chris-bellman

More Bass or More Detail, Which Is Right?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now

With Doug Sax mastering from the real tape, you get a Rock Solid Bottom End like you will not believe. Talk about punchy, well-defined and deep, man, this record has BASS that you sure don’t hear too often on rock records. 

And it’s not just bass that separates the Men from the Boys, or the Real Thing from the Classic Reissue for that matter. It’s WEIGHT, fullness, the part of the frequency range from the lower midrange to the upper bass, that area that spans roughly 150 to 600 cycles.

It’s what makes Daltry’s voice sound full and rich, not thin and modern.

It’s what makes the drums solid and fat the way Johns intended.

The good copies of Who’s Next and Quadrophenia have plenty of muscle in this area, and so do the imports we played.

But not the Classic. Oh no, so much of what gives Who By Numbers its Classic Rock sound has been equalized right out of the Heavy Vinyl reissue by Chris Bellman at BG’s mastering house.

Some have said the originals are warmer but not as detailed. I would have to agree, but that misses the point entirely: take out the warmth — the fullness that makes the original pressings sound so right — and you of course hear more detail, as the detail region is no longer masked by all the stuff going on below it.

Want to hear detail? Disconnect your woofers — you’ll hear plenty of detail all right!

Keep that in mind when they tell you at the store that the record you brought in to audition is at fault, not their expensive and therefore “correct” equipment. I’ve been in enough of these places to know better. To mangle another old saying, if you know your records, their excuses should fall on deaf ears. (more…)

Robert Brook’s Guide to Legrand Jazz on Impex

Robert Brook has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Robert tries to remain positive when choosing the words that would best describe the award winning Impex release of Legrand Jazz. In the end he goes with the spoken word over the written one.

Years ago I wrote about how important the Legrand Jazz album was for me in my growth as a critical listener. It’s yet another example of an album that helped make me a better audiophile by showing me the errors of my tweaking and tuning ways.

Let’s watch the video and see what Robert has learned about Impex’s recent release.

Legrand Jazz (featuring Miles Davis) – the 2019 IMPEX Double 45 rpm

Michael Fremer gives the Impex pressings an 11 for sound. He writes (emphasis added):

“This IMPEX reissue is sourced from an “analog mix-down transfer of the original 1958 work tape by Mark Wilder at Battery Studios” and cut by Chris Bellman and Bob Donnelly at Bernie Grundman Mastering on Grundman’s all-tube mastering system. I have a clean, original 6-Eye pressing that this superbly pressed reissue betters in every way. This will make both your stereo and your heart sing. Some of the greatest jazz musicians of that or any era wailing and clearly having a Legrand time. Limited to 3000 copies. Don’t miss it!”

Who are you going to believe, the Self-Appointed Vinyl Experts of the World and Bestowers of Prestigious Audio Awards (awards which you may have never heard of; I sure hadn’t), or some guy who’s just dedicated to being an Analog Audiophile and knows a good record when he hears one? (Or doesn’t hear one, as the case may be.)

Like Robert, I tried being kinder and gentler, but it didn’t take. I may resolve to try harder in 2024 2026. Then again, I may not. If we’re nicer to the people currently making Heavy Vinyl records, aren’t we running the risk, to cop a line from the late, great P.J. O’Rourke, of encouraging them?

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How Does the Heavy Vinyl Pressing of Harvest Sound?

 Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

How does the Heavy Vinyl of Harvest sound?

We have no idea. We’ve never played a copy.

Actually, that’s not true. We do have an idea.

Although we’ve never auditioned the Heavy Vinyl pressing of Harvest, we have played the newly remastered After the Gold Rush. We concluded that this is a reissue series that should hold very little appeal for audiophiles. Some excerpts from our review:

We know what the good pressings of the album sound like, we play them regularly, and this newly remastered vinyl is missing almost everything that makes the album essential to any Right Thinking Music Lover’s collection.

We can summarize the sound of this awful record in one word: boring. Since some of you may want to know more than that we’ll be happy to break it down for you a bit further.

What It Does Right

It’s tonally correct.

Can’t think of anything else…

What It Does Wrong

Where to begin?

It has no real space or ambience. When you play this record it sounds as if they must have recorded it in a heavily padded studio. Somehow the originals of After the Gold Rush, like most of Neil’s classic albums from the era, are clear, open and spacious.

Cleverly the engineers responsible for this audiophile remastering have managed to reproduce the sound of a dead studio on a record that wasn’t recorded in one.

In addition, the record never gets loud. The good pressings get very loud. They rock, they’re overflowing with energy.

And, lastly, there’s no real weight to the bottom end. The whomp factor on this new pressing is practically non-existent. The low end of the originals is huge, deep and powerful.

The Bottom Line

This new Heavy Vinyl pressing is boring beyond belief (tip of the hat to Elvis Costello there). I wouldn’t give you a nickel for it. If Neil Young actually had anything to do with it he should be ashamed of himself.

If you want a good copy of the album we have them on the site from time to time. If you can’t afford our Hot Stampers, please don’t waste your money on this one. I have an old CD from 30 years ago, and it is dramatically better than this LP.

Pass / Not Yet

We think the Heavy Vinyl pressing of After the Gold Rush is so awful that whatever supporters it may have — and there are surely some who have spoken highly of it on audiophile forums somewhere, having seen the most ridiculously bad audiophile records touted again and again — are failing utterly in this hobby in one or both of the following ways.

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Oh, So That’s Who Butchered Neil Young’s Greatest Hits

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

When I reviewed the Classic Records pressing of Neil Young’s Greatest Hits in 2005, I had never heard of Chris Bellman. As it turns out, he’s the guy who cut this piece of crap. I had no idea. And why would I care anyway?

UPDATE 2025

The median price the album sells for on Discogs as of 10/2025 is $142.92, and it has sold for as much as $288 and change in the past. There are bigger wastes of money in the world of records — this guy can be counted on to produce more than his share, some at prices that even make us blush — but it is hard to imagine how anyone could get less for his $142 than by buying this 2 disc set.

The most shocking thing about the fact that he cut the album is not how awful it sounds.

No, there are plenty of awful sounding Heavy Vinyl pressings in the world, enough to fill up the glossy-paged catalogs of every mail order audiophile record dealer from here to Timbuktu.

What is shocking is that there are audiophiles — self-identified lovers of sound, who are supposedly capable of telling a good sounding record from a hole in the ground — that defend this man’s work.

How does anyone take this guy’s records seriously?

To be fair, it should be said that I actually like one of the records Mr Bellman has cut, the 45 of Brothers in Arms, discussed here. An excerpt:

[In this video] I’m asked if I like any modern mastering engineers, and the only one I can think of is Chris Bellman, because he mastered one of the few Heavy Vinyl pressings I know of that sounds any good, Brothers in Arms, released in 2021. I played it when Edgers [Geoff Edgers from WAPO] brought it by the studio when he first visited me in preparation for his article.

My best copy was clearly better in some important ways, but Bellman’s mostly sounds right, and that surprised me because most of these modern records sound funny and weird and almost never sound right.

(Geoff brought over three records that day: Brothers in Arms, the remastered Zep II, and a ridiculously bad sounding Craft pressing of Lush Life, which was mastered by Kevin Gray, and one which I have not had time to review yet. It was my introduction to the Craft series, and let’s just say we got off on the wrong foot. I told Geoff it sounded like a bad CD, and that’s pretty much all I remember of it. The average price for that pressing on Discogs is roughly $69 these days. The CD is cheaper and there is very little doubt in my mind that it would be better sounding to boot.)

I stand by my admiration for Brothers in Arms, a very good reissue, something that might give one of our lowest level Hot Stamper pressings a run for its money.

But he has a lot of explaining to do when it comes to the other records of his we (and Robert Brook) have played. Reviews are coming, late as always, but for now here is what we’ve written about the records he’s credited with remastering.

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I’m Starting to Get a Bad Feeling About Record Store Day

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

For some reason, don’t ask me why, they keep hiring Chris Bellman to make Heavy Vinyl reissues of Neil Young’s albums, even though he has shown again and again that he has no idea what these recordings are supposed to sould like.

So far he’s ruined After the Gold Rush and Neil Young’s Greatest Hits, and there may be others he’s remastered to death, but no copies of those have come our way so we really don’t know, or care to know, to be honest.

If this is your idea of analog, you are most likely in the wrong hobby and should consider finding a different one. At the very least you are wasting your time and money on worthless crap vinyl pressings put out by the legion of Heavy Vinyl Grifters who emerge from the bowels of the earth on Record Store Day, targeting their rip-off LPs at the low- to mid-fi vinyl collector types who have yet to figure out what a giant scam the whole thing is.

These records have virtually no redeeming features, none that we could find anyway. Allow us to catalog the shortcomings of the three sides that comprise the 2017 Record Store Day release of Harvest Moon.

For the first time in five years we had finally been able to do a shootout for the imports we like, so we knew exactly how good the best pressings could sound. Long story short, they sure don’t sound like this!

Side One

Track Two (From Hank to Hendrix)

  • Blary harmonica
  • Much more treble
  • Still flat and dry
  • Just louder with less bottom
  • Edgy vocals in the chorus

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How Not to Conduct a Proper Shootout for Aqualung

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

UPDATE 2023

This commentary was probably written in 2010 or thereabouts, since that’s the date on Fremer’s Aqualung review, which, for those with much more tolerance for audiophile BS than I am able to muster, can be found here. I’ve made a few changes to the commentary below, but most of the original text is intact.

We recently put up a Hot Stamper Aqualung that just BLEW THE DOORS OFF the CLASSIC 200g pressing. Michael Fremer may think the new reissue is the ultimate pressing, but we sure don’t. 

The Aqualung shootout on his site is priceless. He has so many silly things to say about it, let’s not waste any more time and get right to them.

His Shootout Begins

He says he “… compared Classic’s new 200g reissue with: 1) an original UK Chrysalis 2) an original American Chrysalis/Warner Brothers, 3) an original French Pink Label Island, 4) The Mobile Fidelity ½ speed mastered edition and 5) DCC’s 180g issue mastered by the team of Hoffman and Gray.”

How many of each? One, right? (All the articles in front of the nouns are singular. Assuming MF is using good grammar, how many could there be?)

Mikey, that’s your first mistake.

When it comes to the domestic release, one is a wholly inadequate sample size for pressings that were pumped out by the millions and therefore mastered multiple times. Go to Discogs if you want to see just how many different stamper numbers can be found in the original Reprise pressings. Hint: it’s a lot. Some of them are known to us to be awful, some fall into the middle of the pack, and some we like. Figuring out which are which has taken us a lifetime of work and is well beyond the ability of any single person to decode for more than a few dozen records.

Maybe you got hold of a bad sounding “original American Chrysalis/Warner Brothers,” did you ever think of that? The record bins are full of them.

If you did get hold of a bad one — and all the evidence points in that direction — the time and effort you put into your shootout just went flying out the window, defenestrated as they say.

Shootouts using only a small number of pressings have very little value. Anybody who claims to know anything about records ought to know that.

This next line just floors me.

Now rather than make value judgments, let’s just compare without prejudice.

This guy may not be good for much, but he sure is good for a laugh.

Does he really expect us to believe that the comments that follow are not biased in any way, that they are The Truth, that he is able to measure “intimacy and warmth” and tell us precisely how much of each there is on any given pressing? Who in his right mind thinks like that?  (At this rate he may end up wandering about a park with snot running down his nose, greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Help is available; perhaps Stereophile has a mental health plan under which he could be covered.)

Soon enough he goes on to give his opinion as to the merits of each of the pressings noted above. I’m sorry, did I say opinion? I meant comparisons without prejudice. Sorry, my bad.

The Big Truth

And of course he is more than welcome to make any and all the comparisons he deems fit, each from that lovely sample size of one. And if he wants to add another sample (size = 1) to the mix by playing the DCC gold CD, he’s welcome to do that too, which he did. I’m guessing that his CD player is every bit as accurate as his front end (comprising turntable/ arm/ cartridge/ phono stage/ cables), which, if he were to ascribe a percentage to the accuracy of all the pieces that make up this chain, would have to be in the range of 100% or thereabouts. Or as the late John McLaughlin might say, on a scale of one to ten: ten, meaning Metaphysically Accurate.

No colorations. No imperfections. Pure Truth, and nothing but.

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Our Guide to Legrand Jazz on Impex

Hot Stamper Pressings of 30th St. Recordings Available Now

Years ago I wrote about how important the Legrand Jazz album was in my growth as a critical listener.

It’s yet another example of an album that helped make me a better audiophile by showing me the error of my tweaking and tuning ways.

Now there is a new pressing of it. Well, new to us anyway. (We readily admit to being behind the times and make no apologies for it. With records like these, we often find ourselves wondering why we bother.)

Two new pressings in fact. One on a single disc at 33 RPM as of 2017, and one mastered at 45 RPM on 2 LPs as of 2019, still in print and available for $59.99.

Production details can be found at the end of this review, along with some favorable comments, some from none other than Steve Hoffman himself.

But first let’s hear from the personification of the well-meaning audiophile reviewer, Michael Fremer. He gives the Impex pressings an 11 for sound. He writes (emphasis added):

This IMPEX reissue is sourced from an “analog mix-down transfer of the original 1958 work tape by Mark Wilder at Battery Studios” and cut by Chris Bellman and Bob Donnelly at Bernie Grundman Mastering on Grundman’s all-tube mastering system. I have a clean, original 6-Eye pressing that this superbly pressed reissue betters in every way. This will make both your stereo and your heart sing. Some of the greatest jazz musicians of that or any era wailing and clearly having a Legrand time. Limited to 3000 copies. Don’t miss it!

Who are you going to believe, the Self-Appointed Vinyl Experts of the World or some guy like me who thinks he knows a thing or two about the sound of records, especially, as in this case, a record I have been playing since 1990 or thereabouts.

(Back in those early days I also had the standard CD, which is excellent and highly recommended. Since I couldn’t clean or play my original vinyl pressing properly, my guess would be that the CD had the better sound at the time.)

Our notes (for those who have trouble reading our scratch)

So bright and thin and dry.

Crazy bad!

Unnatural, ugly.

Worst reissue ever?

Void of tubes and body.

So far off the mark.

Awful.

A second opinion

Robert Brook reviewed this pressing a while back. He does his best to remain positive when choosing the words that he thinks will help the reader bette understand the experience of playing the Impex release of Legrand Jazz that we had loaned him. In the end he goes with the spoken word over the written one.

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Doesn’t Anyone Know What Love Is (Supposed to Sound Like)?

Click Here to See Our Most Recent Review for a Real Gold Label Stereo Pressing of Forever Changes 

The one person we can say for sure who must have absolutely no idea what a vintage pressing of the album is supposed to sound like is Chris Bellman. Allow us to make the case.

Below you can see our notes for the Rhino Heavy Vinyl pressing of Forever Changes cut by Chris for Bernie Grundman Mastering in 2012.

We recently got hold of a copy locally and figured why not give it a spin and see how one of the most respected mastering engineers of the day, CB, fared with this apparently difficult to master title. (Others have tried and failed. See here and here.)

The Gold Label pressings are the only ones we buy these days. The Big Red E Elektras are passable at best, and everything after them is terrible, including imports and all the Heavy Vinyl reissues that we’ve had the misfortune to play over the years. We hope to be posting some of the stampers to avoid (we call them bad stamps) before too long.

Let’s get right into the sound of this 2012 remaster. We played the two tracks on each side that we’re most familiar with from doing shootouts for the title.

As the record played, to the best of our ability we made notes of the sound we were hearing:

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Can Chris Bellman Cut Records As Well As Artisan Used to?

Robert Brook has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Robert’s story begins:

Recently a friend and a frequent reader of my website suggested I review the 50th Anniversary Edition of David Crosby’s debut. He’d read my article from a while back in which I made comparisons between two different Hot Stamper copies of the record, and he knew I was a fan the album.

I’m sure he also knew, as any of my regular readers would, that I’m extremely skeptical of modern reissues. You can find many examples on this site of reissues I’ve written about that have failed miserably to impress me. But this friend was pretty insistent that this one, remastered by long time engineer Chris Bellman, was different. He also told me it was on par with original Monarch pressing of …My Name he also owned.

Bellman was responsible for cutting one of the few heavy vinyl reissues that my friend Tom Port has liked and recommended – a European pressing from 2020 of the Dire Straits record Brothers In Arms. Tom likes precious few “audiophile” reissues. He’s mentioned maybe 4 or 5 over the years as being worthy of any consideration. Given that, and the fact that my friend was so insistent, I figured why not give Bellman’s recut of . . .My Name a shot?

Click on the link to read the whole thing. I left some comments at the end you may enjoy reading. I hope to be able to address some of the other issues Robert brings up at a later date.

IF ONLY I COULD REMEMBER MY NAME: 50th Anniversary Edition

If you are interested in picking up an amazing Hot Stamper pressing of the album, we currently (as of 2/24) have some in stock. Click on this link to see what is available: If I Could Only Remember My Name.

On the website, we talk about just how much we love this album:

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By 2007 We Had Changed Our Minds about the Classic Who’s Next

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now

Here is our review from 2005.

After doing our next shootout for Who’s Next in 2007, and replaying the Classic afterwards, we changed our minds about Classic’s version of the album.

Apparently, a surprising amount of audio progress was made from 2005 to 2007, reflected in this review as well as dozens of others.

Looking back, 2007 seems to have been a milestone year  for us here at Better Records, although we certainly had no idea at the time that such dramatic changes had been put in motion.

For example, later that same year we swore off Heavy Vinyl (prompted by the less-than-enchanting sound of the Rhino pressing of Blue) and committed ourselves to doing record shootouts of vintage pressings full time. To accomplish this we eventually ended up doubling the staff.

(Cleaning and playing every record you see on our site turned out to very time consuming. No one man band can begin to fathom the complex and random nature of the vinyl LP, which explains why the audiophile reviewers of the world are right about as often as the proverbially stopped clock.)

Live and learn is our motto, and progress in audio is a feature, not a bug, of record collecting at the most advanced levels. (“Advanced” is a code word for having no interest in any remastered pressing marketed to the audiophile community. There is nothing advanced about these deceptively-packaged mediocrities if you have the stereo to reveal their shortcomings. After spending fifty years in audio (1975-2025, we do. )

This is how good Who’s Next sounds these days, when we have them, which is not often.

In 2007 we did a big shootout for Who’s Next, and as is so often the case, the shortcomings of the Heavy Vinyl version were mercilessly revealed when played head to head with The Right Vintage Pressing. (And not the original Track by the way.)

Oddly enough, and contrary to expectation, even the domestic Decca label copies had amazing sound, not just the British Track label pressings I had favored for so long. (To keep from being influenced by biases of any kind, when we do these shootouts the listeners have no idea which pressing they are evaluating.)

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