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Pretzel Logic – Our Four Plus Shootout Winner from 2011

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

This BEYOND White Hot side one (A++++) of Pretzel Logic has nothing less than master tape sound. [Whatever that is!] Our Four Plus ranking is rare enough, but in this case it has the added benefit of conferring upon this very pressing the status of the best sounding Steely Dan recording we have ever heard.

There is no better recording in the Steely Dan catalog, and I don’t think there’s a copy anywhere that’s any better than this on side one. (To see what we consider to be the single best sounding album from two hundred(!) other artists, please click here.)

UPDATE 2026

  • Note that only one side on this pressing was actually any good. Side two earned a sub-Hot Stamper grade of 1+. We no longer sell records with grades that low.
  • In 2011 we still had a lot to learn about Pretzel Logic, but this copy sure had us fired up at the time, and that’s a good thing, right?
  • Our lengthy commentary entitled outliers and out-of-this-world sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how we go about finding them.
  • We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.
  • Nowadays we most often place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that, out of the blue, revealed to us sound of such high quality that it changes our undertanding of the recording itself.
  • We found ourselves asking “Who knew?” Perhaps a better question might have been “How high is up?”

This Beyond White Hot Pretzel Logic has got it all: tons of energy, mindblowing transparency, uncanny presence, and lots of deep bass. We feel Pretzel Logic is the band’s best sounding recording, and here’s a copy that will show you why.

There’s lots of room around the drums, texture to the bass, breath to the vocals, and weight to the bottom end. The clarity is unbelievable and the overall sound is HUGE! The piano sounds AMAZING and the top end is silky sweet. It’s more open and more alive than you could ever imagine.

We’ve been playing this record since it came out in 1973 and this is the first “Four Plus” A++++ grade we have ever awarded it. The sound is Demo Disc quality of the highest order.

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Listening in Depth to Hot Rats

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Frank Zappa Available Now

Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series.

Hot Rats was mastered by Jack Hunt, a man we know to be responsible for some of the thickest, dullest, most dead sounding MoFi recuts found in their shameful catalog.

We have to admit that he did a good job cutting this album though.

Of course, not cutting at Half Speed was a big help, because Half Speed mastering is just a bad idea that ends up making some of the wackiest sounding records we have ever played.

Side One

Peaches En Regalia

This track tends to be a bit dull and could use a little sweetening on the top end on almost any copy you find. 1 or 2 dB at 10k might be just what the doctor ordered.

Willie the Pimp

This is one of the two extended tracks on the album; the second track on each side is “the long one,” and they both suffer from the same slight upper midrange boost. This song and The Gumbo Variations on side two are both difficult to turn up due to their tendency to be slightly aggressive.

Son Of Mr. Green Genes

One of the best sounding tracks on the album, and probably the best sound to be found on side one.

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Listening in Depth to Pretzel Logic

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

It’s positively criminal how mediocre this amazingly well-recorded album sounds on the average pressing of it. How can you possibly be expected to appreciate the music of Pretzel Logic when it sounds like that?

The reason we audiophiles go through the trouble of owning and tweaking our temperamental equipment is that we know how hard it is to enjoy good music when it doesn’t sound right.

Bad sound is a barrier to deeper understanding and a more intense listening experience, which is why I spent 50 years building a stereo that could play a record like Pretzel Logic right, or at least as right as I could get it to sound. (Speaking of sound, acquiring this preamp only a few years after discovering the music of Steely Dan changed everything for me.)

I also credit Pretzel Logic, probably more than any other album of theirs, with helping me dramatically improve the quality of my playback.

Side One

Rikki Don’t Lose That Number

By far the biggest hit on this album and one of the biggest for the band, it’s also one of the clearest indicators of Hot Stamper Sound. The Horace Silver inspired intro is at its best when you can easily hear the acoustic guitar in the left channel doubling the piano. On most copies it’s blurry and dull, which causes it to get lost in the mix. Transparent copies pull it out in the open where it belongs.

That’s the first test, but the real test for this track is how well the (surprisingly) DYNAMIC chorus is handled. On a properly mastered and pressed copy, Fagen’s singing in the chorus is powerful and very present. He is RIGHT THERE, full of energy and drive, challenging the rest of the band to keep up with him. And they do! The best copies demonstrate what a lively group of musicians he has backing him on this track. (If you know anything about Steely Dan’s recordings, you know the guys in these sessions are the best of the best.)

Check out the big floor tom that gets smacked right before the first chorus. On the best copies the whomp factor is off the scale.

Shocking as it may seem, most copies of this album are DOA on this track. They’re severely compressed — they never come to life, they never get LOUD. The result? Fagen and the band sound bored. And that feeling is contagious.

Of course few audiophiles have any idea how dynamic this recording can be because they’ve never heard an especially good pressing played back on a big speaker system in a big room.

Only a handful of the copies we played had the truly powerful dynamics heard on the best copies. These are Pretzel Logics with far more life than I ever dreamed possible. Who knew?

As an aside, back in 1976 I had my fifty favorite albums professionally cleaned on a KMAL record cleaning machine at the stereo store I worked at. They would give you a custom record sleeve along with the cleaning, and sure enough I found my original Pretzel Logic with its KMAL sleeve. My copy was pretty good but no Hot Stamper. So, yes, it really did take us thirty years to find the best copy!

(I took the picture of the KMAL sleeve you see to the left partly because it provides a piece of factual evidence that I really didn’t have a clue about records in 1976. I was proud to be the owner of an original British pressing of Led Zeppelin II — which is absolutely the wrong pressing of the album if you are interested in good sound — but of course I had no way to know that back then.  (more…)

Listening in Depth to JT

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of James Taylor Available Now

There are at least five or six James Taylor records that I would happily nominate as Desert Island Discs.

His albums set a standard that few other singer/songwriters’ albums can meet. Joni Mitchell comes to mind, and, like our friend James here, she explored many different styles of music throughout her career, the mark of a true artist.

After her, though, I would be hard pressed to name anyone with a body of work as extensive as Mr. Taylor’s.

And just to be clear, this would include all pop and rock artists from the 60s right through to the present. He is one of the greats in my book, and many of his albums are Must Owns.

And this is especially true for us audiophiles. The sound quality of the better pressings of most of his albums is consistently superior to the work of others from that time. Peter Asher deserves most of the credit for that.

Don’t try to start with the first album, which we can’t find for you because only the British pressings sound good and they are just too hard to find in clean condition [even though we did manage to do the shootout in 2022].

Instead go right to Sweet Baby James and JT.

The next group to pursue would contain Mud Slide Slim, Gorilla and In the Pocket.

Follow that up with One Man Dog and Dad Loves His Work (so underrated!).

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The Glorious Big Speaker Sound of Wind of Change

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Peter Frampton Available Now

A while back we discussed the kind of sound that Glyn Johns managed to get for the likes of Humble Pie and The Who:

But oh what a glorious sound it is when it’s working. There’s not a trace of anything phony up top, down low or anywhere in-between. This means it has a quality sorely at odds with the vast majority of audiophile pressings, new and old, as well as practically anything recorded in the last twenty years, and it is simply this: The louder you play it, the better it sounds.

Chris Kimsey knew how to get the Big Rock Sound onto tape about as well as anybody who ever lived. His work on this album set me on a path I would would follow for the next fifty years.

Wind of Change is the very definition of a big speaker record, one that requires the highest-resolution, lowest-distortion components to bring out its best qualities. If you have a system like that, you should find much to like here.

I bought my first copy in 1972 while still in high school and it quickly became one of my favorite records.

All these years later it still is.

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Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Out of This World Sound at Loud Levels

More of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer

  • Boasting KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout, this UK Island Pink Rim pressing makes the case that ELP’s debut is clearly one of the most powerful rock records ever made – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Spacious, rich and dynamic, with big bass and tremendous energy – these are just some of the things we love about Eddie Offord‘s engineering work on this band’s albums
  • Analog at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • “Lucky Man” and “Take A Pebble” on this copy have Demo Disc quality sound like you won’t believe
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Lively, ambitious, almost entirely successful debut album… [which] showcased the group at its least pretentious and most musicianly …there isn’t much excess, and there is a lot of impressive musicianship here.”

If you’ve got the system to play this one loud enough, with the low-end weight and energy it requires, you are in for a treat. The organ that opens side two will rattle the foundation of your house if you’re not careful. This music really needs that kind of megawatt reproduction to make sense. This is 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.

Near The Top Of The List

Without a doubt this record belongs in the Top Rock section. I’d even say it belongs in the Top Ten. It is one of the most dynamic and powerful rock recordings ever made. The organ on this album is wall to wall and floor to ceiling. The quiet interlude during “Take A Pebble” is about as quiet as any popular recording can ever be — the guitar is right at the noise floor. It’s amazing! (Which explains why so many domestic copies have groove damage. The record is just too hard to play for the average turntable. Hell, it’s hard to play with an audiophile turntable.)

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I Don’t Care What Anybody Says, One Eighty Is a Great Album

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Ambrosia Available Now

This is smooth, rich ANALOG at its best.  Easy on the ears as we like to say.

One Eighty is clearly the poppier side of Ambrosia, containing as it does two of their highest-charting mainstream hits, Biggest Part of Me (#3) and You’re the Only Woman (#13). 

I myself of course prefer the proggy first two albums, which fallinto the broad category of Art Rock, where my favorite albums by Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Roxy Music, Supertramp, 10cc, later-period Beatles, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Traffic and so many others from the last forty-plus years can be found.

These artists’ recordings tend to be big, powerful and exceedingly hard to reproduce, which, probably more than anything else, accounts for my becoming a serious stereo enthusiast right out of my teens.

(My mother had to co-sign the loan I needed to purchase the currently-state-of-the-art ARC SP3A-1 preamp I coveted. I remember it being $600+ at a time, back when I was earning roughly $2 an hour. That had to hurt, but I did it. Bought a D-75 amp after I paid it off too.)

The Music

One Eighty (recorded on 1/80, get it?) kicks off with a real rocker: Ready, which is a great name for an opening track and really gets the album off to a high-energy start. Side two opens with my favorite track on the album, Livin’ On My Own. I actually used to demonstrate my system with it: the bass is huge, way up in the mix and really punchy. Additionally there are powerful multi-tracked vocal harmonies in the chorus that are wall-to-wall, surprisingly dynamic, yet sweet (all things considered; this is a modern recording after all).

One Eighty has an excellent mix of rock and softer pop ballads. The last track, Biggest Part Of Me, no matter how many times you’ve heard it, on the radio or elsewhere, is an exceptionally well-produced (designed?) piece of songcraft that will tug at anyone’s heartstrings, anyone who has a heart that is (if I may quote the title of the best song Burt Bacharach ever wrote). On a big audiophile system it should be both powerful and emotional. (more…)

One of The Most Tubey Magical Rock Recordings of All Time

Hot Stamper Pressings of Psychedelic Rock Recordings Available Now

This is some of the best High-Production-Value rock music of the 70s. The amount of effort that went into the recording of this album is comparable to that expended by the engineers and producers of bands like Supertramp, Yes, Jethro Tull, Ambrosia, Pink Floyd and too many others to list.

It seems that no effort or cost was spared in making the home listening experience as compelling as the recording technology of the day permitted. (Of course, as it turns out, recording technology only got worse as the decade wore on, and during the 80s the sound of most recordings went off the proverbial cliff.)

Big Production British Rock just doesn’t get much better than A Space in Time.

Just listen to the guitar solo on Let The Sky Fall. It comes complete with layer upon layer of guitars, acoustic and electric, with some backwards guitar thrown in for good measure. And that’s just the guitar parts. This kind of dense aural soundscape, presented with so many carefully placed elements from side to side and front to back, makes repeated listenings especially rewarding.

No matter how many times you play the album, you are likely to hear (and hopefully appreciate) something new in the mix. I’ve been playing ASIT for forty fifty years (bought my copy when I was still in high school) and I heard lots of things this time around I never knew were there. This is why we keep improving our systems, right? There is never going to be a time when these nearly forty more than fifty year old recordings have nothing new to offer.

Their Only Essential Album

By the way, this was the first Ten Years After record I bought, and I liked it so much I went out and bought many of their other albums, only to find that none of those albums are anything like this one. None of them sound particularly good; none of them are particularly well produced; and, worst of all, most of the music is fairly forgettable British Blues Rock.

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Listening in Depth to James Taylor’s Forgotten Classic

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of James Taylor Available Now

Mud Slide Slim is one of those albums that we think should be more popular with audiophiles, at least the ones looking for timeless music with top quality sound.

It has some of the man’s strongest material:

  • You’ve Got a Friend;
  • You Can Close Your Eyes;
  • Hey Mister, That’s Me up on the Jukebox;

and one of his best and most underrated,

  • Love Has Brought Me Around.

If you’ve got a top copy of the album, this song, the leadoff on side one, can really rock. It’s yet another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you Turn Up Your Volume.

Side One

Love Has Brought Me Around

One of my all-time favorite James Taylor tracks. When you get a good copy, this music comes ALIVE! This is not your typical sad sack, touchy feely James Taylor song. This song ROCKS!

You’ve Got a Friend

Listen to Carole King’s piano. On the best copies the transparency allows her playing to be heard clearly. Her style is unmistakable.

Places in My Past
Riding on a Railroad
Soldiers
Mud Slide Slim

Side Two

Hey Mister, That’s Me up on the Jukebox

As good as any James Taylor song ever written.

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Before 2016 We Were Completely Wrong About Deja Vu

More Crosby / More Stills / More Nash / More Young

There are two areas in which we would like to amend some of the previous comments we’ve made about Deja Vu.

The first has to do with early pressings. Many years ago we wrote the following:

As we noted in previous commentary, the originals are uniformly awful. 

Although that’s mostly still true — Deja Vu is a very difficult album to find with good sound no matter what stampers you have. However, we now know that there are very good sounding copies — Shootout Winning copies in fact — with early stampers.

Deja Vu is in fact a title in which one stamper always wins, and that stamper can only be found on the early pressings.

Amazingly enough, there are more than 90 others (as of 2025) that we’ve discovered with one killer set of stampers that beat all comers as well. (There are surely many more hundreds that do, we just haven’t found them all yet. Please be patient; we are working on it.)

That’s area number one. Area number two is part of this old piece of advice:

If you bought the Classic Records pressing and you can’t tell what’s wrong with it, this may not be the right hobby for you. I highly recommend you buy the Joe Gastwirt mastered CD and either play it on your system or take it to a hi-fi store in your area. It’s tonally correct and undistorted. The Classic version is neither. Now when a stupid $15 CD is correct in a way that a $40 LP is not, something is very very wrong.

The part where we said this may not be the right hobby for you if you like Classic’s godawful remastering of Deja Vu is still true, depending on what exactly you’re trying to accomplish in the hobby.

If you’re not too picky about sound quality and just want to play new records, perhaps because old records are hard to find and often noisy, then fine, the Classic should get that job done for you.

We of course want nothing to do with it because we want exceptionally good sounding vinyl, and the Classic is definitely not very good sounding no matter how many nice things audiophile reviewers may have said about it.

No, the problem we see above is that we were recommending the currently available CD.

Yes, it’s mostly tonally correct and not distorted, but it has a bad a case of dead-as-a-doornail sound.

It’s as awful sounding as any remastered CD I have ever heard.

There is no top, there is no space, there is no life, there is no immediacy, there is no Tubey Magic — in short there is almost nothing left of what makes the best copies of Deja Vu so good.

We’ve known this for about five ten years, apologies for not getting around to correcting the record.

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