George Chkiantz, Engineer – Reviews and Commentaries

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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Led Zeppelin IV – The First Two Tracks on Side One Are Key

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

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 potentially coexist on the same slab of vinyl. You just need to find the right slab and be able to clean it right, a proposition that turns out to be much harder than it might sound.

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. However, the best pressings, whether British or domestic, are so good, and so much fun at the loud volumes we play them at, that in the end it turns out to be worth all the time, trouble and expense it has taken to find them.

On these two tracks, the best pressings of Led Zeppelin IV were capable of producing some of the biggest, boldest sound we have ever heard.

It’s clearly a Demo Disc for big speakers that play at loud levels. The louder you play it, the better it sounds.

Warning: do not attempt to play this album on any system that looks like this one.

The two tracks we discuss below are the ones that can truly test the energy and musical drive of whatever pressing you are playing. If you are fortunate to be able to have one of our better Hot Stamper copies on your table, the energy and musical drive of Black Dog and Rock and Roll might just take your breath away.

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 best 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

Further Reading

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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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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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

Led Zeppelin II – An Overview

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

Below you will find the story of my first encounter with an amazing sounding copy of Zep II back in 1995 or thereabouts.

I had a friend who had come into possession of a White Label Demo pressing of the album and wanted to trade it in to me for the Mobile Fidelity pressing that I had played for him once or twice over the years, and which we both thought was The King on that album.

To my shock and dismay, his stupid American copy killed the MoFi. It trounced it in every way. The bass was deeper and punchier. Everything was more dynamic. The vocals were more natural and correct sounding. The highs were sweeter and more extended. The whole pressing was just full of life in a way that the Mobile Fidelity wasn’t.

The Mobile Fidelity didn’t sound bad. It sounded not as good. More importantly, in comparison with the good domestic copy, in many ways it now sounded wrong.

Let me tell you, it was a defining moment in my growth as a record collector. I had long ago discovered that many MoFi’s weren’t all they were cracked up to be. But this was a MoFi I liked. And it had killed the other copies I’d heard in the past.

So I learned something very important that day.

I learned that hearing a better pressing is clearly the surest way to appreciate what’s wrong with the pressing I thought sounded right.

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Led Zeppelin / II – Jimmy Page Remasters a Classic

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

The more appropriate title for this commentary might be The Two Game, in honor of The Blue Game we created way back in 2007.

That year was indeed a watershed in the history of Better Records. It was the year we officially gave up on Heavy Vinyl, having come to the conclusion that the modern remastered LP was a lost cause. One thick slab of vinyl after another was ordered up and placed on our turntable, where it lay half-dead until someone took it off and relieved us of our misery.

Signs of improvement were nowhere to be found. A slough of dubious pressings released in the fifteen years since then have only confirmed the wisdom of our decision. It seems we got out just in time!

Fittingly, it was actually Blue that finally tipped the scales.

Geoff Edgers, the writer for the Washington Post investigating the world of audiophiles, visited me in 2021 to hear what this crazy Hot Stamper thing was all about. [1]

He brought with him a number of records to hear on our reference system, including the 2014 remaster of Led Zeppelin II (excellent), the remaster of Brothers in Arms that Chris Bellman cut, released in 2021 (also excellent, review to come), and last and definitely least, the pricey Craft Recordings remaster by Bernie Grundman of Lush Life (astonishingly bad, review coming).

That last one will cost you a couple of hundred dollars minimum, but you should save your money. It’s not worth a plugged nickel if good sound is what you are after. If you like being the only one on your block with a limited edition pressing, then I suppose you can tell your audiophile friends you own one and that it looks nice on the shelf. Whatever you do, don’t play it.

Retirement Changed My Plans

I’ve been meaning to write about Page’s version of the second Zeppelin album for more than a year. The more times I played the album, and the longer I thought about it, the more remarkable the sound of the record seemed to me, remarkable in the sense that some very interesting things were going on in the sound that would be worth writing about for the benefit of our customers and readers.

But then I retired and had lots of other things to do in order to get out of California. The review would have to wait.

In 2021 and for some time thereafter, I was so impressed with the sound that I considered buying a dozen, cleaning them up and doing a shootout with them. The sound was good enough to qualify as a Hot Stamper, probably in the range of 1.5+, which is what we would typically call good, not great sound.

Still, worlds better than the truly awful sounding audiophile pressings we’ve been reviewing over the last couple of years.

I actually did buy a second copy, had it cleaned and played it against the first one we bought. It sounded virtually identical. Whatever the differences, they were minor, although if I’d bought ten copies, I suspect that the differences between the best and the worst would have been significant, but that’s really only a guess.

(Many years ago, back in 2008 I think, we had done a shootout using a Heavy Vinyl title, Sting’s Mercury Falling. We have not done many since, for the simple reason that we know of no Heavy Vinyl pressings with sound good enough to be considered Hot Stampers.)

UPDATE 2025

Actually we now know of one, which proves it can be done!)

The guys who do the listening now and I all agreed about what the new version was doing, right and wrong. [2]

I wanted to talk about the good and the bad in depth because I thought I knew what was going on with the sound that nobody else would outside of our little group of three. I felt I had unlocked its secrets, secrets no one, to my knowledge, had discussed or examined. (If you know of a good review, please send it my way. I have yet to read a good one.)

The Hot Stamper Remaster

We don’t list albums with One Plus grades anymore, but in this case we could make the argument — and back it up! — that the best pressings of Page’s version are better than any reissue ever made. No audiophile version is any good, that’s for sure. We’ve played them and reviewed them and put them where they belong, in our audiophile hall of shame. [3]

Our latest thinking is that we will give one of the Page remasters to our customers for free when they buy one of our Hot Stamper pressings, so that they can compare the two for themselves. This is currently our policy.

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Led Zeppelin / II – A Top Ten Title

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

Hot Stamper Pressings of Top Ten Titles Available Now

You may have seen our Top 100 list of the best sounding rock and pop records on the site.

We recently picked out a Top Ten from that list and you will not be surprised to learn that Led Zeppelin II made the cut. (It may in fact deserve to be at the top of the list. That’s how good the best copies are.)

The blog you are on, as well as our website, are dedicated to very special records such as these.

It is the very definition of a Demo Disc for big speakers that play at loud levels. The better pressings have the kind of ENERGY in their grooves that are sure to leave most audiophile systems begging for mercy.

This is the audio challenge that awaits you. If you don’t have a stereo designed to play records with this kind of sonic firepower, don’t expect to hear them the way the band, the engineers and everybody else involved in the production wanted you to.

This album wants to rock your world, and that’s exactly what our Hot Stamper pressings do best.

The Evolution of an Audiophile 

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Listening in Depth to Led Zeppelin II

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

Reviews and Commentaries for Led Zeppelin II

The best copies of Zep II have the kind of rock and roll firepower that’s guaranteed to bring any system to its knees.

That’s what makes it a Top Test Disc.

And if you’re looking for rock and pop albums that are very hard to reproduce, here are some that should fit the bill nicely.

Side One

Whole Lotta Love

This album is unique in one sense: both sides of ZEP II start our with MONSTER ROCK AND ROLL tracks with unbelievable dynamics, energy and bass. Most bands would be lucky to get one song like this on an album. This album has about five!

The middle section with the cymbals and panning instruments is key to the best copies. When it starts they goose the volume — not subtly mind you — and a big room opens up in which everything starts bouncing around, reflecting off the walls of the studio. It’s a cool effect, there’s no denying it.

This is the loudest, most dynamic cut on side one. If it doesn’t knock you out, keep turning up the volume and playing it again until it does.

What Is and What Should Never Be

Amazing presence. Plant is right there!

The Lemon Song

The bass parts always sounded muddy on the sub-gen copies I often found. The definition and note-like quality here is superb and it’s only found on these good originals.

There are real dynamics here — the middle part is at a much lower level than the guitars that follow. This song, like so many on II, is really designed to assault you, to give you the sense that guitars are being broken over your head. That’s the kind of power this track has. It’s also relatively smooth and sweet compared to the rest of the album as a whole.

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