Top Engineers

Bryan Ferry / In Your Mind

More of the Music of Roxy Music

  • In Your Mind makes its Hot Stamper debut with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this original UK import pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • May I point out that the copy with the Shootout Winning stampers had exactly the same stampers as the copy that came in last in our shootout?
  • If such an unlikely thing strikes you as odd, please go the blog and read about the scores of other shootout titles for which this was true
  • The stampers are one thing, the sound of the pressing on the turntable is another
  • The sound is big and rich, the vocals breathy and immediate, and you will not believe all the space and ambience – which of course are all qualities that Heavy Vinyl records have far too little of, and the main reason we have lost all respect for the bulk of them
  • A personal favorite, one that I have easily played more than a hundred times
  • We were never able to complete a shootout for it back in the day — the blog has that story — but thankfully things have changed
  • “In Your Mind still burns more fiercely than both the later solo and group albums, at least on certain tracks – like Siren, it balances between rockier and smoother paths, most often favoring the former. Ferry’s lyrics remain in his own realm of intelligent, romantic dissipation, and are some of his best efforts.”

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Mozart / Symphonies Nos. 40 & 41 on Speakers Corner

Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca and London Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This was our take on the record way back in 1998 when we first started to carry it. This is our current favorite performance on record, but of course we prefer the vintage pressings of the recording as they clearly sound better. We prefer the best Decca pressings, but the Londons can be quite good as well, just not as good. In other words, they can’t win shootouts, but they will easily beat whatever other pressing you may have of the recording. (More on Decca Vs. London here.)

This is one of the better Speakers Corner Deccas. When they released this title on Heavy Vinyl in 1998, it became one of the few Speakers Corner classical recordings we carried and recommended. 

We knew it sounded good, but up until recently [recently being 2010 or so], when we started collecting and playing the better vintage Deccas and Londons, we sure didn’t know it could sound as good as the best of those pressings do.

Below are some thoughts from a recent classical listing that we hope will shed light on our longstanding aversion to the sound of these modern remasterings. 

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Red Garland Trio – Groovy

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

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  • Boasting solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them, this vintage Prestige recording pressed on fairly quiet OJC vinyl was giving us the sound we were looking for on Red’s Jazz Masterpiece
  • The MONO sound is clear, spacious, relaxed, and full-bodied, with Tubey Magical richness and analog smoothness that only the better vintage pressings can offer (particularly on side one)
  • Another top jazz recording from Rudy Van Gelder – big, bold and lively (also particularly on side one), just the right sound for this music
  • 4 1/2 stars: “With bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Art Taylor, Garland has all the support he needs to wing it in a variety of directions. Recorded in that most legendary year of jazz, 1957, Garland is coming into his own in a more confident way, buoyed by his association at the time with Miles Davis.”

What makes this vintage piano trio album in mono so special? Allow me to quote a review from a few years back for a pair of recordings that Red Garland made with Miles Davis back in the mid-50s: Workin’ And Steamin’.

To the Jazz Fans of the World, we here present one of the best sounding jazz recordings we have ever had the privilege to place on a turntable. I cannot ever recall hearing a better sounding Rudy Van Gelder recording, and I have a theory as to why this tape is as good as it is: it’s MONO. It also sounds like it’s recorded completely live in the studio, direct to one track you might say. As good a recording as Kind of Blue is, I think the best parts of this album are more immediate and more real than anything on KOB.

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Who Can’t Hear Differences in Sound from Side to Side on Most Records?

rimskscheh_2446Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Rimsky-Korsakov Available Now

Both the Chesky [1] and Classic reissue pressings of LSC 2446 are just plain terrible. Embarrassingly, the latter is found on the TAS List.

There is a newly [2013, time flies!] remastered 33 RPM pressing of the album garnering rave reviews in the audiophile press. We didn’t like that one either.

It fails the violin test that we wrote about here.

Please note that in many of the reviews for the new pressing, the original vinyl used for comparison is a Shaded Dog pressing. In our experience almost no Shaded Dog pressings are competitive with the later White Dog pressings, and many of them are just plain awful, as we have noted previously on the site.

UPDATE 2024

Now that we know which stampers have the potential to sound the best in our shootouts, the Shaded Dog originals have lately been winning top honors, although the White Dog pressings can still sound quite good, just not as good.

The “original is better” premise of most reviewers renders the work they do practically worthless, at least to those of us who take the time to play a wide variety of pressings and judge them on the merits of their sound, not the design of their labels.

[A fairly embarrassing example of live and learn.]

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Why Own a Turntable if You’re Going to Play Mediocrities Like These?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Aja Available Now

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Available Now

Hot Stamper Pressings of Aqualung Available Now

This commentary was posted in 2007 and amended later with the statement that we would no longer be ordering new Heavy Vinyl titles. The thrill was gone and there was no sign of it ever coming back. It took a while to sell off the inventory, but by 2011 we had eliminated them completely from our site.

As it happens, 2007 turned out to be a milestone year for us here at Better Records.

If you bought any Heavy Vinyl pressing from us, ever, please accept our apologies.

Now is the perfect time to find out just how much a Hot Stamper pressing can do for your musical enjoyment. (You might consider taking the enthusiastic advice of these customers regarding that subject.)

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Midnight Blue on Classic Records (with Badly Mistaken Commentary about Original Blue Notes)

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Kenny Burrell Available Now

Sonic Grade: D

Flat and lifeless. You would never understand why audiophiles rave about this recording by listening to the Classic Records pressing of it. That happens a lot with their remastered pressings. Why do audiophiles think so highly of them when they make records that sound the one this one does?

We played it up against our best, and as expected it was nothing to write home about. Since Rudy has remastered and ruined practically all the Blue Note CDs by now, you will have your work cut out for you if you want to find a good sounding version of Midnight Blue. This sure ain’t one.

Of course we would be more than happy to get you an amazing sounding copy — it’s what we do — but the price will be five to ten times (or more) what the Classic costs. In our opinion it’s money well spent, as you will see in our review below.

Since the Classic conveys very little of what the musicians were up to whilst recording the album, our advice is to cross it off your list of records of interest.

It’s thirty bucks down the drain.

From a recent Hot Stamper listing:

I’ve never heard an original Blue Note pressing with this kind of resolution, sharp leading edge transients, tight, articulate bass definition, and on and on.

Collectors routinely pay hundreds of dollars for original copies that don’t sound nearly as good as this one.

Which is fine by us. We’re not in that business. We’re not selling the right labels; we’re selling the right sound. There is a difference. Collecting original pressings is easy (albeit expensive). Collecting good sounding pressings is hard; in fact nothing in the record collecting world is harder. But if you actually like playing your records as opposed to just collecting them, then the best possible sound should be at the top of your list and the rarity of the label down at the bottom.

Ellington-Basie / First Time – The Count Meets the Duke

More of the Music of Duke Ellington

More of the Music of Count Basie

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  • This original 6-Eye Stereo pressing was doing most everything right, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • Huge amounts of three-dimensional space and ambience, along with boatloads of Tubey Magic – here’s a 30th Street recording from 1961 that demonstrates just how good Columbia’s engineers were back then
  • If all you’ve heard are the Classic Records reissues of Ellington, you are in for a treat, because there is a world of difference lying between the real things and the Classic wannabes
  • It’s yet another Tubey Magical Demo Disc from the golden age of vacuum tube recording
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… a very successful and surprisingly uncrowded encounter… Ellington and Basie both play piano (their interaction with each other is wonderful) and the arrangements allowed the stars from both bands to take turns soloing.”
  • It’s hard to imagine that any list of the best jazz albums of 1961 would not have The Count Meets the Duke on it. The sound is out of this world on the best copies.

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Fly Like An Eagle on Capitol Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of Classic Rock Albums Available Now

This Capitol Records Limited Edition 180 gram LP from the series that Robert Ludwig mastered is the worst sounding version of the album I have ever heard, bar none. It was cut with the azimuth off, which smears all the high frequency transients.

How anybody could put up with that crappy sounding LP is beyond me, but I have never read a single word complaining about the sound.

Granted, the MoFi has a bit more going on up top, but the blurry bass and lack of presence fail to bring the music to life the way a properly-mastered, properly-pressed copy will. 

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On Tarkio, Do All the Robert Ludwig Mastered Copies Have Hot Stampers?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Hippie Folk Rock Albums Available Now

UPDATE 2023

This commentary recounts a few observations we’d made after doing a shootout for Tarkio a few years back.

Tarkio is one of those very special recordings that deserves credit for helping us dramatically improve the quality of our playback.

I learned a lot about unhyped, unprocessed, Tubey Magical sound from Tarkio and treasure the music it contains to this day.

Even though all the original Pink Label pressings are mastered by the great Robert Ludwig, they have a marked tendency to be dull, thick and opaque.

On too many of the original pressings we’ve played, even after a good cleaning the top end and upper midrange are a bit rolled off, causing the sound to be smoother than it should be. And of course the way we discover that fact is simplicity itself: the best pressings do not suffer from rolled-off sound.

Analog that is “super-smooth” is the kind of sound that is simply the reverse of the brighter, edgier sound that many CDs suffer from. Both of them are wrong. As Goldilocks will tell you, ideally there will always be a pressing with the correct tonality, neither smooth nor bright, and the way we know that is by playing a bunch of copies and finding the ones in the pile with that tonally correct sound.

We can’t predict which ones will have it, but we sure can hear which ones do.

But finding it without a pile of copies is very hard, almost impossible. How “tonally correct” is any given copy compared to “perfectly tonally correct?” You need plenty of copies to know that, as well as a tonally neutral system capable of playing them properly.

If you like your audiophile pressings to sound super smooth, smooth as mud, there is a guy that offers exactly what you are looking for. His name is Pete Hutchison. He has built a lucrative business for himself making all his records sound like they are being played back through 50s tube electronics.

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A Tale of Two MoFi Deja Vu’s

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and (Sometimes) Young

UPDATE 2026

A commentary from a long time ago about two different MoFi pressings of the same title, Deja Vu. We stopped playing Mobile Fidelity records like this a long time ago and the only ones we play these days are ones that are sent to us for free from customers or friends. Mobile Fidelity made some good records back in the old days. As I wrote not long ago, I owe them a debt of gratitude.

But the records we’ve auditioned that they’ve been making more recently had me asking: How is this company still in business?

Sonic Grade: F (or not!)

Just for fun about 10 years ago [make that 20] I pulled out a MoFi pressing of Deja Vu I had laying around. I hadn’t played their version in a long time. I could have gone a lot longer without playing it, because what I heard was pretty disappointing. Playing their record confirmed all my prejudices. The highs sizzled and spit. The heart of the midrange was recessed and sour.

Know what it reminded me of? A bad Japanese pressing.

(Since most of them are pretty bad I could have just said a typical Japanese pressing, but that’s another story for another day.)

And if that’s not bad enough, the bass definition disappeared. Bass notes and bass parts that were clearly audible and easily followed on our Hot Stamper copies were murky, ill-defined mud on the MoFi.

If you own the MoFi you owe it to yourself to hear a better sounding version. You really don’t know what you’re missing.

But Then, A Few Years Later We Played This Copy…

Here is what we had to say at the time:

Hot Stamper Sound on the MoFi pressing of Deja Vu, can it be possible? I have NEVER heard the MoFi sound this good, not even close. This just KILLS the other copies I’ve heard. I wrote a scathing review of their badly mastered pressing which you can read below, and I still stand behind every word, because this copy is not your average MoFi. The average one still sucks. What we are selling here is a FLUKE. Here is the story from our Hot Stamper shootout we just did.

This week we picked up a very clean looking MoFi pressing and decided to throw it in the shootout just for fun. We were shocked — this one actually sounded good! Not as amazing as our best Hot Stampers, but much better than we had expected. We checked our old copy and heard the same bad sound described above. 

Pressing variations exist for audiophile records as well, and here was another example. It just goes to show that nothing short of playing a record will tell you how it sounds — except for reading our website. Who besides us could spend so much time playing so many bad records? It’s a dirty job, but we’re happy to do it. Hearing one amazing record makes up for playing 10 bad ones, so we’ll keep at it.

Keep in mind that the only way you can never be wrong about your records is to simply avoid playing them. If you have better equipment than you did, say, five or ten years ago, try playing some of your MoFi’s, 180 gram LPs, Japanese pressings, 45 RPM remasters and the like. You might be in for quite a shock.

It’s all good — until the needle hits the groove. Then you might find yourself in need of actual Better Records, not the ones you just hoped were better.

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