early-press-wins-reissues-fine

Here you can find a hundred or so records which potentially have shootout winning sound on the earliest pressings, but whose reissues can still sound very good.

Art Pepper – …The Way It Was

More of the Music of Art Pepper

  • A vintage Contemporary pressing of previously unreleased material with superb Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides
  • It’s airy, open, and spacious with superb clarity and an extended top end – the beautiful reading of “Autumn Leaves” on side two has Demo Disc quality sound, with Pepper really pouring his heart into it
  • Included are three tracks left off some of Pepper’s best albums on Contemporary – Meets the Rhythm Section, Intensity and Gettin’ Together
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Despite his very erratic lifestyle, altoist Art Pepper never made a bad record. The first four titles team together Pepper with tenor-saxophonist Warne Marsh for generally intriguing explorations of four standards… this album finds Art Pepper in top form.”

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

More Duke Ellington

More Count Basie

  • This original 6-Eye Stereo pressing was doing pretty much everything right, with both sides earning superb Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • Reasonably quiet vinyl too, considering its age – how many early ’60s Columbia Stereo pressings survived with audiophile-quality playing surfaces the way this one did?
  • 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 between the real thing and the Classic wannabe
  • 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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Free / Tons Of Sobs – A Classic of British Blues

More Free

More British Blues Rock


  • Tons of Sobs returns to the site for only the second time in over two and a half years, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER from top to bottom – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Side one was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • This Island Pink Rim UK pressing gave us what we were looking for from these British Blues rockers – it’s smooth, weighty, and overflowing with Tubey Magical richness
  • The key is to find a copy with a top end — a lot of what we played was just too dull up high, and we take a lot of points off for the copies that are too smooth, because that is simply not the right sound for this album
  • It’s tough to find these imports in audiophile condition, which is why they only hit the site at most every two years or so
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…a blistering combination of youth, ambition, and experience that, across the course of their debut album, did indeed lay the groundwork for all that Zeppelin would embrace. …Tons of Sobs has a density that makes Zeppelin and the rest of the era’s rocky contemporaries sound like flyweights by comparison.”

Here is just the kind of sound you want on an album like this — big and bold!

If you’ve got the full range dynamic speakers to play Tons of Sobs good and loud, you will discover, as we have, what a powerful British Blues Rock album this is. No hits, just heavy electric blues played with feeling, months before Zeppelin would come along and take the genre to a whole new level.

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Harry Nilsson / Aerial Ballet

More of the Music of Harry Nilsson

  • Nilsson’s sophomore LP returns to the site for the first time in years, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades throughout this early (but not original) RCA pressing
  • “Daddy’s Song” is only on the first pressing, and we do not see many of those in audiophile playing condition!
  • Even finding these early reissues is getting to be too much — too time consuming and too expensive, so get while the gettin’s good
  • Both of these sides are big, clear and full-bodied throughout – if you are a Nilsson fan, this copy is guaranteed to beat anything you’ve heard before, and by a wide margin
  • All of the elements are working here – you get silky vocals, punchy bass, breathy brass, silky highs, superb immediacy, remarkable clarity, and the list goes on
  • 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
  • 4 1/2 stars: “As ‘Good Old Desk’ opens Aerial Ballet with a cheerful saunter, it’s clear that Harry Nilsson decided to pick up where he left off with his debut, offering another round of effervescent, devilishly clever pop, equal parts lite psychedelia, pretty ballads, and music hall cabaret.”

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Rimsky-Korsakoff / Scheherazade – Reiner (White Dog)

More of the Music of Rimsky-Korsakov

  • Reiner and the Chicago Symphony’s performance of this dazzling symphonic suite returns to the site on this vintage White Dog pressing that boasts outstanding Double Plus (A++) Living Stereo sound or close to it from first note to last
  • We guarantee there is more richness, fullness, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you own any of the Heavy Vinyl pressings that are currently on the market
  • Our favorite Scheherazade for about the last 15 years or so has been the one Ansermet conducted for Decca in 1961, but the roller-coaster excitement Reiner and the CSO bring to the fourth movement is something very special
  • True, the side with the fourth movement earned a minimal Hot Stamper grade of 1.5+, but we still guarantee that it will beat the pants off any Heavy Vinyl reissue, because every one of those that we’ve played was ridiculously opaque, muddy and thick enough to have us crying “uncle” after five minutes (reviews available on the blog)

UPDATE 2024

Now that we know which stampers have the potential to win our shootouts, the Shaded Dog originals have lately been coming out on top, although the White Dog pressings can still sound quite good, just not as good

We did a monster shootout for this music in 2014, one we had been planning for more than two years. On hand were quite a few copies of the Reiner on RCA; the Ansermet on London (CS 6212, his second stereo recording, from 1961, not the earlier and noticeably poorer sounding recording from in 1959); the Ormandy on Columbia, and a few others we felt had potential.

The only recordings that held up all the way through — the fourth movement being the Ball Breaker of all time, for both the engineers and musicians — were those by Reiner and Ansermet. This was disappointing considering how much time and money we spent finding, cleaning and playing those ten or so other pressings, but such is the nature of our business.

TAS List

Harry Pearson put this record on his TAS list of super discs.

Of course, the fact that a recording is on the TAS list doesn’t guarantee that the pressing you buy will have great sound, but Better Records does precisely that. If you don’t think a record sounds as good as we’ve described it, we’ll always happily take that record back and refund your money.

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Leonard Bernstein – West Side Story (Original Soundtrack)

More of the music of Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

More Soundtrack Albums

  • You’ll find INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this original Columbia 6-Eye Stereo pressing
  • Spacious, rich and smooth – only vintage analog seems capable of reproducing all three of these qualities without sacrificing resolution, staging, imaging or presence
  • Tonality is the hardest thing to get right on this album, and here it is right on the money, because if it were not, it would not have won the shootout
  • For those of you who like to do your own shootouts, good luck, you will need a lot of originals to find one that sounds as good as this one does
  • The biggest selling album of the ’60s – 54 weeks at Number One (!)
  • 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: “The soundtrack of the West Side Story film is deservedly one of the most popular soundtrack recordings of all time, and one of the relatively few to have attained long-term popularity beyond a specialized soundtrack/theatrical musical audience.”

This album is at least five times more common in mono than it is in stereo, and finding enough clean early stereo pressings takes us years nowadays.

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Offenbach – Overtures / Fremaux

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

  • Overtures appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this original British EMI pressing
  • Both of these sides are exceptionally big, clear and dynamic with an abundance of Tubey Magical richness to rival the best recordings you may have heard
  • The notes for side one of our best copy, with sound similar to this side two, read: breathy and rich flutes / fully extending up high / very weighty and powerful and tubey / so fun / spacious
  • If that sounds like the kind of record you might want to hear for yourself in your very own listening room, this one is currently available for just that purpose
  • This shootout has been many years in the making – we’ve been trying to do these wonderful overtures for about five years, which just goes to show how hard it is to find these kinds of records in audiophile playing condition nowadays
  • We also just debuted a recording with Ansermet at the helm for Decca which features two of the pieces found here that’s every bit as good
  • Which one is better is probably a matter of taste as they are both head and shoulders better than any other recordings we have come across in the last five or more years

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Ravel / Daphnis et Chloé / Monteux

More of the Music of Maurice Ravel

  • Boasting excellent Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them throughout, this vintage Decca Ace of Diamonds pressing was giving us the sound we were looking for on Ravel’s complete Masterpiece
  • The sound is big and rich, lively and open, with tons of depth and huge climaxes that hold together (particularly on side one)
  • The voices in the chorus are clear, natural, separate and full-bodied — this is the hallmark of a vintage Golden Age recording: naturalness
  • We know of no other recording of the work that does as good a job of capturing such a large orchestra and chorus
  • Of course, Monteux is a master of the French idiom – his performance of the complete ballet is definitive in our opinion
  • Even though properly-cleaned, properly-pressed, properly-mastered original Decca pressings are the ones that win our shootouts, we guarantee this 60s reissue will easily beat any copy of the album you can find, at any price
  • There are about 150 orchestral recordings we have found to offer the best performances with the highest quality sound. As card-carrying audiophiles, we naturally insist on both. This record is certainly deserving of a place on that list.

Both sides here are BIG, with the space and depth of the wonderful Kingsway Hall that the LSO perform in. John Culshaw produced the album, which surely accounts for the huge size and space, not to mention quality, of the recording. The sound is dynamic and tonally correct throughout.

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Willie Dixon – I Am The Blues

More Willie Dixon

More Soul, Blues and R&B

  • With STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish, this early Columbia stereo pressing could not be beat
  • Notably richer and livelier than practically all other copies we played, with plenty of Tubey Magic and good weight down low
  • A longtime favorite of ours, with unusually good sound for a blues recording, even one from as late as 1970
  • Features updated versions of many Dixon Classics: “Spoonful,” “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “I Can’t Quit You Baby” and more
  • “The material is superb, consisting of some of Willie Dixon’s best-known songs of the 1960s, and the production is smoothly professional…”

The material here is top notch — Dixon was one of the blues’ greatest songwriters, responsible for “Spoonful,” “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “Little Red Rooster,” “Back Door Man” and other songs you’ve probably heard your favorite classic rock band covering. A copy such as this gives you more detail and texture, more extension up top and real weight to the bottom end — absolutely crucial for this music.

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Muddy Waters – Folk Singer

  • Folk Singer returns to the site after a nearly three year hiatus, here with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides
  • This is an exceptional live-in-the-studio recording, with some of the best sound Muddy Waters ever managed to get down on tape
  • This early reissue is guaranteed to trounce any heavy vinyl pressing you’ve heard of the album or we’ll give you your money back and then some!
  • We admit we did not have an original mono pressing from 1964 to play – we’ve never seen one in audiophile playing condition and don’t expect to anytime soon
  • An even earlier stereo pressing than the one that won the shootout was ridiculously bright and compressed – not sure how much creedence we should give that information, but our best later pressing was so good, it will be very hard to beat no matter what you throw at it
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Muddy’s ‘unplugged’ album was cut in September of 1963 and still sounds fresh and vital today. It was Muddy simply returning to his original style on a plain acoustic guitar in a well-tuned room with Willie Dixon on string bass, Clifton James on drums, and Buddy Guy on second acoustic guitar.”
  • Although the Chess originals, now that we know which stampers to pick up, will always win our shootouts, the Artisan-mastered reissues still sound quite good to us, just not as good

This 1963 recording has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern pressings rarely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back.

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