Eddie Kramer, Engineer – Reviews and Commentaries

Our History with Led Zeppelin’s Rock Classic from 1990 – 2010

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

UPDATE 2026

In 2010 we wrote the overview below about what we thought we knew about Zep II. We have since amended the text in a few places and added some links. Please to enjoy.

This is undoubtedly one of the best, maybe THE best hard rock recording of all time, but you need a good pressing if you’re going to unleash anything approaching its full potential. We just conducted a shootout and heard MUCH more bad sound than good. You name it — imports, reissues, originals — we’ve played ’em, and most of them were TERRIBLE.

Especially the non-RL originals. That’s some of the worst sound we’ve ever heard.

If you see a “J” stamper, run for your life.

The best copies of Zep II have the kind of rock and roll firepower that’s guaranteed to bring any system to its knees. I can tell you with no sense of shame whatsoever that I do not have a system powerful enough to play this record at the levels I was listening to it at in one of our shootouts a while back. When the big bass comes in, hell yeah it distorts. It would have distorted worse at any concert the band ever played. Did people walk out, or ask the band to turn down the volume? No way. The volume IS the sound.

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We Was Wrong about Mr. Fantasy

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Traffic Available Now

UPDATE 2026

For our newest take on the sound of the various labels and stampers for Mr. Fantasy, please click here. Years ago we wrote:

We used to think that The Best of Traffic had better sound, but in a head to head comparison with this very copy, we were proved wrong.

Big, full-bodied and lively, with huge amounts of space and off the charts Tubey Magic, the sound here is Hard to Fault.

This is one of the best sounding Traffic records ever made. Musically it’s hit or miss, but so is every other Traffic record, including my favorite, John Barleycorn. The best songs here are Heaven Is In Your Mind, Dear Mr. Fantasy, and Coloured Rain. The first of these is worth the price of the album alone, in my opinion. It’s a wonderful example of late ’60s British psychedelic rock. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “What a mind-blowing experience!”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jimi Hendrix Available Now

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

Hey Tom,    

Well, you found another INCREDIBLE Hot Stamper with “Axis: Bold as Love.” What a mind-blowing experience!

This was at least my fifth copy of this album and it shamed all other sad sacks I had bought.

I really don’t know how you do it, but I’m infinitely grateful that you do. The notion of a “great sounding Hendrix album” almost sounds like an oxymoron, but again you struck sonic gold and unearthed one of those rare few that offer a deeply satisfying listening experience – to put it mildly!

My appreciation for Hendrix’s towering musical achievements has doubled, maybe even tripled, from hearing this Hot Stamper. That’s quite a feat for an artist I already considered to be one of the best ever! All this because of those magical Hot Stamper grooves. This goes to show what a difference amazing sound can have on the ability to appreciate an album or artist.

Oh, and I once owned a copy of the abysmal Classic pressing. Among its many other failings is the decision to re-release it in mono. Mono!? “Axis” is one of the creative examples of stereo mixing known to man! Reducing this album to mono is a travesty, but I guess that didn’t bother Classic Records.

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Listening in Depth to Houses of the Holy

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

You really get an understanding of just how much of a production genius Jimmy Page was when you listen to a copy of Houses on high quality modern equipment, the kind that simply did not exist when the record came out in 1973.

To take just one example, listen to how clearly the multi-tracked guitars can be heard in the different layers and areas of the soundstage. On some songs you will have no trouble picking out three, four and even more guitars playing, each with its own unique character. The clarity of the better copies allows you to recognize — perhaps for the first time — the special contribution each is making to the finished song.

Side One

The Song Remains the Same
The Rain Song

Check out the guitars — the sound should be warm, sweet and delicate. There are some dead quiet passages in this song that are almost always going to have some surface noise. Most copies start out a bit noisy but almost always get quieter as the music goes along.

Over the Hills and Far Away

This is a great test track for side one. It starts with lovely acoustic guitars before the Monster Zep Rock Chords come crashing in. If both parts of the song sound correct and balanced, you more than likely have a winner. And the bigger the dynamic contrast between the parts the better.

Turn your volume up good and high in order to get the full effect, then stand back and let the boys have at it.

The Crunge (more…)

The Wrong Early Pressings of Mad Dogs and Englishmen Have Horrendous Sound

Hot Stamper Pressings of Classic Rock Albums Available Now

If you get the wrong stampers on this record, you will discover, as we did, that it’s clearly been mastered from a badly made dub. The “cassette-like” sound quality will not be hard to recognize. If you have stumbled onto one of those pressings, give up on it and try your luck elsewhere, making sure to note the bad stampers.

Most copies have a tendency to get smeary and congested when loud.

Listen for good transients and not too much compression.

Most copies are opaque, as well as dull up top; try to find the ones with some degree of transparency and as much top end extension as you can (the percussion will be helped most of all by the extended top).

And of course you need to find a copy that rocks, as this is a definitely a Rock Concert, although what it most reminds me of is Ray Charles doing a choice set of modern classics, mixing it up by off-handedly mixing in a few of his own. See how they all fit together? That’s how the pros do it. (The main pro in this case is Leon Russell, the mastermind of the whole operation. He clearly knows what he is doing.)

All tracks were selected and mixed by none other than the legendary Glyn Johns.

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Letter of the Week – “You guys aren’t kidding… blew me away.”

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

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing of Their Satanic Majesties Request he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

Just played Their Satanic Majesties Request that I received from you. You guys aren’t kidding. The copy is excellent – blew me away. It replaces my original copy (with the 3D photo). I have a pretty good system, and it really stood out – lots of detail and quite a few surprises.

Thanks for curating such great vinyl.

Rodney

Rodney,

Thanks for your letter. The originals we’ve played are simply not competitive with the best sounding reissues, which is why we sell the best sounding reissues for more money than the originals.

Anybody can buy an original. Only somebody who does rigorous shootouts of multiple pressings from different eras can know which are the best sounding pressings of any given album (keeping in mind that the results from any given shootout, like any scientific finding, are provisional.)

You came to the right place for the best sound and you got it.

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Houses of the Holy on Classic Records and 156 Other Records No Audiophile Should Want Anything to Do With

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.

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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.

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Led Zeppelin on Prestigious Japanese Limited Edition Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

A classic case of live and learn. In 2006 I finally woke up to how ridiculously bad these Japanese pressings I was selling back in the 90s actually were.

It’s what real progress in audio is all about, in this case about ten years’ worth. Those are ten years that really shook my world, and by 2007 we had discovered much better cleaning technologies and given up on Heavy Vinyl and audiophile bullshit pressings such as these, whew!

Our story from 2006:

I used to sell the German Import reissues of the Zep catalog in the 90s. At the time I thought they we’re pretty good, but then the Japanese AMJY Series came out and I thought they were clearly better.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. I now realize those Japanese pressings are bright as bright can be. Now, not-too-surprisingly, the German pressings sound more or less right (on some of their titles).

They tend to be tonally correct, which is more than you can say for most Zep pressings, especially some of the Classics [linked here], which have the same brightness issue (as well as many other problems).

UPDATE 2024

Only one of the German-pressed Zeppelin records is good enough to win shootouts, the only title of theirs on German vinyl that we buy these days. Of course we tried them all, at no small expense I might add, because there were a great many pressings cut by many different engineers over the course of decades that were pressed in Germany, and the only way we could judge them was to buy them and have them shipped over. In the end only one had the big, bold, dynamic sound we were after.

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How Good Are the UK Original Unboxed Deccas of Satanic Majesties?

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

How good are the original Unboxed Deccas on Satanic Majesties?

They can be very good.

But they are never as good as the right later pressings with the Decca in a box label, the ones produced from about 1970 on.

The Unboxed Decca pressing earned a Super Hot Stamper grade (A++). The later pressing, with the right stamper, showed us just how good the album can sound.

Since the originals are pricey and hard to find, and, as a rule, noisier than the later pressings, we don’t pick them up unless we find them for cheap, which rarely happens. They have not won any shootouts, and that is very unlikely to change.

There is one set of stampers for this album that always wins, and those stampers are not found on the early label.

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