Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jimi Hendrix Available Now
One of the worst things those dummies at Classic ever did. The mono mix is just plain awful.
Their reissue of the mono mix is flat and dry with practically no Tubey Magic whatsoever.
It positively screams “CHEAP REISSUE.” That two word description reminds me of this record, although to be fair the sound is quite a bit worse on the Hendrix.
Is it the worst version of the album ever pressed? It almost has to be, doesn’t it?
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now
Houses of the Holy is another one of the very bad records Michael Fremer put on his 2009 Top LP list, while passing over one of Classic’s better titles, the first Led Zeppelin album.
(We don’t like it as much as we used to, but it is still a good record if you get a good pressing of it, something that can never be guaranteed of course. We link to our review of it below.)
Michael Fremer’s web site used to be called called musicangle (now defunct). On this site you would have been able to find a feature called “157 In-Print LPs You Should Own!”
Surprisingly it seems that the link still works. If I had made a list this misguided, it surely would have turned into a “I’m sorry, I didn’t know what I was talking about” commentary. I would have felt an obligation to correct the record, out of sheer embarrassment at the very least.
But this guy apparently never learns. As far as he’s concerned, what worked in 1982 ain’t broke and don’t need fixing.
The List
I can’t begin to count the bad records on this list.
There are scores of them — albums that are so bad that we actually created an audiophile hall of shame section to help you avoid them. Obviously we never got around to making listings for them all and cataloging their flaws. Who has that kind of time?
But Michael Fremer holds just the opposite view — he thinks these are records you should own. Now I suppose we can disagree over the merits (or lack of them) of a title such as Houses of the Holy on Classic (reviewed here). It’s a free country after all.
But the reason this list does such positive harm to the record-loving audiophile public, in my opinion, is that MF passes over one of the best records Classic ever cut, Led Zeppelin’s first album, in order to put the ridiculously bright and aggressive Houses of the Holy on the list in its place.
More Reviews and Commentaries for Heavily Processed Recordings
This album has some of the worst sound I have ever heard in my life, worse than The Hunter even, and that’s saying something.
If this kind of crap is what audiophiles choose to play, then they deserve all the derision heaped upon them.
We’re glad we no longer offer embarrassments such as The Well, although we used to, many years ago. In our defense we would simply offer up this old maxim: de gustibus non est disputandum.
Our old slogan was Records for Audiophiles, Not Audiophile Records, but we also followed this business rule: Give the Customer What He Wants.
Now we give the customer what he wants, as long as he wants one of the best sounding pressings of the album ever made. (In this case obviously there is no good sounding pressing.)
How Bad Is It?
If this isn’t the perfect example of a pass/not-yet record, I don’t know what would be.
Some records are so wrong, or are so lacking in qualities that are critically important to their sound — qualities typically found in abundance on the right vintage pressings (although there is no acceptable pressing of this record, vintage or otherwise) — that the defenders of these records are fundamentally failing to judge them properly. We call these records pass/not-yet, implying that the admirers of these kinds of phony-sounding records are not where they need to be in audio yet, but that there is still hope, and if they devote enough time and money to the effort, they can get where they need to be, the same way we did.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Little Feat Available Now
A Hot Stamper pressing of this amazing sounding album, a title we regret to say we have in stock only rarely, might be described this way:
Some of the best sounding live rock and roll sound you will ever hear outside of a concert venue. If you want to understand the unique appeal of the band, there’s no better place to start than right here.
It’s one of our all-time favorite live recordings and their single best release – a true Masterpiece.
I have lately been listening to this album in its entirety at the gym (playing the standard cassette over headphones) and enjoying the hell out of it. As good as their best studio albums are, and I count myself as big a fan of the band as there is, Waiting for Columbus is surely the pinnacle of their recorded output. It is as close to perfect as any live album I know.
(The Last Record Album is my personal favorite of their studio albums, but since nobody seems to want to buy it at the prices we charge, I regret to say we had to stop doing shootouts for it years ago. We were losing too much money that way.)
But Bernie Grundman’s version is just another one in a very long line of disastrous recuts, the kind of crap he has been churning out for the last thirty years. It’s all but unplayable on modern high quality equipment. (If it’s not on your system, you might consideer the idea that you still have plenty of work left to do, audio-wise.)
As you can see from the notes below, record one may be passable, but record two is NFG. How is it possible to turn such a wonderful recording into such a ridiculously bad sounding pressing? Even Mobile Fidelity did a better job with the album, and they’re one of the most incompetent remastering outfits that the audiophile world has even known.
We’re frankly at a loss to understand any of it.Bernie Grundman used to make good sounding records. We know that for a fact, having played them by the hundreds. Apparently those days are gone, and, based on this album and plenty of others, there is very little chance of them returning.
Notes on the Sound
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Willie Nelson Available Now
This letter came to us many years ago. Updates have been added as of 2024.
One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he had purchased:
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 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
Hot Stamper Living Stereo Orchestral Titles Available Now
Well below the reproduction of the front page of our old catalog you will find the review I wrote in 2007 for the Classic Records’ Heavy Vinyl pressing of Witches’ Brew.
Clearly I did not care for it in the least. In fact, I thought it was one of the worst reissues I’d ever heard, so aggressive, boosted and unnatural it all but defied understanding. That anyone could play such a record and not notice how wrong it sounded did not speak well for audiophiles.
Now when I think about the Classic Records reissue of Witches’ Brew and its awful sound, it’s obviously a modern remastering I could not possibly have liked.
However, in preparing to move to Georgia in 2022, I found myself digging through some old catalogs from the early Nineties. Something I read in one of them chilled me to the bone.
There it was in black and white, lower left: my rave review for the Classic Records pressing of Witches’ Brew.
It’s actually on the front page of the catalog, along with at least one other record that I would be mortified to sell today: the OJC pressing of Saxophone Colossus.
(As soon as I find my review in the old catalog for Saxophone Colossus, I will post it. I can hardly believe I wrote it, but I did. I wrote all my catalogs back then. My lack of competence and the guilt associated with my lack of expertise at the time is undeniable. It obviously would be foolish and wrong of me to try to deny any of it, so I don’t.)
Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Pressings Available Now
Some person on some audiophile forum might feel obligated at some point to explain to you, benighted soul that you are, that the old classical records you — and other audiophiles like you — revere so highly have to be recognized these days for what they are: drastically compromised by the limits of their old technology.
Simply put, there’s just no way they can sound good.
It’s just a fact. It’s science. Technology marches on and those old records belong on the ash heap of history collecting dust, not sitting on the platter of a modern turntable.
That’s why the audio world was crying out for Bernie Grundman to recut those Living Stereo recordings from the 50s and 60s on his modern transistorized cutting equipment and have RTI press them on quiet, flat, high-resolution 180 gram vinyl, following the best practices of an industry that everybody knows has been constantly improving for decades.
Right?
For those of us who actually play these records, there is little evidence to support this narrative.
It’s a story made up mostly of assertions, along with an unhealthy amount of faith in so-called experts. [1]
Note that Bernie had no experience cutting classical music. He was a rock, pop and jazz guy. Robert Ludwig was the classical guy, cutting hundreds of albums for labels like Nonesuch in the 60s. What a different world it would be if he was the guy who cut for Classic Records! This review gets to the heart of the matter.
However, the contrarian view outlined above only really holds true for a very small minority of audiophiles of the analog persuasion: those given to empirical testing of such propositions. [2]
For an audiophile to compare the new pressings to the old ones, proper testing requires that the following four conditions can are met:
If you’ve spent much time on this blog, you’ve probably read by now that the first three on this list are what allow you to achieve the fourth.
Compromises?
The best classical recordings of the 50s, 60s and 70s were compromised in every imaginable way, yet still they sound amazing.
Hot Stamper Orchestral Pressings Available Now
The Classic reissue of LSC 2446, as well as the Analogue Productions version from 2013 (the original 33 is the only one I have played, mastered by Ryan Smith at Sterling), are both disasters for many reasons, but they do have one specific failing that is easy to recognize.
Both pressings are worth further discussion and analysis because they provide an easy test that can show you how wrong they are.
When reading the commentary below, keep in mind that what is bad about the Classic Records reissue from 1995 is what is bad about the Analogue Productions remaster put out many years later.
As I noted for some of the Classic Heifetz titles a while back, for all I know the CDs for his Living Stereo recordings may have better sound. That’s probably the first place to go, considering Classic’s rather poor track record regarding the remastering of his music.
Case in point: The Living Stereo CDs I own (both the CD and the SACD) of Scheherazade are dramatically better than the awful Classic Records pressing of it.
Audiophiles who don’t notice what is wrong with the Classic pressing need to get hold of a nice RCA White Dog pressing to see just how poorly the Classic stacks up. (They could even find one that’s not so nice and listen through the surface noise. The difference would still be obvious.)
UPDATE 2025
It has been many years since a White Dog pressing won a shootout. In our last listing for a Hot Stamper White Dog pressing in 2024, we noted:
Now that we know which stampers have the potential to win our shootouts, the right Shaded Dog originals have lately been coming out on top, although the White Dog pressings can still sound quite good, just not as good.
No White Dog earned a higher grade than 2+, and none of the three WD pressings we had on hand earned 2+ on both sides.
Our notes for the various sides of the WD pressings read: “a bit brash, sometimes squawky, dry and bright,” and the like.
Those of you looking for the best sound should stick to the Shaded Dog label originals. They are rich and lush in a way that the WD reissues in our experience never are. I used to swear by the WD reissues, but I see now how wrong I was. My judgments were colored by a darker, less revealing stereo than the one we use now, and that makes all the difference in the world.
Back to LSC 2446
The solo violin in the left channel at the opening of the first movement should be all it takes to hear what is wrong with the modern remastered pressings.
Anyone has ever attended a classical music concert will have no trouble recognizing that the violin on any of the Heavy Vinyl pressings, including the Analogue Productions pressing, is completely wrong and sounds nothing like a violin in a concert hall would ever sound.
And I mean ever.
No matter where you might be sitting.
No matter how good or bad the hall’s acoustics.
The violin on these Heavy Vinyl pressings is dark, it’s veiled, and it’s overly rich, as well as lacking in overtones.
Solo violins in live performance never sound like that.
They are clear, clean and present. You have no trouble at all “seeing” them, no matter where you sit.
Hot Stamper Living Stereo Classical and Orchestral Titles Available Now
As I noted in Part One of this commentary, I promised to find my old blurb for the Classic pressing of Witches’ Brew from the catalog I sent out for years in the mid-’90s.
Well, I found it.
The excerpt from the earlier commentary seen below gets to the heart of the problem with my (embarrassing) review.
“With an old school audio system you will continue to be fooled by bad records, just as I and all my audio buds were fooled thirty and forty years ago. Audio has improved immensely in that time. If you’re still playing Heavy Vinyl and Audiophile pressings, there’s a world of sound you’re missing. We would love to help you find it.”
Ouch.
I apparently had one of those systems in the ’90s, because my system sure wasn’t doing a very good job of showing me how awful the Classic pressing of Witches’ Brew was.
Also, my guess that the Classic pressing was 10db more dynamic is risible. That number was clearly plucked out of thin air by someone who didn’t know what he was talking about (10db is a lot).
I will take some solace from my comment that “90% of the magic of the original is here,” which means that even in 1994 I could hear that Bernie’s cutting system had problems reproducing the Tubey Magical Living Stereo sound that was all the rage at the time, mostly owing to Harry Pearson’s listing so many RCAs on his Super Disc List.
And, although we still like Gibson’s reading of the work, these days our favorite performance of Danse Macabre is this one on EMI, one we only discovered about five years ago. It’s one advantage to being in the record business. You get to play lots and lots of records, and playing large numbers of records is practically the only way to find the ones that are even better than the ones you know.
Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin Available Now
An audiophile hall of shame pressing and another Classic Records Classical LP reviewed and found wanting.
Classic Records ruined this album, as anyone who has played some of their classical reissues should have expected. Their version is dramatically more aggressive, shrill and harsh than the Shaded Dogs we’ve played, with almost none of the sweetness, richness and ambience that the best RCA pressings have in such abundance.
In fact their pressing is just plain awful, like most of the classical recordings they remastered, and should be avoided at any price.
Apparently, most audiophiles (including audiophile record reviewers) have never heard a top quality classical recording reproduced properly. If they had, Classic Records would have gone out of business immediately after producing their first three Living Stereo titles, all of which were dreadful and labeled as such by us way back in 1994. I’m not sure why the rest of the audiophile community was so easily fooled, but I can say that we weren’t, at least when it came to their classical releases.
(We admit to having made plenty of mistaken judgments about their jazz and rock, and we have the We Was Wrong entries to prove it.)