Eddie Kramer, Engineer – Reviews and Commentaries

Are Your Cellists Digging In on I Am the Walrus?

Hot Stamper Pressings of The Beatles’ Music Available Now

This commentary was written many years ago.

Over the last decade I Am The Walrus has evolved into a good test for side one, a fact that came as a complete surprise to me. As I was listening to the various copies in a shootout years ago I noted that the opening cellos and basses in the right channel were often tonally identical from copy to copy, but sounded quite a bit more lively and energetic on some pressings relative to others. Was it EQ? Level? Compression?  

Why so much more passion from the players on some copies and not others?

As I tried to puzzle it out, playing first one copy and then another, it became clear to me what was happening. The cellists and the bassists were just plain digging HARDER into the strings on the best copies. When you see live classical music, the cellists at the front of the orchestra are usually sawing away with abandon when the music is really going. They dig their bows hard into the strings to make them vibrate as loud as possible. To make their instruments heard in the back row it becomes a matter of muscle, of pure physical exertion.

So armed with the copies where the string players are working the hardest, I checked the other tracks. Sure enough, the opening cut, MMT, jumped out of the speakers with the most energy I had heard on any copy. As I went through the tracks one by one, they had the most life of any of the copies I had been listening to. To use a word that was popular at the time, the music was HAPPENING.

This was the final piece to the puzzle. Tonality always comes first. Frequency extension; lack of distortion; rich, powerful bass — these are important qualities as well. But the life of the music is in the micro and macro dynamics, and that is what I had not been paying sufficient attention to during the shootout.

That was until I listened to Walrus and heard the players working up a good healthy sweat. Then I knew I had a Hot Stamper. And when I played the not-so-Hot Stampers, the string guys sounded like session musicians picking up a paycheck.

Where was their passion? Didn’t they realize they were making a classic?

If you get the right pressing they sure were!

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Jimmy Page’s Houses of the Holy Needed Tubes and Didn’t Get Them

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

We did not care for the newly remastered version of Houses of the Holy. It badly lacks the kind of mastering that Robert Ludwig brought to the sound, and by that we mean lots of lovely tubes in the mastering chain.

What tube equipment he used and how he used it is something we have been researching for years now, but rather than go down that rabbit hole for the moment, let’s just say the Tubey Magic that is all over the original cuttings of the album is hard to find on the new one, and that means it’s missing a quality that makes Houses of the Holy one of the most luscious audiophile listening experiences one can have, even for those of us who long ago gave up on tube equipment.

The notes for side one, track one (The Song Remains the Same) and track three (Over the Hills and Far Away), read:

  • Blary, but not as awful as I expected
  • Dry, top end is bright, big though

The notes for side two, tracks one (Dancing Days) and three (No Quarter), read:

  • A bit thick, tonally OK
  • Less space around the low end

Tubes are what the doctor ordered, precisely the medicine that was needed to cure many of this pressing’s problems, but tubes are not what Jimmy Page and his engineer, John Davis, brought to the project, and more’s the pity. Any good domestic original will show you exactly what is wrong with the sound of this version in under two minutes.

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Led Zeppelin II on Classic Records – Seriously, What Could Be Sadder?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

An unmitigated disaster — ridiculously bright and ridiculously crude.

In short, a completely unlistenable piece of garbage, and, along with the MoFi pressing from 1982, one of the worst sounding versions of the album ever made.

Over the years we have done many Led Zeppelin shootouts, often including the Classic Heavy Vinyl Pressings as a “reference.” After all, the Classic pressings are considered by many — if not most — audiophiles as superior to other pressings.

What could be sadder?

In fact, you will find very few critics of the Classic Zep LPs outside of those of us (me and the rat in my pocket) who write for this Better Records, and even we used to recommend three of the Zep titles on Classic: Led Zeppelin I, IV and Presence when they first came out.

Wrong on all counts.

Since then we’ve made it a point to review most of the Classic Zeps, a public service of Better Records. We don’t actually like any of them now, although the first album is still by far the best of the bunch.

Below you will find our reviews of the more than 200 Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years.

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Hey Mr. Fantasy – Where’s the Bass?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Traffic Available Now

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

A long, long time ago, probably at the start of the 2000s, we put up this early UK pressing on the Island pink label.

Charged good money for it, too, justified by the fact that the early pink label pressing would be assumed to have the best sound for audiophiles in search of higher fidelity.

Back then we didn’t know what we know now, which is that the right reissues are dramatically better sounding.

In fact, they handily win our shootouts, something they have been doing for at least the last ten years or so.

The pink label pressing we review below is very unlikely to earn a grade high enough to qualify for Hot Stamper status.

Our Old Listing

This pink label original Island pressing has amazingly sweet, open, extended and transparent mids and highs.

It has two major shortcomings: a lack of bass, and a fair amount of surface noise.

If you can add a few — let’s say three — dB around 50 cycles and can put up with some surface noise and scratches, you are guaranteed to hear some wonderful sound in the best tubey Island tradition. 

Side two sounds better than side one. It has more bass and is more tonally correct overall.

Live and learn is our motto, and progress in audio is a feature, not a bug, of record collecting at the most advanced levels. (“Advanced” is a code word for having little to no interest in any remastered pressing marketed to the audiophile community. If you want to avoid the worst of them, we are happy to help you do that.)

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Letter of the Week – “The copy I bought from you 100% blew my mind, with no wiggle room….completely blown!”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

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

Hi Tom,
I’ve been waiting for the right time to play the RL WHS LZII. It finally happened last night. I do have a LZ II with RL on side 1, and I was previously quite happy with it. I did prefer it over all the other copies, both regular and audiophile.

However, the copy I bought from you 100% blew my mind, with no wiggle room….completely blown!

JB’s drum kit is coming right out of the speakers like there is no tomorrow. I think I lost my mind while listening to Heartbreaker, a song I like but never really fully enjoyed……until NOW.

The room is never big enough for this one. Those punches of sound were so punchy, like George Foreman hitting Ali… massive.

Side 2 of this album is nothing short of phenomenal. I’m not sure if I own another LP that rocks like this RL one does. No wonder you made a top ten list just so you could put this one on it.

Someone will ask me or comment…why on earth would you spend $2400 on a record? To that person I will say… I am not buying a record. I am buying an experience that I can repeat as many times as I like, over and over again. To me, listening to this music in this way is priceless.

I truly don’t have the words to express what utter joy my being felt while listening to this. Can’t wait to do it again.

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Physical Graffiti on Classic Records

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

An Audiophile Hall of Shame pressing and another Classic Records Rock LP badly mastered for the benefit of audiophiles looking for easy answers and quick fixes.

Tonally correct, which is one thing you can’t say for most of the Zeps in this series, that’s for sure. Those of you with crappy domestic copies, crappy imported reissues and crappy CDs, which make up the bulk of offerings available for this recording, probably do not know what you’re missing.

What’s Lost

What is lost in these newly remastered recordings? Lots of things, but the most obvious and bothersome is transparency.

Modern records are just so damn opaque.

We can’t stand that sound. It drives us crazy. Important musical information — the kind we hear on even second-rate regular pressings — is simply nowhere to be found. That audiophiles as a group — including those that pass themselves off as champions of analog in the audio press — do not notice these failings does not speak well for either their equipment or their critical listening skills.

It is our contention that almost no one alive today is capable of making records that sound as good as the vintage ones we sell.

Once you hear a Hot Stamper pressing, those 180 gram records you own may never sound right to you again. They sure don’t sound right to us, but we are in the enviable position of being able to play the best properly-cleaned older pressings (reissues included) side by side with the newer ones.

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Magical Mystery Tour – Our Beyond White Hot Copy from 2007

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

Looking back, 2007 seems to have been a milestone year for us here at Better Records, although we certainly did not know that at the time.

Later that same year we swore off Heavy Vinyl for good (prompted by the mediocre sound of the Rhino pressing of Blue) and committed ourselves to doing record shootouts of vintage pressings full time. (Please excuse the overuse of capitals.)

Our Commentary from 2007

The best sounding Magical Mystery Tour ever! Hot Stamper copies of this album are a regular feature on this site, but we’ve NEVER heard one like this — on EITHER side.

We had no choice but to award this album the very rare grade of A++++ (Four Pluses!) on both sides.

Our lengthy commentary entitled  entitled outliers and out-of-this-world sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how to go about finding them.

We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.

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Led Zeppelin / II – Jimmy Page Remasters a Classic, Part III

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

One of our customers did his own comparison with two pressings he had on hand. (Emphasis added.)

I briefly listened to the recent JP copy against the RL pressing I have from Presswell. I think that (according to Robert Brook) the Monarch or Specialty ones usually win your shootouts, and that the Presswells don’t often sound as transparent. The copy I have is pretty good but probably still falls into this category.

Having said that, my main takeaway was the almost complete absence of reverb on the JP copy. This was especially apparent when listening to the big drums and the vocals. The RL cut seems to give a much better sense of the studio and more space around the instruments, on my system.

The imaging and placement of the musicians is clear and distinct, but not as spacious as the RL pressing. The tonality and timbre on the JP cut are very good though, and the mix is not muddy and does not fall apart in loud complex passages like most other modern pressings I have heard. But this may have been his intention: to focus the instruments and tighten up the way the compositions come across without the “echoey” quality of the reverb and the overwhelming bass of the RL cut.

Also the JP cut is a bit more angular sounding and less tubey magic, but that could be my pressing — which is definitely tubey.

The overall sound of the JP is surprisingly good, but it sounds a more compressed to me than the RL, and the dynamic range also seems a bit more constricted.

Ian

Ian,

A lot of what you are hearing I would have to check again, since a lot of what you note is not something that stuck out to me, although it ties in to the one big issue that is fundamental to the difference in sound between the two pressings.

I’ve just been reading what different reviewers have said about the sound of the new album versus the old one, and most of it does not sound very much like the albums I played, but double-checking all this now that I live in GA is going to be hard!

I may have my main guy Riley give it another listen for some things, like reverb and compressed dynamics, and see what he thinks.

Best, TP

Click here to read the original story from January, 2023

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Baby You’re a Rich Man

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

Below we discuss listening to Baby You’re a Rich Man from side two of the German MMT.

If you own a copy of the album, play yours and listen for what we describe in this track by track breakdown.

For those of you interested in digging deeper into the sound of scores of other titles, our listening in depth commentaries have track breakdowns for some of the better-known albums we’ve done shootouts for.

Baby You’re A Rich Man

This track is Demo Disc Quality on the best Hot Stamper pressings. As I was playing this song for the shootout, the thought occurred to me that if I had one track to play to someone to demonstrate what a thrill it is to have a big, expensive stereo, it would be hard to pick a better song than Baby You’re A Rich Man.

The only other one that occurs to me off the top of my head is Sergio Mendes’ For What It’s Worth off of Stillness.

The sound is wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling and big as life. You can’t get that sound with screens and you can’t get it with smaller speakers and their smaller drivers.

Once you’ve heard that sound it’s hard to get too excited about any other.

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Led Zeppelin / II – Jimmy Page Remasters a Classic, Updated

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

A customer who bought one of our Hot Stampers was sent the Page remaster, free of charge of course. He wrote us a nice letter about what a thrill it was to hear such an amazing record — the original, not the reissue — and we made the following comment to him about the shootout he said he was going to do.

Bill,

Pay special attention in your shootout to The Lemon Song. I am going to discuss some things I learned about it recently. See how all your versions do on the song and what you think each version is doing right and wrong.

Enjoy and have fun.

Click here to read the whole story from January, 2023