fri-2026

Talk About Getting the Sound Wrong – What Was Decca Thinking?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

Even though we know that the UK Decca pressings have not done well in our shootouts for more years than I care to remember, if we see one for cheap locally you know we’re going to buy it and get it another chance at the brass ring no matter how many times it’s failed in the past.

As you can see from our shootout notes, the Decca import has once again let us down.

It’s bright, with no warmth or weight. It’s not musical like the London pressings with the right stampers are.

If a certain kind of audiophile were to play this record, the kind of audiophile who might be given to simplistic conclusions based on insufficiently small sets of data — which, in our experience, pretty much covers the entire audiophile record collector community, including, if not especially, the so-called expert reviewers — the conclusion such a person might reach is that Beggars Banquet is just not very well recorded.

If Decca pressings don’t sound good, what on earth would?

Or, to put it another way, if Decca, the label that the Stones recorded this album for, can’t figure out how to make Beggars sound its best, why would we assume that any other company could?

We would, naturally, assume that Decca did the best they could with the tape and the mediocre quality of the sound you hear — 1+/1.5+ is pretty much our definition of mediocre — is all there is.

The Option that Is Almost Always Wrong

Worse — if a new Heavy Vinyl pressing of the album came out with even halfway-decent sound, then it would prove beyond a doubt that some modern mastering engineer had finally figured out how to get Beggars to sound right.

But of course it would prove no such thing.

If all you have to guide you is conventional collector wisdom, then the one thing you can be sure of is that the Decca pressing from the UK should have better sound than any other, especially any record made in the states.

But it doesn’t. It’s possible I suppose – we haven’t played every pressing ever made – but it sure is unlikely based on the evidence presented to our ears over the course of the last twenty to thirty years or so.

If you would like to hear Beggars Banquet sound right, and have the hundreds of dollars we charge for a copy that is guaranteed to sound right or your money back, click on the link. It’s rare that we have one in stock, but you never know.

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Labels, Patterns and Reasoning in a Circle

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Music Available Now

This commentary was written more than ten years ago. It seems to be holding up just fine though, especially considering just how bad some of the Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played recently sounded.

RFR1/ 2.  This pressing has DEMONSTRATION QUALITY SOUND.

Here is the sound that Mercury is famous for: immediate, dynamic and spacious. This record lives up to the Mercury claim: You immediately feel as though you are in the Living Presence of the orchestra.

This is precisely the kind of record that Speakers Corner would not have a clue how to master. I’d stake my reputation on it, for what that’s worth.

As you may know, I am a critic of the new [now long in the tooth] Speakers Corner Mercury series, and I can tell you without ever hearing their version of this recording that there is NO CHANCE IN THE WORLD they will ever cut a record that sounds like this.

It’s alive in a way that none of their pressings would even begin to suggest.

If you don’t believe me, please buy this record and play it for yourself. If you don’t agree, I will refund your money and pay the domestic shipping back.

This record also gives the lie to those who think that Vendor pressings are inferior. This is a Vendor and I would be surprised if there’s a better sounding copy than this one. I’ve certainly never heard one.

People who like to read labels and find some sort of pattern or connection between the label and the sound of the record are living in a world of their own making.

A world that exists solely in their heads.

The stamper numbers are the only thing that can possibly mean anything on a record, and even those are subject to so much variation from pressing to pressing that they become little more than a vague, general guide.

This LP is a good example of a record that a certain kind of record collector might pass up, hoping to find a better sounding non-Vendor pressing.

Of course, the circular reasoning that would result is that such a collector would buy the non-Vendor pressing, possibly with the exact same stamper numbers, hear how good it sounded, and congratulate himself on the fact that the non-Vendor pressings always sound so much better.

All without ever having done a comparison. A good way to never be wrong.

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On Young Person’s Guide, Stick with the Unboxed Deccas

Hot Stamper Pressings of Classical and Orchestral Music Available Now

This is our favorite recording of the work. Those of you looking for a Young Person’s Guide can stop looking, this is the one.

For those who have never heard it, check out The Young Person’s Guide on YouTube – it is a tour de force of orchestral excitement, especially from the percussion section.

We’ve learned from shootouts past (and were reminded again during our most recent) that the London pressings can also be quite good, but none of them can hold a candle to the early Deccas.

However, the later Boxed Label Deccas leave a lot to be desired and should be avoided by those looking for top quality sound.

Side one of this copy was dry and hot. Side two thin and very small.

This is an amazing recording, but you’d never know it from playing the reissues.

There are about 150 orchestral recordings we think offer the best performances with the highest quality sound. This record is certainly deserving of a place on that list.

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Could This Be the Sound Audiophiles Complain About with RVG’s Mastering?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

A rare and expensive early mono pressing that we put into our most recent shootout was dreadful sounding.

Our main listening guy owns the record and made the note you see below, saying that his personal copy is every bit as bad.

The sound of the original was painfully midrangy and crude. It was not the worst of all the pressings we played, but it was nevertheless pretty bad, sounding nothing like our shootout winners.

We had a pressing on an early Prestige label in stereo, also mastered by Rudy Van Gelder, that was reasonably good sounding, earning grades of 1.5+ to 2+. It was sweet and relaxed, but relatively small and lacked the weight of the best.

For this music, we’ve found the best sound on the better Two-Fer pressings and the right OJC.

That Two-Fer budget reissue pressing, remastered by David Turner in 1972, can do very well in a shootout, but it can also fall far short of the mark on some sides, as you can see from the grades for these three other copies.

If you have the Two-Fer, how does yours sound compared to the four we auditioned (a shootout we were doing for the third or fourth time I might add), and how could you possibly know such a thing without a great many more copies at hand to clean and play?

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On Porgy and Bess, Stick with the Early Pressings on the Black Label

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Harry Belafonte Available Now

A Living Stereo knockout! We sometimes forget to spend time with records like this when there are so many Zeppelin and Floyd records waiting to be played (and a lot more customers waiting to get hold of them to add to their collection).

We’ve always enjoyed Belafonte At Carnegie Hall, but when we’ve dug further into his catalog we’ve been left cold more often than not. However, when we finally got around to dropping the needle on a few of these many years ago we were very impressed by the music and blown away by the sound on the better pressings.

Just make sure that you avoid the orange label reissues.

They are dry, gritty and spitty. The notes below show a side one earning a single plus (1+) not-quite-Hot Stamper grade. We discuss its faults on the far right, and the other orange label pressing we played was even worse, earning a grade of NFG.

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Some Pressings of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 Can Sure Be a Letdown

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

I don’t know of another recording of the work that gets the sound of the piano better. On the properly-mastered, properly-pressed copies, the percussive quality of the instrument really comes through.

But that quality (along with lots of others) is only heard on the better copies.

The reissues (one with the later Tulips label, one with the earlier Large Tulips label) described below are at best passable, and some of them were just awful.

The note to the left makes clear that even some of the early Large Tulips label pressings had very bad sound. Watch out especially for 18A/15B stampers. They’re NFG: No F***ing Good.

As you can see from the notes above for this particular recording in the Black and White cover, one side was passable, earning our 1.5+ grade. That makes it a decent sounding record, I suppose, but it’s a long, long, long way from the best.

1.5+ is four grades down from the top copy. That’s a steep dropoff as far as we’re concerned. 1.5+ only hints at how good a recording this DG can be on the best pressings.

To see more records that earned the 1.5+ grade, please click here. (Incidentally, some of them are even on Heavy Vinyl. The better modern pressings have sometimes, if rarely, been known to earn Hot Stamper grades, and two recently shocked the hell out of us by actually winning a shootout. Wouldn’t you like to know which two!)

One Plus (1+) is a sub-Hot Stamper grade. We do not sell records that do not earn a grade of at least 1.5+ on both sides.

For those who might be interested, there’s more on our grading scale here.

Our Favorite Performance with Sound to Match

A recent listing for the album can be found here.

Without question this is a phenomenal piano recording in every way.

On the best copies the rich texture of the strings is out of this world — you will have a very hard time finding a DG with better string tone. This record does not have the shortcomings of the average DG: it’s not hard, shrill, or sour.

DG made plenty of good records in the 50s and 60s, then proceeded to fall apart, like most labels did. This is one of their finest. It proves conclusively that at one time — 1962 to be exact — they clearly knew exactly what they were doing.

It’s amazing how many piano recordings have poorly-miked pianos. The badly recorded pianos are either too distant, lack proper reproduction of the lower registers, or somehow smear the pounding of the keys into a blurry mess.

Are they badly recorded?

Or is it a mastering issue?

Perhaps a pressing issue?

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Are All the Masterdisk Pressings of 2112 Good Sounding?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Rush Available Now

Even though many of the original pressings are mastered at Masterdisk (by HW, BK and GK), some of the reissues from 1979 on the “skyscraper” label are too.

But none of the later pressings we played sounded very good. Audiophiles looking for top quality sound should stick to the domestic originals.

What We’re Listening For On 2112

  • Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
  • Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
  • The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
  • Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
  • Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
  • Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
  • Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

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For Also Sprach Zarathustra, These Stampers Are Passable at Best

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now

Even though they had the Shaded Dog label, some of the later stampers for this record were not very good sounding compared to the ones that won our shootouts.

20s backed by 15s earned grades that would prevent it from being sold as a Hot Stamper pressing.

One side was passable, earning our 1.5+ grade. It’s a decent sounding side I suppose, but a long, long, long way from the best.

1.5+ is four grades down from the top copy, the kind that would end up in this section. (To read about some phenomenally good sounding Shootout Winning pressing we’ve played recently, click here.)

That’s a steep dropoff as far as we’re concerned. 1.5+ only hints at how good a recording LSC 2609 can be on the best vintage pressings.

To see more records that earned the 1.5+ grade, please click here. (Incidentally, some of them are pressed on Heavy Vinyl. The best modern pressings have sometimes, though rarely, been known to earn Hot Stamper grades, and one shocked the hell out of us by actually winning a shootout. Wouldn’t you like to know which one!)

The 1+ grade found on this side one means it’s simply not very good, Shaded Dog label or no Shaded Dog label.

The average Shaded Dog may be better than the average classical record, but that certainly doesn’t mean it has any claim to audiophile sound. We’ve played bad early RCA pressings by the hundreds. Now, with this blog we can point some of them out to those record lovers who are more interested in top quality sound than an original label.

For those who might be interested, there’s more on our grading scale here.

There are quite a number of other records that we’ve run into over the years with obvious shortcomings.

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These Are the Stampers to Avoid on The Doors’ Debut

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Doors Available Now

In our experience, the Gold Label stereo originals with 1B/1B stampers are terrible sounding.

With 1B stampers it’s bad enough to go into our hall of shame for vintage pressings.

(Bad sounding audiophile records, being so plentiful, especially these days, have their own hall of shame.)

No surprise there; it’s just another bad sounding original pressing that ended up doing poorly in one of our shootouts.

We’ve auditioned countless pressings like this one in the 37 years we’ve been in business — buying, cleaning and playing them by the thousands. This is how we find the best sounding vinyl pressings ever made.

Not the ones that should sound the best. The ones that actually do sound the best.

If you’re an audiophile looking for top quality sound on vintage vinyl, we’d be happy to send you the Hot Stamper pressing guaranteed to beat anything and everything you’ve heard, especially if you have any pressing marketed as suitable for an audiophile. Those, with very few exceptions, are the worst.

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Are White Label Promos the Way to Go on this Mystery Columbia Jazz Album?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Vintage Columbia Albums Available Now

Recently we conducted a shootout for a Columbia recording, one that we had auditioned a couple of times before and one for which we knew the music and the general quality of the sound well.

It’s not the record you see pictured. For now we’re keeping the title a mystery, consistent with the idea that we give out lots of bad stampers on this blog, but almost never do we give out the good ones. (When we do give out the best stampers, we keep the title a mystery. We are not the least bit interested in putting ourselves out of business.)

The discussion for today revolves around the idea held by a great many audiophiles that the White Label Promo copies are going to be the best sounding pressings of almost any album they might happen to run across.

And, to be fair, in the case of this mysterious double album, they’re right.

Our two best sounding copies were White Label Promos.

What interests me in these findings is that the stampers for a White Label Promo copy, the second one, the one with mostly Super Hot grades, are almost identical to the one that came in last in the shootout, with barely passable grades.

If an audiophile collector were to go to Discogs, find the WLP pressings, write down their stampers, and then check them against the copies he owned or might want to buy, he could either find himself with a top quality copy, or a not-nearly-as-good copy, depending on his luck. (And side four of the worst pressing earned a sub-Hot Stamper grade of 1+.)

Why one set of stampers sounds so much better than another set, or the same or similar set on a different pressing, is a mystery.

Does anyone have a practical way to get around the unfortunate reality that allows one set of stampers to sound great and the same or a similar set of stampers to sound not much better than decent?

Well, we can’t say there is a practical way, but we do know of an impractical one. We’ve been practicing and refining that one for more than twenty years.

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