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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…)

Biggles Let Us Down on this Pressing of Who Are You

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now

We described a recent shootout winning pressing this way:

This copy has the Glyn Johns big, bold sound we demand from this famous producer/engineer.

Forget the domestic pressings, forget the DD Labs Half-Speed, forget whatever lame reissues have come or will come down the pike – if you want to hear this album right, a Hot Stamper British pressing is the only way to go.

The title song sounds amazing on this killer Triple Plus side two – the dynamic power of the recording comes through loud and clear.

Of course, not all stampers are hot enough to win a shootout. This British A3/B2 cut by none other than Biggles was judged to have middling sound quality.

1.5+ is four grades down from the top copy. That’s a steep dropoff as far as we’re concerned. 1.5+ only hints at how good sounding a recording Who Are You can be on the best pressings.

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Milt Jackson and John Coltrane – Bags & Trane

More of the Music of John Coltrane

  • Stunning sound throughout this stereo pressing, with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • If all you have ever played is an original pressing or a modern reissue, you are in for a treat — this copy is going to murder them
  • One of Tom Dowd’s many outstanding recordings of John Coltrane at the height of his powers – the sound is to die for
  • 5 stars: “Vibraphonist Milt Jackson and tenor saxophonist John Coltrane make for a surprisingly complementary team on this 1959 studio session, their only joint recording.”

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What’s More Important – The Right Label or the Right Stamper Numbers?

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin Available Now

In this case, since the label is different but the stampers are the same, it’s the label that tells you how good your pressing may — heavy accent on the may — sound.

Lately we’ve been having exceptionally good luck with the early label pressings of many of the London violin concerto records we’ve done shootouts for.

However, the notes you see below do not belong to the wonderful Sibelius record pictured here.

They belong to another London record. We give out lots of bad stampers on this blog, but almost never do we give out the good ones. (When we do give out the best stampers, we usually keep the title a mystery, as is the case of the record here. To see the other titles whose Shootout Winning stampers have been revealed, please click here. The list to date is short but not to worry, more are on their way.)

The amazingly good sounding pressing on the early label took the recording to another level. Our shootout notes read:

  • Amazing violin sound and performance.
  • Very dynamic and realistic.
  • So much subtlety.

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Skip the OJC on You Get More Bounce with Curtis Counce

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

This album is findable on the OJC pressing from the 80s, but we found the sound of the oens we we played seriously wanting.

They were brighter and thinner than even the worst of the real Contemporary pressings.  Above all they badly lacked Tubey Magic, a sound the best pressings are swimming in. Consequently, none of them made the cut for our shootout.

Here are more than 400 other vintage albums that fell short, whether sonically or musically. Audiophiles should seriously consider avoiding them, and if any of you own copies of these titles, pull them off the shelf and see if the sound and/or music is as bad as we say.

Bright, thin and lacking in Tubey Magic is just not our sound.  It’s not the sound Roy DuNann was famous for, so why should we like it either?

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Love – Da Capo

More of the Music of Love

  • This vintage Gold Label pressing was doing practically everything right, with both sides earning killer Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • The recording quality here is big, rich and Tubey Magical, with lovely breathy vocals and a massive bottom end – thanks, Bruce Botnick!
  • The first Love album is without a doubt the punchiest, liveliest, most powerful recording in the Love catalog (all three albums of it).
  • “… a truly classic body of work, highlighted by the atomic blast of pre-punk rock ‘7 and 7 Is’ (their only hit single), the manic jazz tempos of ‘Stephanie Knows Who,’ and the enchanting ‘She Comes in Colors,’ perhaps Lee’s best composition (and reportedly the inspiration for the Rolling Stones’ ‘She’s a Rainbow’).”

These Nearly White Hot Stamper pressings have top-quality sound that’s often surprisingly close to our White Hots, but they sell at substantial discounts to our Shootout Winners, making them a relative bargain in the world of Hot Stampers (“relative” meaning relative considering the prices we charge). We feel you get what you pay for here at Better Records, and if ever you don’t agree, please feel free to return the record for a full refund, no questions asked.

If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good 1967 All Tube Analog sound can be, this killer copy will do the trick. This Gold Label pressing is spacious, sweet and positively dripping with ambience. Talk about Tubey Magic, the liquidity of the sound here is positively uncanny. This is vintage analog at its best, so full-bodied and relaxed you’ll wonder how it ever came to be that anyone seriously contemplated trying to improve it. (more…)

Love’s Debut and Forever Changes on Heavy Vinyl – Indefensible Dreck from Sundazed

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Love Available Now

Two audiophile hall of shame titles, and another two Sundazed records reviewed and found seriously wanting.

We got hold of a minty original pressing of the first Love album back around 2007, so in preparation for the commentary I pulled one of the Sundazed pressings off the shelf, (Forever Changes, the only one we ever bothered to sell), cracked it open and threw it on the turntable. 

Gag, what a piece of crap. When I had auditioned them all those years ago (2002), it was — I’m not kidding — the best of the bunch.

The sound to me back then was nothing special, but not bad. Knowing how rare the originals were, we gave it a lukewarm review and put it in the catalog, the single Sundazed Love album that (just barely) made the cut.

Now I wish I hadn’t, because no one should have to suffer through sound that bad. Here’s what I wrote for the shootout:

You’d never know it from those dull Sundazed reissues, but the right pressings of Love albums are full of Tubey Magic! With Bruce Botnick at the controls you can expect a meaty bottom end and BIG rock sound, and this recording really delivers on both counts.

With Sundazed mastering engineers running the show, you can expect none of the above.

No Tubey Magic, no meaty bottom end, no big rock sound.

After the shootout, I took the two copies we had in stock right down to my local record store and traded them in.

I didn’t want them in my house, let alone on my site.

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In Search Of Amazing Mona Bones

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

UPDATED 2026

Below you will see the notes we made during our first shootout for Mona Bone Jakon back in 2007.

Until fairly recently the handful of UK imports we had played sounded subpar to us.

The UK pressings may have been the versions on the TAS Super Disc List, but none of the ones we’d played sounded all that super to us.

Out of the blue, in 2023 we found some imports that set a new standard for the recording quality of the album.

We thought we knew “How high is up?”, but the mports we played that year proved to us we didn’t.

Egg on our faces? Not really. It’s just us going about doing the work.Since no one else in the world of records seems to want to figure any of this stuff out, you don’t have a lot of other sources for reliable information. Seriously, wWho else are you going to turn to, other than Robert Brook?

Most of the reviewers we stumble upon act like it’s still 1982.

True, the imports don’t win by much — the best domestic pressings can still earn Nearly Triple Plus grades — but that extra half a plus the Shootout Winning imports merit is quite noticeable when you play the best pressings against the close-to-the-best copies.

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Brewer & Shipley / Tarkio

More of the Music of Brewer and Shipley

  • A Tarkio like you’ve never heard, with solid Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this early pressing
  • It’s the rare copy that’s this lively, solid and rich… drop the needle on any track and you’ll see what we mean
  • “Notable not just for the inclusion of ‘One Toke Over the Line’ but also for the great back porch stoned ambience of the entire recording… Not that it ever takes away from the excellent country-style playing that pops up all over the record.”

Not Really One Toke Over the Line

Please don’t assume that this album has much in the way of uptempo country rockers like One Toke Over the Line, Flying Burrito Brothers style. Nothing could be further from the truth. Practically every other song on the album is better, almost all of them are taken at a slower pace, with none of them having the “poppy” arrangement of that carefully calculated Top Forty hit. The rest of the music on the album, the music you probably don’t know, is much better than the music that you do know if what you know is that song.

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Joni Mitchell – Court and Spark

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell 

  • With STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides, this early Asylum pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Court and Spark you’ve heard
  • The sound is rich, warm and natural, with wonderful transparency, ambience and loads of Tubey Magic
  • Musically this is one of our favorite Joni albums here at Better Records, and probably her Best Recording as well
  • A proud member (along with Blue) of our Top 100 Rock and Pop albums – yes, it’s that good sounding when it’s mastered and pressed as well as this copy is
  • It takes us about two years to get a shootout for this album going, mostly because the Asylum vinyl of the day is a problem, and also because this album is so good it tended to get played a lot
  • 5 stars: “[A] remarkably deft fusion of folk, pop, and jazz … the music is smart, smooth, and assured from the first note to the last.”
  • If I were to compile a list of my favorite rock and pop albums from 1974, this album would definitely be on it

Court and Spark deserves to be heard with all the clarity, beauty and power that our Hot Stampers reproduce so well. If there is a better sounding album with Joni Mitchell’s name on the cover, you’ll have to prove it to us.

What you hear is the sound of the real tape; every instrument has its own character because the mastering is correct and the vinyl — against all odds — managed to capture all (or almost all; who can know?) of the resolution that the tape had to offer. (more…)