Andy Johns, Engineer – Reviews and Commentaries

Your Shootout Questions Answered – Part One

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

Robert Brook wrote to me recently with some questions.

Hi Tom,

I read your recent post about Sticky Fingers and the European TML reissues you included in shootouts.

It raised a question for me that I’ve been wanting to ask you for a while now.

The fact that the UK TML earned an A+ to A++ grade and that, with just a one copy sample, you wouldn’t consider that pressing to have shootout winning potential, suggests to me that the US pressings you favor will grade at A++ or higher.

In other words, if you put a shootout together of [redacted stamper] pressings and whatever else you like, does every copy in the shootout grade at least A++ / A++? Are the right stampers that reliable?

I guess I’ve always assumed that even if you put together a shootout with this or any other title, and even if you only include pressings that have won or placed high in the past, at least a couple of them would end up graded no higher than A+ or A+ to A++.

And if that is correct, wouldn’t it be worth buying more UK TML’s to see if any emerge that could win a shootout?

With Revolver, for instance, why not just do shootouts with [redacted numbers] if those are the ones that win the shootouts? Why even bother with [later pressings]?

Robert,

All good questions! I could go on for days with this kind of inside baseball stuff. I’ve been living it full time for more than twenty years, and it obviously interests you because you are actually trying to hone your shootout skills and figure out how many of what pressings you need to get one going, etc., etc.

Not many others are doing what you are doing in a serious way, so how helpful anyone will find this information is hard to know. Under the circumstances, I should have kept my answers shorter rather than longer but I could not resist going into more detail than might have been advisable. Feel free to skim if you like.

Why not put more TML pressings into shootouts?

If they had pressed plenty of them and they’d ended up sitting in record bins all over town for twenty bucks a pop, we could get a bunch in and see if we could figure which stampers, if any, are able to reach the Super Hot stamper level.

(more…)

What Are the Best Stampers for Led Zeppelin’s Albums?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

What are the best sounding stampers for Led Zeppelin’s albums?

As if we would tell you!

This is a reworked excerpt from a much longer piece entitled record collecting for audiophiles – the limits of expert advice

In it we discussed the various stampers for some of Led Zeppelin’s albums and what role they play in our Hot Stamper shootouts.

Please to enjoy.

There is no way to know whether a record is any good without playing it, early stamper, late stamper or any other stamper.

First pressings (A, 1A, A1) don’t always win shootouts.

If they did we would simply buy only first pressings with those early stampers and only sell copies with those early stampers, since they are the best.

But this ignores the inconvenient fact that a great many other things go into the production of a record that have nothing to do with how early the stamper is.

A single copy of an album with stampers numbered (or lettered) A, when compared to B, when compared to C, has no definitive meaning for stampers A, B, C, or any others, because of the tremendous variation in the sound of all the pressings with A,B,C and other stampers.

Example Number One

There is a hot stamper for a certain Zep album that always wins the shootouts, [redacted].

It beats the hell out of the early stampers, A and B. In fact, we don’t even go after A and B anymore because they are expensive and rarely sound good enough to recoup our investment of the time and money we would spend buying, cleaning and auditioning them in a shootout.

A and B can be good, but why pay top dollar for them when they have never been any better than “good?”

We’re looking for “great” so that we can charge a premium price for them. This accomplishes three things that are obviously of great importance to any business:

  1. It pleases the hell out of our customers.
  2. It covers our costs, and
  3. It lets us pay our staff good wages and bonuses for their hard work, skill and knowledge.

(more…)

How Does the Abbey Road Half-Speed of Sticky Fingers Sound?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

A listing for an early domestic Hot Stamper pressing for Sticky Fingers will typically be introduced this way:

If you have never heard one of our Hot Stamper pressings of the album, you (probably) cannot begin to appreciate just how amazingly well-recorded an album it is.

It is truly a landmark Glyn Johns / Andy Johns / Chris Kimsey recording, as well as our favorite by the Stones, a Top 100 Title (of course) and one that earned 5 stars on Allmusic (ditto).

5 stars: “With its offhand mixture of decadence, roots music, and outright malevolence, Sticky Fingers set the tone for the rest of the decade for the Stones.”

However, we found the new Half-Speed Heavy Vinyl pressing mastered by Miles Showell at Abbey Road to be seriously lacking in “outright malevolence.” It’s so tame that even at high volume it would be unlikely to disturb the most innocuous afternoon tea in the back garden of a country estate.

Brown Sugar is:

  • It’s smaller
  • Not as weighty or lively
  • Tonally pretty close

Sway is:

  • Tonally pretty close
  • Just missing some weight and dynamics

Oh, is that all? Well then, not as bad as it could have been, right?

1.5+, which means it would qualify for our lowest Hot Stamper grade. But no record that does not earn at least that grade on both sides can make it to our site, and when we flipped the album over, side two let us down even more than side one.

Bitch is:

  • A little sandy up top

I Got the Blues is:

  • Missing the dynamics

Grade for side two: 1+. Substandard. Not good enough to sell.

(more…)

Hot Stamper Sharing Can’t Get Off the Ground, How Come?

Basic Concepts and Record Realities Explained 

The above link takes you to our blog. Normally such a link would take you to our in-stock Hot Stamper pressings on the site for the band in question, but we rarely have any Traffic albums to sell these days, which is the case as of this writing.

Finding just the right Traffic pressings, with audiophile-quality vinyl no less, requires effort and resources that we just haven’t been committing to lately. We hope to do better in 2025.

In 2014 somebody on the Hoffman forum tried to get a Hot Stamper thread going under this heading: cheap Hot Stampers revealed.

The thread:

“If you have a “hot stamper” record – one that smokes and takes no prisoners, I mean a BADASS pressing, show it here with matrix info, label or other identifying features so we can all hunt with a bit of a head-start.

“I know these records are out there, just looking for a place to show off their analog glory.

“Here is a recent find that fits the bill and then some:

“Traffic: Best Of Traffic UK.

“Matrix # ILPS 9112 A-1/B-1”

OK, let’s talk about this Island reissue. We know the record well. If it sounds the way the copies we played over the years have sounded, we would say it can be good, not great, and if it qualified for Hot Stamper status, it might — might — earn a plus and a half at best. (1.5+.)

We don’t even bother to pick them up at any price these days, if that tells you anything.

He got very little support in his endeavor. The thread closed after a while with practically nothing in it.

Could it be that the folks on the Hoffman forum have a poor grasp of the amount of effort, time and money it takes to find Hot Stampers?

And, having committed to neither the effort, the time nor the money, find that they have nothing of any value to contribute to such a list?  

Yes, that could be. That definitely could be. Thank god it doesn’t keep them from criticizing those of us who, working in concert with a staff of ten or so, have devoted ourselves to the task and found them by the thousands.

By the way, we know that Traffic title very well. The Pink Label original is by far the best pressing in our experience. No copy we have ever heard on the label promoted by this poster would qualify as much more than a bargain Hot Stamper in comparison to the Pink Label and Pink Rim label pressings that we sell, although of course, not having heard his copy, we can’t say it’s not fabulous. 

It’s just not very likely to be fabulous. 

(more…)

How Does the Brass Sound on Your Copy of Sticky Fingers?

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

The best copies have texture and real dynamics in the brass.

The bad copies are smeared, grainy and unpleasant when the brass comes in.

Toss those bad ones and start shooting out the good ones.

Believe me, if you find a good one it will be worth all the work.

One customer observed that the recording was “deliberately a bit muddy and smeared…” and he was mostly right about that. We replied as follows;

You are spot on with your observation about the sound being deliberately muddy.

Glyn Johns loves his tube compressors. They can make some tracks murkier than many of us would like, but they work positive wonders most of the time.

A lot of the smearing you reference is from uncleaned or improperly cleaned vinyl. Once we got our cleaning regimen dialed in, a lot of the smear we used to hear so often stopped being a problem.

3-Dimensionality also greatly improves with clean, fully restored vinyl. A lot of old records just sound like old records until you learn how to clean them right.

Play It Loud

Even through the noise of the bad vinyl you can hear the audio magic. The sound is exactly what you want from a Stones album: deep punchy bass and dynamic grungy guitars.

This record is to be played loud like it says on the inner sleeve and the surface noise is to be ignored.

The louder you play it, the less bothersome the noise will be.

This album ROCKS and it was not made to be listened to in a comfy chair with a glass of wine.

(more…)

“I had no idea there was this much difference between copies.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The  Rolling Stones Available Now

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

Hey Tom,   

Wow! this copy of Exile on MS is amazing! It sounded fantastic before my amps even were warm.

The drums sound like they are in the same room as the room with the microphone; the horns sound like… well, like… horns.

The copy I had before was brand new and sucked. This $350 copy is worth the dough and I am surprised. I am tempted to stop buying vinyl at all unless it has been pre-tested by your team (this will be tough). 

I had NO IDEA there was this much difference between copies.

Brian S. 

Brian,

Thanks for your letter.

Now you know what we know, that there is a huge difference between pressings of an album like Exile on Main Street, and the only way to find the good ones is to keep playing copy after copy until you luck into one.

Here is how we described one we found in one of our recent shootouts:

    • The better copies are also much less gritty and hard, but manage to keep the raw, grungy, heavily tube-compressed sound the Stones and their exceptionally talented engineer, Glyn Johns, were going for
    • The sound may be too grungy for some, making Exile fairly difficult to reproduce, but the best sounding pressings — played at good, loud levels on big dynamic speakers, in a large, heavily-treated room — are a blast

The harder you work to get distortion out of your system and room, the more enjoyable you will find this album, which is exactly the reason you want to do all that work in the first place — in order to get the most out of difficult-to-reproduce albums like Exile.

(more…)

Letter of the Week – “You can’t hear the speakers; the sound fills the entire room, including the back walls.”

More Customer Letters Comparing Our Hot Stamper Pressings to Their Heavy Vinyl

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased a while back:

Hey Tom, 

A good friend of mine came over today to take a look at my cartridge setup now that it is properly burned in. I was still getting some brightness in the right channel and we found that the cartridge was not seating properly in the groove. A few adjustments and now perfection!

My litmus test, Yes Close to the Edge now sounds absolutely unbelievable! You can’t hear the speakers; the sound fills the entire room, including the back walls.

As you stated, everyone should own a copy of this record to determine if their setup is correct.

I went through several of my hot stampers and I feel like I am in audio heaven now.

Morning Has Broken also sounds amazing; Piano definition, Cat’s voice, etc.

nother 3D sound extravaganza!

Finally, I had a chance to compare Led Zeppelin 4 (your hot stamper vs. my 200g Classic).

Before the cartridge tweaking I was hard pressed to tell the difference.

Now that the stylus is properly seated in the groove, with the Hot Stamper I can hear more detail in Jimmy’s guitar, more airiness in Robert’s voice and just an overall more listenable experience.

The entire soundstage is about 3 feet higher than the Classic version.

Well, I am spoiled again and loving it!

Thanks again,
Rob

Rob,

Glad to hear your turntable is working better. As you say, differences between Hot Stampers and Heavy Vinyl pressings are not much more obvious, and that’s a good thing. We think audiophiles should learn to do all these sorts of things for themselves, and have written about it at some length: Tuning and tweaking are essential to improving your critical listening skills.

(more…)

Listening in Depth to Led Zeppelin IV

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Zep’s mighty fourth album.

Here are some albums currently on our site with similar track by track breakdowns.

We always have a great time doing Zep IV shootouts. It’s one of those all-too-rare cases where amazing music and amazing sonics coexist on the same slab of vinyl. You just need to find the right slab, a proposition that turns out to be much harder than it sounds.

You probably know by now just how tough it is to find audiophile quality sonics on this album. Far too many copies just leave us cold, but the best pressings, whether British or domestic, are so good, and so much fun at the loud volumes we employ, that it ends up being worth all the time, trouble and expense it takes to wade through the vinyl dreck to find them.

But the best copies are so good, and so much fun, that it was definitely worth the trouble. Because the best copies ROCK, and it is a positive THRILL to hear this record rock the way it was meant to. If you have big speakers and the power to drive them, your neighbors are going to be very upset with you.

This link will take you to the Hot Stamper pressings of our hardest rockin’ albums currently available on the site.

Here are some of the other titles that have earned a place on our none rocks harder list.

Side One

Black Dog

The key to both of the first two tracks is to find a copy with a solid bottom end. Next look for an extended top end, easily heard on all the splashing cymbals.

Now listen for a tonally correct Robert Plant. The copies with lots of top will typically have him sounding too bright.

The copies with little in the way of high frequency extension will have him sounding veiled and dull.

One out of ten copies (with potentially good stampers) will get all three right: the top, the bottom and his voice. When you hear it you know it immediately, but you sure do have to go through a lot of copies before you have much of a chance of hearing it!

Rock and Roll

“[Rock and Roll] was a little tough to record because with the hi-hat being so open and [Bonham] hitting it that hard it was difficult to control. But I managed somehow or another.” Andy Johns

“The better copies prove once and for all that these are some of most up-front, lively and above all real sounding rock cymbals ever put on tape.” Tom Port
(more…)

Sticky Fingers – Worst Version Ever!

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

Mastered by Robert Ludwig. (Scroll down to find links to more of Robert Ludwig’s work.)

Digitally remastered using UV22 Super CD encoding by Apogee Electronics, Santa Monica, California.

This RTI 180g copy (with the zipper cover) is one of a series of five titles Bob Ludwig cut in the 90s. According to the man, after cutting the record he chanced upon a consumer copy and was shocked to hear how bad it sounded.   

It sounded, according to him, nothing like the record he had cut. Somehow they had botched the pressings and ruined the sound. How this could happen I can’t imagine.

Bob says that’s what they did and we’ll take him at his word, out of respect for one of the all-time great mastering engineers, RL himself. He promptly sold off all his analog mastering equipment and got out of the game.

Can you blame him? According to him they put his name all over a record the sound of which they had ruined. Guess I would stop making records too if that were the case.

By the way, the sound was dismal on every title from that series we played except for Heart’s, which was okay, certainly better than the average pressing out there, but no Hot Stamper by any stretch of the imagination. 

(more…)

On Tons Of Sobs, the Domestic Pressings Just Don’t Make the Cut These Days

Hot Stamper Pressings of British Blues Rock Albums Available Now

Years ago — in 2011 to be exact — we wrote the following in a listing for a very good sounding domestic pressing:

Solid bass, present vocals, plenty of energy — the only thing missing here is the Tubey Magical richness and sweetness that only the British originals (in our experience) have, and in spades by the way.

But try to find one. Over the last two or three years I think we’ve managed to get hold of exactly one clean copy.

Fast forward a number of years and we’ve only had a few since then. I have seen the original Pink Label British pressing of this album sell on the web for more than 1000 dollars, which might explain why we rarely have them.

But if you want to hear this record in all of its glory, the UK Island pressings are the only game in town.

Both Pink and Sunray labels sound good, just make sure they are from the UK.

And don’t buy any later label pressing from any country if you want the best sound.

(more…)