
The old Classic pressing is probably better, and it would earn about a C grade. [I honestly do not remember exactly what pressing Douglas sent us. All I remember is that it was on Heavy Vinyl.]
I suspect the CDs of both these pressings are much better sounding than this vinyl. The DCC gold is definitely better by a long shot, and the plain old Willie CD is probably a step up as well.
A Further Update
The DCC Nat King Cole CDs which I recommended earlier now drive me up a wall. Can’t stand the Hoffman remix. Sorry for the error!
I will be writing a review with more depth down the road, taken from my notes. How these records can be enjoyed by anyone is beyond me. Some of the worst sound I have ever heard, and I have heard plenty! (You can find more than 250 reviews for bad audiophile records here. These are records that no audiophile in his right mind should even consider buying.)
Take any or all of the above for what it’s worth.
Best, TP
Whoa!
I am surprised! Very different take from what I’m hearing at home – would it be okay for me to take another week or two to do some more A/B listening of Stardust and Love Is The Thing on my system?
I’d like to reread “what to listen for” and really do a deep comparison of a couple tracks on each.
* Really * appreciate your time and feedback!
Douglas
A few weeks went by and we asked Douglas how his shootout went. He replied:
Howdy Tom,
Life has been a little crazy but my buddy Miguel Nelson (who turned me on to Better Records) came up and we listened to Willie and Nat, and our experience lined up pretty well with yours. The new pressings offered clarity, separation, and a quiet background, at the expense of the warmth, emotion, organic integration, subtlety, range and impact, which the Better Records copies offered in spades!
Douglas
Douglas,
That’s what we heard. Glad you heard it too.
Clarity, separation and a quiet background are what people like about the sound of CDs.
Warmth, emotion, organic integration, subtlety, range, impact and a whole lot more are what people like about Analog.
The vintage pressings we offer have more of these analog qualities than modern pressings.
Those vintage pressings with more of the analog qualities we prize are labelled Hot Stampers.
They are right in a way that the typical Half-Speed Mastered or Heavy Vinyl pressing rarely is.
The more critically one listens, the more obvious the differences become.
The real thing just can’t be beat, and you can be pretty sure that the real thing is an old record.
Here are some letters from customers who took another listen to the records we’d sent them and belatedly recognized the superior sound of our Hot Stamper pressings the second time around.
(more…)