Andy Johns, Engineer

Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin IV

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

  • A Zep IV that was doing just about everything right, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides
  • Insane rock and roll energy like nothing you have ever heard – the sound is full-bodied and reasonably smooth, making it possible to get the volume up good and high where it belongs
  • Here are the rock and roll classics that reign supreme to this very day – “Black Dog,” “Rock & Roll,” “Stairway to Heaven,” “When the Levee Breaks,” every one sounding better than you’ve ever heard them or your money back
  • There are some bad marks (as is sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records) on “Rock and Roll,” but once you hear just how excellent sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and just be swept away by the music
  • 5 stars: “Encompassing heavy metal, folk, pure rock & roll, and blues, Led Zeppelin’s untitled fourth album is a monolithic record, defining not only Led Zeppelin but the sound and style of 70s hard rock.”
  • If you’re a fan of the band, this title from 1971 is clearly one of their best, and one of their best sounding
  • The complete list of titles from 1971 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

It is a positive THRILL to hear this record rock the way it was meant to. If you have big speakers and the power to drive them, your neighbors are going to be very upset with you when you play this copy at the listening levels it was meant to be heard at.

You’d better be ready to rock, because this copy has the ENERGY and WHOMP that will make you want to. Zep IV demands loud levels, but practically any copy will punish you mercilessly if you try to play it at anything even approaching live levels.

I never met John Bonham, and it’s probably too late now, but I imagine he would feel more than a little disrespected if he found out people were playing his music at the polite listening levels many audiophiles prefer. The term “hi-fidelity” loses its meaning if the instruments are playing at impossibly low levels. If the instruments could never be heard that way live, where exactly is the fidelity?

How on earth is a speaker system like this one going to reproduce the 22 inch (or more!) kick drum of John Bonham?

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Led Zeppelin – Physical Graffiti

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

  • This killer double album boasts roughly Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound or close to it on all FOUR sides – just shy of our Shootout Winner (side four actually won the shootout)
  • Transparency, the ability to see into the mix, and the other side of the vintage analog richness coin, is key to the better pressings of this album, as well as many of our other favorite Demo Discs
  • Of course the main attributes that set the better copies apart from the also-rans are size, energy, weight, vocal presence and an overall freedom from grit and grain, and we guarantee that this copy will do better in all of these areas than any you have ever heard
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 5 stars: “Physical Graffiti captures the whole experience of Led Zeppelin at the top of their game better than any of their other albums.”
  • This is a Must Own title from 1975, a great year for rock and pop music

A distinguished member of the Better Records Rock Hall of Fame and another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you turn up your volume .

If you’ve been waiting for a seriously powerful Kashmir experience, today is your lucky day. (more…)

Led Zeppelin – III

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

  • A vintage import pressing that was doing just about everything right, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on both sides – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • Huge, Tubey Magical and lively, with solid weight down low and lots of space around all the instruments, this copy is guaranteed to rock like nothing you have ever heard (particularly on side one)
  • Drop the needle on “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” turn it up good and loud and Zep will be right there in front of you for the live concert of a lifetime
  • 5 stars: “On their first two albums, Led Zeppelin unleashed a relentless barrage of heavy blues and rockabilly riffs, but Led Zeppelin III provided the band with the necessary room to grow musically. While there are still a handful of metallic rockers, III is built on a folky, acoustic foundation that gives the music extra depth.”
  • If you’re a fan of the band, this classic from 1970 belongs in your collection.

Drop the needle on Since I’ve Been Loving You and turn it up good and loud. Robert Plant will be right there between your speakers, and your jaw will be on the floor!

Cue up Tangerine on side two for a taste of rich, sweet, Tubey Magical Analog Sound. The acoustic guitars are lush and delicate, the bass is deep and well-defined, and the vocals are completely natural and free from bad mastering or phony EQ.

Zep Unplugged

The three Zep albums with out of this world acoustic guitars are the first album, III and Houses of the Holy. (All three are currently on our Top 100 list, along with II and IV. All five can be amazing sounding on the right pressings, but those pressings tend to be tough to come by in clean condition.)

The guitars are every bit as rich, tubey, sweet, delicate and harmonically correct as those found on Tea For the Tillerman, Rubber Soul, Comes a Time or any of the other phenomenally good recordings we rave about on the site.

Of course, without the right pressing, you would never know that. Later copies, Classic Records copies, typical domestic and import copies — none of them are going to sound like this one. We guarantee it.

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Jimi Hendrix – Axis: Bold As Love

More of the Music of Jimi Hendrix

  • With STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides, this vintage UK import reissue is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Axis: Bold As Love you’ve heard – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This copy was just bigger and richer than any other we played in our recent shootout, with rock solid energy to beat them all
  • You get clean, clear, full-bodied, lively and musical analog sound from first note to last
  • 5 stars: “…the beautiful, wistful ballads ‘Little Wing,’ ‘Castles Made of Sand,’ ‘One Rainy Wish,’ and the title track set closer show [Hendrix’s] remarkable growth and depth as a tunesmith, harnessing Curtis Mayfield soul guitar to Dylanesque lyrical imagery and Fuzz Face hyperactivity to produce yet another side to his grand psychedelic musical vision.”
  • It’s hard to conceive of any list of the best rock and pop albums of 1967 that would not have this record on it

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The Rolling Stones – It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones

  • It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll returns to the site for only the second time in three years, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on both sides
  • On this side two you will find sound quality that is both clean and clear, with much less grit and grain than you are used to, assuming you have any copy of the album at all, and side one is not far behind in all those areas
  • I’m guessing most audiophiles gave up on this one after hearing the average pressing, but here you will find the kind of richness that is fundamental to getting this album to sound its best (particularly on side two)
  • The superbly talented Andy Johns engineered, so you can be sure that this is the sound the Stones were aiming for
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • “Throughout, the Stones wear their title as the ‘World’s Greatest Rock & Roll Band’ with a defiant smirk, which makes the bitter cynicism of ‘If You Can’t Rock Me’ and the title track all the more striking, and the reggae experimentation… all the more enjoyable.”

It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll is a consistently good, straight-ahead, no-frills rock album from the Stones with Mick Taylor still in the band. It was the last of its kind for a while; their next release was the reggae-influenced Black and Blue. The sound can be a bit gritty and grainy at times, but you gotta believe that that’s precisely the sound the Stones heard in the booth and were totally cool with. Andy Johns (younger brother of Glyn Johns) engineered and he’s made as many super-tubey, super-rich and super-smooth recordings as anybody this side of Bill Porter.

The Stones didn’t want that sound this time around. The Stones wanted this sound.

This album may have some of the best The Rolling Stones music, but those looking for top quality sonics for the Stones should head in the direction of Beggars Banquet, Sticky Fingers, or Let It Bleed. They’re simply more audiophile-friendly recordings.

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The Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones

  • With outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom, this copy will be very hard to beat – reasonably quiet vinyl too, about as quiet as we can find them
  • If you have never heard one of our Hot Stamper pressings of the album, you (probably) cannot begin to appreciate just how amazing the sound is
  • A landmark Glyn Johns / Andy Johns recording, our favorite by the Stones, a Top 100 Title (of course) and 5 stars on Allmusic (ditto)
  • Q magazine said this was “the Stones at their assured, showboating peak … A magic formula of heavy soul, junkie blues and macho rock.”
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – those on “Wild Horses” are especially bad – but if you can tough those out, this copy is going to blow your mind
  • 5 stars: “With its offhand mixture of decadence, roots music, and outright malevolence, Sticky Fingers set the tone for the rest of the decade for the Stones.”
  • If I had to compile a list of my favorite rock albums from 1971, this album would definitely be on it

This is the best record the Stones ever made, with Let It Bleed and Beggars Banquet right up there with it but just a half-step behind. Today I would probably modify that assessment to say that Sticky Fingers is better understood as being first among equals, primus inter pares, rather than ahead of the brilliant Let It Bleed and Beggars Banquet.

The sound is exactly what you want from a Stones album, with deep punchy bass and dynamic, grungy guitars. This record is to be played loud like it says on the inner sleeve and the surface noise is to be ignored. The louder you play it, the less bothersome the noise will be. This album ROCKS and it was not made to be listened to in a comfy chair while sipping wine.

Tubey Magical acoustic guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this recording. Simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum, along with richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and especially from modern remasterings).

Play I Got the Blues to hear exactly what we mean.

A QUICK TEST: The best copies have texture and real dynamics in the brass. The bad copies are smeared, grainy and unpleasant when the brass comes in. Toss those bad ones and start shooting out the good ones. Believe me, if you find a good one it will be obvious and worth whatever you had to pay for it.

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Traffic – The Best of Traffic

More Music on Island Records

For those who wish to find their own Hot Stamper pressings of the album, we say more power to you. Our helpful advice can be found at the bottom of the listing,

  • This original Pink Label Island pressing was doing just about everything right, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • Side one was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • Here are the full-bodied mids, punchy lows and clear, open, extended highs that let this 1969 release come alive
  • This amazing compilation boasts superb sound, often dramatically better than the very same tracks on many of the original British releases
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • Top 100 and 4 stars: “The entire second side of the LP, comprising ‘Medicated Goo,’ ‘Forty Thousand Headmen,’ ‘Feelin’ Alright,’ ‘Shanghai Noodle Factory,’ and ‘Dear Mr. Fantasy,’ was the kind of progressive rock that would define Traffic and give it its place in the rock pantheon.”
  • For our current take on the sound of the various labels and stampers for Mr. Fantasy and The Best of Traffic, please click here.

This British Pink Label Island pressing has some of the best Traffic sound you’ll ever hear! We’ve been flipping out over Hot Stamper copies of this greatest hits comp for ages for a very simple, yet likely shocking, reason — the sound on the best copies can be better than the best original pressings! How can that be you ask, dumbfounded by the sheer ridiculousness of such a statement? Well, dear reader, I’ll tell you. Follow me over the jump to find out.

It’s a dirty little secret in the record biz that sometimes the master for the anticipated “hit single” (or singles) is pulled from the album’s final two-track master and used to make the 45, the thinking being that the 45 is what people are going to buy, or, having heard it sound so good on the radio, cause them to buy the album. One way or another, it’s the single that will do the selling of Traffic’s music.

A dub is then made of the master tape that was used to cut the 45 and spliced back onto the album master, so that the single (or singles) is one generation down from the master for the other songs on the side.

This explains why the “hit single” from so many albums is often the worst-sounding song on the album — most likely to suffer from bad radio EQ and distorted, smeary, sub-gen sound. And it also explains another anomaly those of us who play tons of records run into from time to time: songs on greatest hits albums sounding better than their counterparts on the original albums from which they are taken. That’s crazy talk, but this Traffic record is all the evidence you need to demonstrate that as it crazy as it seems, every once in a while it turns out to be true. This is one of those times.

Heaven Is In Your Mind

Best proof: “Heaven Is In Your Mind,” the second track on side one. It is amazing sounding here and such a disappointment on every Pink Label Island original (and some reissues) we’ve played. Once you know how good that song can sound — by playing a Hot Stamper copy of Best of Traffic like this one — going back to the original version of the song found on the album is not just a letdown, it’s positively painful.

Where’s the analog magic? The weight to the piano? The startling clarity and super-spaciousness of the soundfield? The life and energy of the performance?

They’re gone, brother. Not entirely gone, mind you, more a shadow of what they should be. But once you’ve heard the real thing, it’s no fun listening to a shadow. It’s just a drag.

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Jethro Tull – Stand Up

More Jethro Tull

More British Blues Rock

  • A Stand Up like you’ve never heard, with solid Double Plus (A++) grades throughout this vintage UK import – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • This is a true Tull Classic – my favorite by the band – and a very tough record to come by with this kind of sound and surfaces that play this well
  • Both of these sides give you richness, Tubey Magic, clarity and resolution few copies can touch, including most Pink Label Island pressings, especially the early ones
  • “Stand Up! has great textural interest, due, in part, to a more sophisticated recording technique, in part to the organ, mandolin, balalaika, etc., which Anderson plays to enrich each song. The band is able to work with different musical styles, but without a trace of the facile, glib manipulation which strains for attention.”

Need a refresher course in Tubey Magic after playing too many modern recordings or remasterings? These UK pressings are overflowing with it. Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead-on correct tonality — everything that we listen for in a great record is here. We must give thanks to the brilliant engineer Andy Johns.

This record is the very definition of Tubey Magic. No recordings will ever be made that sound like this again, and no CD will ever capture what is in the grooves of this record. There is of course a CD of this album, quite a few of them I would guess, but those of us with a good turntable could care less.

Tubey Magical acoustic guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this recording. Simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum, along with richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and especially from modern remasterings).

If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all-analog recordings are known for — this sound.

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Led Zeppelin / Led Zeppelin II

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

  • An incredible copy of Zep II with killer sound from start to finish – this one is guaranteed to rock your world like no other!
  • The sound is freakishly good – we created a Top Ten list just to put this album on it
  • Years ago we gave up on everything but these killer RL (and SS) pressings, because nothing else can hold a candle to them
  • With copies selling for $1000+ on ebay, sometimes $3000+, we’re forced to pay big bucks for Zep II these days, but if any album is worth it — to us and our customers — it’s this one
  • A Must Own Zep classic from 1969 that belongs in every right-thinking audiophile’s collection
  • It’s our pick for the band’s best sounding album. Roughly 150 other listings for the Best by an Artist or Group can be found here.

At least 80% of the copies we buy these days — for many, many hundreds of dollars each I might add, more than a grand on occasion — go right back to the seller. The biggest problem we run into besides obvious scratches that play and worn out grooves is easy to spot: just play the song “Thank You” at the end of side one. Most of the time there is inner groove damage so bad that the track becomes virtually unlistenable.

It’s become a common dealbreaker for the records we buy on the internet. We get them in, we play that track, we hear it distort and we pack the record up and send it back to the seller.

UPDATE 2023

This was true ten years ago, but we have since found better sources for our copies. The sellers we tend to buy from know not to send us groove-damaged, scratched copies. Something closer to 20% get returned now.

But this copy plays clean all the way to the end on both sides — assuming you have a highly-tweaked, high-performance front end of course.

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The Rolling Stones – Goats Head Soup

More Rolling Stones

  • A vintage copy (one of only a handful to hit the site in two years) with excellent Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides
  • We guarantee the sonics are dramatically bigger, richer, fuller, and livelier than any pressing you have ever heard or you get your money back – it’s as simple as that
  • Who knew the record could sound this good? Certainly not us until about seven years ago – we had no luck with this album for decades before that (and we bet you are in the same boat)
  • “This may not be as downright funky, freaky, and fantastic as Exile, yet the extra layer of gloss brings out the enunciated lyrics, added strings, wah-wah guitars, explicit sex, and violence, making it all seem trippily decadent…”
  • If you’re a fan of The Stones, this is a classic from 1973 that belongs in your collection.

The better pressings give you exactly what you want from this brand of straight-ahead rock and roll: presence in the vocals, solid, note-like bass, big punchy drums, and the kind of live-in-the-studio energetic, clean and clear sound we love here at Better Records. With big speakers and the power to drive them, at loud levels you are there.

And why not? The engineer is Andy Johns, Glyn’s very talented younger brother (sadly, now deceased). They worked together on the Stones’ previous album, Exile on Main St.

Andy engineered the Zep albums from II through Physical Graffiti, and those are amazingly well-recorded albums in anybody’s book when you have pressings that allow you to hear them right.

And you can add to that group Tull’s Stand Up (69), Traffic’s John Barleycorn (70) and the Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request (67), Sticky Fingers (71) and It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll (74). Even two tracks from Stephen Stills’ first album (71).

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