amazing-finds

Check out our notes for some of the most amazing sounding vintage pressings we’ve ever played.

Our Shootout Winner Needed to Solve Some Common Problems with Mercury Recordings

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin Available Now

We described our shootout winning copy of Szeryng Plays the Music of Fritz Kreisler this way:

With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from first note to last, this Plum Label Mercury stereo pressing (the first copy to ever hit the site) is doing everything right.

The violin is so sweet and present, so rich, natural and real, you will forget you’re listening to a record at all.

This recording is not your typical dry, bright, nasaly, upper-midrangy Merc – the sound is rich and smooth like a good London, with a big stage and lovely transparency.

As is sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings, there are marks that play, but if you can tough those out, this copy is going to blow your mind.

Here are the notes that back up what we said above:

Notice that on side one, track four, we mention “not strident,” and the second track we note it’s “not too dry.”

Side has a note to the effect that it’s “kinda rich” and “not too bright.”

This tells you that practically all the other copies had these kinds of problems, something that anyone with a good selection of Mercury violin recordings is sure to know.

Our job is to find the pressings that not strident, not dry, not bright, and richer than others.

When you buy a top copy of an album from us, you don’t hear those problems because they are mostly not there.

What you hear is a side one that is:

  • Much fuller and 3-D, with a
  • Sweet and lively violin, one with
  • The most space

On side two you hear more of the same, and that’s a good thing:

  • 3-D and alive violin
  • Kinda rich
  • More dynamic and jumping out
  • Not too bright

Probably not the best solo violin recording we’ve ever sold, but certainly one of the best.

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On Our Top Copy of Moondance, How Did We Recognize that One Side Was Not as Tubey?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Van Morrison Available Now

We described our most recent shootout winning pressing this way:

A Moondance like you’ve never heard, with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this early Green Label pressing.

Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “silky and 3D and present”…”sweet and breathy vox”…”spacious and rich”…”huge and lively”…”jumping out of the speakers.”

Drop the needle anywhere on the album for a taste of early-70s Tubey Magical analog, not to mention the kind of blue-eyed soul that will remind some of you just how good music on vinyl used to be.

Side one was killer in every way, and the way we know that is we played a bunch of copies and nothing could beat it. This side one took top honors for having exactly the sound we described above.

Side two is another matter. We came across a side two that was slightly better than the side two you see here.

When we played the two best copies back to back, side one of this copy came out on top, earning a grade of 3+. However, the side two of another pressing showed us there was even more Tubey Magic in the recording than we’d noticed the first time around.

With another copy earning a better grade for having even more Tubey Magic, the full 3 pluses, we felt the right grade for this side two was 2.5+.

Helpful Advice

To aid you in doing your own evaluations, here is a list of records that we’ve found to be good for testing Tubey Magic.

This is exactly why we do shootouts. If you really want to be able to recognize subtle (and not so subtle!) differences between pressings, you must learn to do them too.

And make sure to take notes about what you are hearing, good and bad.

One more thing: stick with the Green Label early pressings, they are the only way to fly on Moondance.

Mistakes Were Made

If you made the mistake of buying the Rhino pressing of Moondance, I hope you heard what we heard: a complete lack of Tubey Magic! This on one of the most Tubey Magical analog recordings we’ve ever played. You can thank Kevin Gray for helping you flush your record money down the drain. When we first reviewed the remaster in 2014, we wrote:

Where is the Tubey Magic of the originals? The sweetness? The richness? And why is there so little ambience or transparency? You just can’t “see” into the studio on this pressing the way you can on the good originals, but that’s fairly consistently been the knock on these remastered Heavy Vinyl records. We noted as much when we reviewed Blue all the way back in early 2007, so no surprise there.

We also complained that the Heavy Vinyl reissue gets the voice wrong.  When the voice is wrong on a Van Morrison record, you have yourself a completely worthless piece of vinyl. 180 grams or 120 grams or any other number of grams, vinyl with sound this bad should hold no appeal to the audiophile. The record collector, maybe, but collecting for the sake of collecting has never been our thing and we hope it’s never been yours.

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This Original British Tarkus Had the Sound Most Audiophiles Can Only Dream Of

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Available Now

To be clear, audiophiles who buy a shootout winning White Hot Stamper pressing from us don’t have to dream, but practically everyone else does, because copies that sound as good as this one are few and far between.

It’s an amazing find, the kind of record we live for here at Better Records.

We described the sound of our most recent shootout winning copy this way:

This original UK Island pressing was doing everything right, earning killer Triple Plus (A+++) grades from top to bottom.

Our recent monster shootout produced this incredible sounding British pressing on Island (the only way we offer the title) and it is stone guaranteed to rock your world.

Eddie Offord‘s trademark Tubey Magic, energy, resolution, whomp factor and dynamics are all over this phenomenal recording, and this pressing captured it all.

Here are the notes that back up everything we said, and more. We can’t put all the qualities we rave about into every listing. Who would believe us?

No other copy offered this kind of sound. It’s what we used to call AGAIG — As Good As It Gets.

3+/3+ records like this one go in our Top Shelf section, which currently holds 32 titles.

Records with at least one 3+ side go in this section, and there are 143 of those as of today, almost five times as many.

Eddie Is The Man

Tarkus is clearly a Demo Disc for big speakers that can play at loud levels.

The organ captured here by Eddie Offord (of Yes engineering fame, we’re his biggest fans) and then transferred so well onto our Hot Stamper pressings will rattle the foundation of your house if you’re not careful. This music really needs that kind of megawatt reproduction to make sense. It’s Big Bombastic Prog that wants desperately to rock your world. At moderate levels it just sounds overblown and silly. At loud levels it actually will rock your world.

All but the best Brit pressings have a tendency to be a bit turgid and many of them lack the bottom end weight that music like this absolutely must have to work its magic. There are some good domestic copies — not in a league with the best Brits at all — but most of them have sub-generation sound that robs the instruments of their immediacy and texture (much the same way that Heavy Vinyl does, truth be told).

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Debussy & Ravel – A Tale of Two Top Copies

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Claude Debussy Available Now

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Maurice Ravel Available Now

In 2024 we did a shootout for this recording of quartets, LSC 2413, our first in 19 years.

For the shootout winning pressing, we wrote the following:

Juilliard String Quartet’s performance of these wonderful classical works appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides of this original Shaded Dog pressing.

Having just played some killer copies of Death and the Maiden, we’re tempted to say that this Debussy record has the potential for even better sound — it’s richer and sweeter, but every bit as real and immediate as any chamber recording we know of.

Here are the notes for the actual record we played. Side one really blew our minds, earning a grade of at least 3+.

The second place finisher may not have been quite as good on side one, but it was still so good that it had no problem earning the full three pluses. It had the same stampers as the copy above by the way.

Side two however lacked the space of the very best pressings we played, and we marked it down one half plus for that shortcoming. Although it was “so tubey and 3-D” it did not have “all the space but not hot at all and natural and sweet.”

It’s very unlikely that the person who bought this copy would feel there was any problem with side two. We had two killer side two’s to play against each other back to back, and that’s about the only way these kinds of very subtle differences can be recognized, assuming you have a system that can resolve the space of the recording at an extremely high level to begin with.

The big rooms with high ceilings that systems like those require are not usually found in listening rooms that have not been custom built.

More on this wonderful record:

The Living Stereo sound here is Tubey Magical, lively and clear, with the kind of transparency that puts living, breathing musicians right in your listening room in the way that only the best vintage vinyl pressings can.

Lewis Layton engineered this recording (along with Ed Begley) and he nailed it, perfectly capturing the rich, textured sheen on the strings, the hallmark of Living Stereo sound in the 50s and 60s.

He recorded both the Schubert (LSC 2378) mentioned above and this wonderful Debussy/Ravel record for RCA in 1960 — it would be quite the understatement to say he had a gift for recordings of this kind.

Another superb recording from the 60s, brought to you by your vinyl-loving friends at Better Records.

It’s an exceptional Living Stereo all analog recording from 1960 – nothing else sounds like it.

When you’ve played as many Living Stereo titles as we have (250+ and counting), you’re bound to run into this kind of Demo Disc sound from time to time – it’s what makes record collecting fun.

It’s an amazing find, the kind of record we live for here at Better Records.

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Lee Konitz With Warne Marsh Is Yet Another Amazing Sounding Budget Reissue

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Recordings Featuring the Saxophone Available Now

Here is how we described this wonderful reissue of the 1955 recording of Lee Konitz with Warne Marsh:

Incredible MONO sound throughout this reissue copy of Lee Konitz with Warne Marsh (only the second to hit the site in years).

Exceptionally spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied – this pressing was a big step up over every other copy we played.

If you want to hear the Tubey Magic, size and energy of this wonderful session from 1955 – originally recorded by Tom Dowd and expertly remastered by George Piros – this pressing will definitely let you do that.

I hope these notes are able to speak for themselves. If you have trouble reading them, please drop me a line and I will translate them for you.

The horns are breathy and clear, yet full and rich as can be. There may be a good reason that this pressing sounds as good as it does: it was remastered by one of the greatest mastering engineers of all time, George Piros.

Tom Dowd is the original recording engineer, and this one album should be all the proof you need that when it comes to jazz in mono, the guy is hard to beat. Rock in stereo, there the record is quite a bit more spotty (see, or better yet, listen to Cream, The Young Rascals, Delaney and Bonnie and too many others to list).

UPDATE 2025

The listening panel for this record listened to it with the mono switch in as well as with the mono switch out on the EAR 324p phono stage we use.

Somewhat surprisingly, the sound got worse on this mono pressing playing with the mono switch activated.

That’s not supposed to be the way works, but in the world of records, when has that ever counted for anything?

Just another reminder to always stay skeptical. Never believe anything anybody tells you about audio. Test everything for yourself, and that includes our Hot Stamper pressings. Play them against the best other pressings you can find. We will happily take back any record that doesn’t trounce anything you have to play head to head with our records.

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Why Do So Few Living Stereo Pressings Sound as Good as This One?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now

We introduced our most recent shootout winning copy of The Reiner Sound from 1958 this way:

The Reiner Sound returns to the site for the first time in years, here with big, bold, dynamic Triple Plus (A+++) Living Stereo sound throughout this original Shaded Dog pressing.

These are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “fully extended up top”…”sweet and rich”…”supremely dynamic and spacious!!!” (side one)…”massive and tubey and 3D”…”like no other” (side two)…”explosive finish.”

These sides are doing everything right – they’re rich, clear, undistorted, open, spacious, and have depth and transparency to rival the best recordings you may have heard.

This record will have you asking why so few Living Stereo pressings actually do what this one does.

The more critical listeners among you will recognize that this is a very special copy indeed.

Everyone else will just enjoy the hell out of it.

And here are the notes to prove it!

Side one was at least 3+.

  • Lots of tape hiss
  • The top end really extends
  • Sweet and spacious dynamic peaks, and rich
  • Supremely dynamic and spacious

Side two was right up there with it:

  • Massive and tubey and three-dimensional
  • Very full and dynamic
  • The explosive finish is like no other

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Our Amazingly Good Shootout Winning Copy Fell Short in One Area

Hot Stamper Pressings of Bossa Nova Albums Available Now

With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) live jazz sound or close to it throughout, this copy is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Getz – Gilberto #2 you’ve heard.

Rich, tubey and musical, the sound is wonderful for these live performances of the two very different groups – one side featuring Getz, the other Gilberto.

As you can see from the notes, side one of our most recent White Hot stamper Shootout Winner was doing everything right.

However, we had a side two that was slightly better than the side two you see here.

The Second Round

When we played the two best copies back to back, side one of this copy came out on top, earning a grade of 3+, but the side two of another pressing showed us the sound could be even more open than we thought the first time around.

As a consequence, we dropped side two’s grade a half plus, from 3 to 2.5+.

This is exactly why we do shootouts. If you really want to be able to recognize subtle (and sometimes not so subtle!) differences between pressings, you must learn to do them too.

And make sure to take notes about what you are hearing, good and bad.

One side falling short of the full Three Pluses happens more often than not. One out of five records that has one shootout winning side will have a matching shootout winning other side.

The math works like this. 3+/3+ records go in this section, which currently holds 29 titles as of 4/2025. Records with at least one 3+ side go in this section, and there are 145 of those as of the same date, about five times as many.

Getz Is the Man

Stan Getz is a truly great tenor saxophonist, the cool school’s most popular player. Over the years we have invested an insane amount of time and money in our search for Hot Stamper copies of this and other Getz albums.

We rarely have much to show for our efforts — certainly not in terms of quantity, as years can go by without a single record of his on the site.

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Bones Howe Knocked Windy Right Out of the Park

More Hot Stamper Pressings of Tubey Magical Rock Recordings Available Now

We describe the 2-pack currently on the site (as of 4/2025) this way:

The Tubey Magical sound, the lively, tight playing by The Wrecking Crew, not to mention some killer chart-topping 60s pop, make this THE Association album to own.

With these copies the Sound of the Sixties will fill your room like never before – wall to wall, floor to ceiling, with layers upon layers of analog depth.

These original Gold Label stereo pressings are have the potential to be the best sounding, with the ideal balance of richness and clarity.

Potentially is the key concept when it comes to understanding this and every other record. Again, the label is no guarantee of top quality sound. Only proper cleaning, revealing stereos and careful shootouts make it possible to recognize the best sounding pressings.

As you can see by the notes for a different, but equally good copy below, many aspects of the sound caught our attention on side one of this particular copy. (It turned out to have unacceptable amounts of noise on one of its side, hence the 2-pack.)

I have boldened three that I think did the most heavy lifting to put it over the top:

  • Breathy
  • Spacious and tubey
  • Best bass yet
  • Huge and weighty and tubey
  • No smear or veil
  • Great energy

Side two was every bit as good:

  • Tubey and weighty
  • Vocals up front and sweet and rich
  • Tubey (I tell you!)

The master of Tubey Magical pop recording is, of course, a Mr. BONES HOWE.

 You would be very hard pressed to find a pop or rock recording from 1967 that sounds as good as a Hot Stamper Insight Out. (Sgt. Pepper comes to mind, as well as some of these other Must Own titles, but Insight Out sets a fairly high bar most of them will have trouble getting over.)

Can you imagine the Mamas and the Papas or The Jefferson Airplane with this kind of rich, sweet, open, textured, natural, tonally correct sound quality?

The midrange is pure Tubey Magic. If you have the kind of system that brings out that quality in a recording, you will go wild over this one. In fact, it’s so good it made me appreciate some of the other songs on the album which I had previously dismissed as filler. When you hear them sound this good, you may change your mind about them too.

Hal, Joe and Bones

The real stars of Windy (and the album itself) are Hal Blaine and Joe Osborne, the famous session drummer/ bass player team. It is they who create the driving force behind these songs. Osborne’s website puts Windy front and center as the first track demonstrating what a top rhythm section can do for a pop song. This whole album can be enjoyed simply for the great drum and bass work, not to mention the sound that both of those instruments are given by the pop recording master Bones Howe.

He produced and engineered the show here; Bones is a man who knew his way around a studio as well as practically anybody in the 60s. He’s the one responsible for all the Tubey Magic of the recording. That’s his sound. If you are a fan of that sound, will find much to like here.

Bouncing Tracks

Never My Love is clearly the best sounding track on the album. Those of you with better front ends will be astonished at the quality of the sound. Windy also sounds excellent, but I hear some sub-generation harmonic distortion, probably caused by bouncing down some of the tracks to make room for others.

This is the era of the four track machine, and when four of the tracks are used up they are bounced down to one track, making available three new tracks. Some of the albums from this era — the Mamas and the Papas come to mind — have multiple bounces, three and four deep, which accounts for the distortion that you hear all through their recordings. The two-track finished master might have upwards of five tape generations or more on some instruments or vocal parts.

UPDATE 2025:

In our shootout notes, no mention was made of any problems with the sound of the song Windy.  The harmonic distortion we mentioned above may be an artifact of some of our previous limitations in cleaning and playback. Those of you with a top quality copy may want to listen for yourself and see if you hear the harmonic distortion we describe.

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A Killer Reissue Pressing of Jazz Samba Won Our Shootout

Hot Stamper Pressings of Bossa Nova Albums Available Now

A killer copy of Jazz Samba (the first to hit the site in over four years) with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from first note to last – exceptionally (and exceptionally rare) quiet vinyl too.

This is by far the best copy of the album we have ever played — we had no idea a copy could possibly sound this good and be pressed on vinyl this quiet.

Remarkably spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied – this pressing was a big step up over all of the other pressings we played in our recent shootout.

No other copy earned a better grade than 2+ on either side, and some of the originals were godawful (watch for the “wrong” stampers coming to the blog soon).

As you can see from the notes, both sides of our most recent White Hot stamper shootout winning copy were doing everything right. This copy was so good that it qualified to be in our Top Shelf section, for records with two shootout winning sides.

You know what’s unusual about these notes?

They’re the kind of notes we’ve never written for any Heavy Vinyl reissue, even for the one that won our shootout not long ago.

They are the kind of notes that make it clear to us what a sham the modern Heavy Vinyl pressing tends to be, even those that are done right.

No modern record we’ve ever played has ever had anything even approaching this kind of big as life sound, and we doubt one ever will.

Records like this vintage vinyl pressing are thrilling in a way that very, very few records ever are.

Once you hear sound like this, you are not likely to forget it.

It sets a standard that modern remastered records simply cannot meet.

Hey, want to find your own top quality copy?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that consistently win our shootouts.

This record has been sounding its best for many years, in shootout after shootout, this way:

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Leonard Cohen Sure Sounds Better than He Used to

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Leonard Cohen Available Now

Insanely good Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on both sides AND fairly quiet vinyl – the best copy to ever hit the site bar none.

Unbeatable richness and freedom from artificiality in the midrange allowed this one to tower over the rest of the field.

As you can see from the notes, both sides of our most recent White Hot stamper shootout winning copy were doing everything right. We marvelled at these specific qualities in the sound:

Side One

Track one

    • Rich vocals
    • Jumps out
    • Much bigger and fuller and more natural

Track two

    • Big and rich and breathy
    • Very open chorus

Side Two

Track three

    • Big, breathy and transparent and rich
    • Vocals are right up front and dynamic

Track one

    • Sweet and tubey
    • Big bass

Midrange presence is one of the most important qualities of any rock or pop recording we might be evaluating, and for a Leonard Cohen album it is absolutely essential.

You want Cohen to be front and center, neither recessed in space nor behind a veil.

The notes for track three on side two say it all:

Vocals are right up front and dynamic

That is what gets this music to sound the way it is supposed to. You can be very sure that no Heavy Vinyl remastered pressing is going to put Leonard Cohen front and center. They practically never do. (Here is an especially offensive remaster with a bad case of recessed vocals. Funny how none of the audiophile reviewers noticed. What does that say about the quality of their playback, or the standards to which they hold their records?)

DIY Advice

To aid you in doing your own evaluations, here is a list of records that we’ve found to be good for testing midrange presence.

This is exactly why we do shootouts. If you really want to be able to recognize subtle (and not so subtle!) differences between pressings, you must learn to do them too.

And make sure to take notes about what you are hearing, good and bad.

We love Cohen’s albums here at Better Records. No, they’re not audiophile spectaculars, but much like the best Dylan recordings, when they work the sound fits the music perfectly.

UPDATE 2025

In previous listings we had noted:

The vocals are right up front and fairly dry, throwing the words and phrasing into high relief.

But we would no longer agree with the vocals being dry. On the best copies they are rich, full-bodied and tubey.

What does that say about the quality of our playback? How about: It’s better now than it used to be!

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