Top Artists – Neil Young

We Were Wrong About the Right Mix in 2018

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

In 2018 we described our Shootout Winner this way:

Amazing sound throughout for Neil’s self-titled debut – shootout winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides. Both sides are rich, full and Tubey Magical with a big bottom end and excellent resolution.

Surely one of Neil’s toughest to find with top quality sound – and only these early pressings with the original mix have the potential to sound as good as this one does.

Six years later, in 2024, we had acquired enough copies of Neil’s debut to do the shootout again. (Yes, it seems that you may have to wait years for a chance to buy a Hot Stamper pressing of the album from us. However, feel free to use the stamper information provided in the blog listing linked here to help you avoid some of the worst sounding stampers of them all, the earliest ones.

To be clear, some of the later label reissues that come in the second cover are even worse sounding than the first mix stamper pressings that come in the first cover.

(A great deal more on the superior sound of some reissues can be found at the bottom of this listing.)

UPDATE 2024

In our latest shootout, the original mix on multiple copies we played did poorly.

We were wrong and for that we apologize. Please ignore what we wrote about the album below back in 2018. The old mix definitely does not beat the new mix.

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Just How Good Is a Second Tier Neil Young Album?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

AMG raves about this album, giving it 5 big stars. (For those of you keeping score at home, that’s half a star MORE than they gave Harvest.) We like the album just fine, but I doubt we would want to go quite that far. Sure, these are great songs, but give us After The Gold Rush, Zuma or Harvest (all Top 100 titles, Hot Stampers of which are sometimes in stock) over this one any day.

Still, a second tier Neil Young album (by our standards) usually will beat a first tier album from just about anybody else making records in 1979.

And if you’re a fan this record absolutely belongs in your collection, along with about ten others by the man. Now what other solo artist can you name that has ten or more records to his name worth owning? I’m hard pressed to think of one. The Beatles and The Stones don’t count, obviously. Elvis Costello comes pretty close, but ten? I can’t get there, with him or anybody else. Neil’s body of work stands alone.

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Neil Young and the Limits of Expert Advice

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

Richard Feynman gave a series of lectures concerning the workings of the scientific method. Here is an excerpt from one of them that I would like you to keep in mind as you read the discussion that follows. [Bolding added by me.]

Now I’m going to discuss how we would look for a new law. In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it (audience laughter), no, don’t laugh, that’s the truth. Then we compute the consequences of the guess, to see what, if this is right, if this law we guess is right, to see what it would imply and then we compare the computation results to nature or we say compare to experiment or experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works.

If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.

It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are who made the guess, or what his name is … If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.

Back in 2015, a mastering engineer by the name of Phil Brown contacted me in reference to a Hot Stamper pressing of Neil Young’s  Zuma he had seen in our mailer. (Apologies in advance for not giving out the stamper numbers; we tend to frown on that sort of thing around here.) He wrote:

  Hey Tom,   

I see it’s a featured disc in the newsletter. I’m curious what the matrix numbers are since I mastered it.

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Neil Young / Self-Titled

More of the Music of Neil Young

  • Here is a vintage Reprise pressing of Neil’s solo debut with solid Double Plus (A++) grades from start to finish
  • Both sides are rich, full and Tubey Magical with a big bottom end and excellent resolution
  • Surely one of Neil’s toughest to find with top quality sonics – and only certain early pressings have the potential to sound as good as this one does, a subject we discuss on the blog in some detail
  • “…a flowing tributary from the over-all Springfield river of twangs, breathless vocals and slim yet stout instrumentation. Especially vivid is Young’s sense of melancholy and the ingenious clusters of images he employs in his lyrics (printed in full).” – Rolling Stone

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Avoid these Stampers on Buffalo Springfield’s Retrospective Album

Hot Stamper Pressings of Country and Country Rock Available Now

In 2025 we finally got around to doing another shootout for Buffalo Springfield’s wonderful Retrospective album, a “greatest hits” compilation for a band that really only had one hit but put out two of my all time favorite albums, Buffalo Springfield Again and Last Time Around. Our Shootout Winning early pressing was described this way:

Big, full-bodied, clear and present, the Tubey Magical richness of the best pressings is a joy to hear on modern high resolution equipment. “Kind Woman” and “I Am A Child” are two of the best sounding songs – listen to all that space around the voices and instruments

And the three Psych tracks – “On the Way Home,” “Broken Arrow” and “Expecting to Fly” – are guaranteed to be dramatically more three-dimensional than you’ve ever heard them.

But if you somehow ended up with a copy that has the wrong stampers, stampers similar to the ones you see below — on the original label mind you — none of those songs will have the audiophile qualities we describe.

And if you thought you were buying an original pressing of the album on the Yellow Atco label, well, that’s exactly what you were buying.

It’s not really your fault. The good pressings and the bad pressings all look the same. How were you to know your random purchase would only hint at the sound quality of the best pressings?

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Neil Young – Zuma

More of the Music of Neil Young

  • Boasting two outstanding Double Plus (A++) sides, this copy of Neil’s amazingly well recorded 1975 masterpiece is guaranteed to floor audiophiles and Neil Young fans alike – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Zuma captures a kind of garage band purity that makes practically any other studio album you own sound processed and desiccated in comparison
  • For a hard-rockin’ Neil Young album with Demo Disc quality sound, you’ll have a hard time finding a better choice than a Hot Stamper pressing of Zuma
  • A Must Own Top 100 Title – just drop the needle on “Danger Bird” or “Cortez the Killer” to have your mind blown!

Can any one artist lay claim to two of the best sounding rock albums ever made? Neil Young can!

After the Gold Rush and Zuma are Demo Discs and super discs of the highest order, right up there with Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat, the other two albums by a single artist that deserve to be placed on that rarified plane.

Part of Zuma’s attraction is that it has exceptionally unprocessed sound that seems to have been recorded “live in the studio.”

The fact that Gold Rush and Zuma both involve Neil Young is doubtless not an accident. I would be very surprised to learn that he was not intimately involved with every aspect of the recording of both Masterpieces, from the miking to the final mix and every step in between.

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Neil Young and His Crazy Pals LIVE in the Studio

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

Hot Stampers are all about finding those rare and very special pressings that manage to represent the master tape at its best.

Notice I did not say ACCURATELY represent the master tape, because the master tape may have faults that need to be corrected, and the only way to do that is in the mastering phase.

I can tell you without fear of contradiction that absolute fidelity to the master tape should never be — and more importantly, rarely is — the goal of the engineer mastering a record.

Which, as a practical matter, means two things:

  1. Flat transfers are most often a mistake.
  2. Talking about the fidelity you think a record has to its master tape, a tape you have never heard, is completely pointless.

Whether we like or dislike the presentation of any given recording is of course a matter of taste. When listening we constantly make judgments about the way we think the recording at any moment ought to sound, based on what we like or don’t like about the sound of recordings in general and how our stereos deal with them.

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On the Beach – Here’s the Live in the Studio Sound We Love

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

UPDATE 2026

Years ago we described a Shootout Winning early pressing with the comments you see below. (Please excuse the excessive capitalization.)

We’ve been trying for a while to find a copy of this album with the kind of wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling sound we get from the best copies of Zuma and After The Gold Rush, but it hasn’t been easy.

However, on the best copies, the title track is out of this world.

It’s got that live-in-the-studio sound we recognize and love from Zuma, but in this case it sounds like it was recorded at three in the morning in a room full of pot smoke.

When you play a Hot Stamper copy, the soundfield is huge — big, wide, and deep — and there’s lots of space around all the instruments. You will not believe all the studio ambience, and you may even catch a contact high from it.

Two Knockout Sides

Side one held its own against every copy we threw against it, earning our top grade of A+++. The sound is relaxed, musical, and SUPER transparent — there’s virtually nothing between you and the music. Neil’s voice is PERFECTION with lots of texture, and it is surrounded by lovely ambience.

Play the second track, See The Sky About To Rain, to hear some mellow magic. Neil’s work on the wurlitzer sounds fantastic, and the soft, breathy vocals are bound to give you goosebumps.

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Letter of the Week – “The sound is incredible. Neil’s voice is right in the room.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently, including After the Goldrush and Beatles For Sale: 

Hey Tom, 

Just wanted to write and tell you how much I love that Neil Young After The Gold Rush White Hot Stamper I picked up last week. Really awesome. This ranks up with the best I’ve bought from you guys.

The sound is incredible. Neil’s voice is right in the room. The guitar sounds real and that harmonica is super. I love when he performs, just him and nobody else. I’m really stuck on Neil’s albums. The sound is just soooo good. I’m working on my system to get more out of these records.

Oh yeah, I picked up one of your “Beatles for Sale” albums for $65. [This must be an old letter!] Really nice for the money. Those Beatles albums can really be awesome. Have to get a White Hot Stamper Beatles album someday. (more…)

Neil Young – Time Fades Away

More of the Music of Neil Young

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) front row center sound or BETTER throughout this early Reprise pressing
  • Side two was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • A solid step up from most other copies we played in our most recent shootout – full-bodied, smooth and musical, the classic sound of Neil Young at his performing peak
  • 4 stars: “…sounds very much of a piece with Tonight’s the Night and On the Beach, albums that explored the troubled zeitgeist of America in the mid-70s in a way few rockers had the courage to face. If the performances are often loose and ragged, they’re also brimming with emotional force… Time Fades Away ranks with the bravest and most painfully honest albums of his career… it isn’t for everyone, but you may be surprised by its powerful effects.”

Unlike most “live” albums, this one was made direct to tape, with no fixes or overdubs, and on the best pressings that warts-and-all approach really pays off. There’s good weight, real openness, and the tonality on these better copies is both rich and sweet. This kind of sound can put you right in the front row.

Finding a copy like this is no walk in the park. The stamper numbers are all over the map, providing little if any guidance. Also, since the album didn’t sell all that well and was never released on CD [although it may have been since this was written; we pay very little attention to that sort of thing], there just aren’t that many clean copies floating around.

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