ledzebest

Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin IV

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  • A Zep IV that was doing just about everything right, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides
  • Insane rock and roll energy like nothing you have ever heard – the sound is full-bodied and reasonably smooth, making it possible to get the volume up good and high where it belongs
  • Here are the rock and roll classics that reign supreme to this very day – “Black Dog,” “Rock & Roll,” “Stairway to Heaven,” “When the Levee Breaks,” every one sounding better than you’ve ever heard them or your money back
  • There are some bad marks (as is sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records) on “Rock and Roll,” but once you hear just how excellent sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and just be swept away by the music
  • 5 stars: “Encompassing heavy metal, folk, pure rock & roll, and blues, Led Zeppelin’s untitled fourth album is a monolithic record, defining not only Led Zeppelin but the sound and style of 70s hard rock.”
  • If you’re a fan of the band, this title from 1971 is clearly one of their best, and one of their best sounding
  • The complete list of titles from 1971 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

It is a positive THRILL to hear this record rock the way it was meant to. If you have big speakers and the power to drive them, your neighbors are going to be very upset with you when you play this copy at the listening levels it was meant to be heard at.

You’d better be ready to rock, because this copy has the ENERGY and WHOMP that will make you want to. Zep IV demands loud levels, but practically any copy will punish you mercilessly if you try to play it at anything even approaching live levels.

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Led Zeppelin – In Through The Out Door

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  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this vintage copy of Zep’s final release
  • It’s all here: huge amounts of rock-solid bass, grungy guitars, breathy, natural vocals, and jump-out-of-the-speakers presence and energy
  • “Fool In The Rain” and “All My Love” are two of the best, and best sounding, tracks on the album
  • Marks 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
  • “The album’s opening number, ‘In the Evening,’ with its stomping rhythms and heavy, staggered riffs, suggests that Zeppelin haven’t deviated from their course, but by the time the rolling shuffle of ‘South Bound Suarez’ kicks into gear, it’s apparent that they’ve regained their sense of humor.”
  • If you’re a Zep fan, this title from 1979 is surely a Must Own
  • The complete list of titles from 1980 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

This may not be Zep’s best album, but there are some great songs here, and the music really works when the sound is this good. (more…)

Led Zeppelin – Physical Graffiti

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  • This killer double album boasts roughly Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound or close to it on all FOUR sides – just shy of our Shootout Winner (side four actually won the shootout)
  • Transparency, the ability to see into the mix, and the other side of the vintage analog richness coin, is key to the better pressings of this album, as well as many of our other favorite Demo Discs
  • Of course the main attributes that set the better copies apart from the also-rans are size, energy, weight, vocal presence and an overall freedom from grit and grain, and we guarantee that this copy will do better in all of these areas than any you have ever heard
  • 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: “Physical Graffiti captures the whole experience of Led Zeppelin at the top of their game better than any of their other albums.”
  • This is a Must Own title from 1975, a great year for rock and pop music

A distinguished member of the Better Records Rock Hall of Fame and another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you turn up your volume .

If you’ve been waiting for a seriously powerful Kashmir experience, today is your lucky day. (more…)

Led Zeppelin – III

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  • A vintage import pressing that was doing just about everything right, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on both sides – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • Huge, Tubey Magical and lively, with solid weight down low and lots of space around all the instruments, this copy is guaranteed to rock like nothing you have ever heard (particularly on side one)
  • Drop the needle on “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” turn it up good and loud and Zep will be right there in front of you for the live concert of a lifetime
  • 5 stars: “On their first two albums, Led Zeppelin unleashed a relentless barrage of heavy blues and rockabilly riffs, but Led Zeppelin III provided the band with the necessary room to grow musically. While there are still a handful of metallic rockers, III is built on a folky, acoustic foundation that gives the music extra depth.”
  • If you’re a fan of the band, this classic from 1970 belongs in your collection.

Drop the needle on Since I’ve Been Loving You and turn it up good and loud. Robert Plant will be right there between your speakers, and your jaw will be on the floor!

Cue up Tangerine on side two for a taste of rich, sweet, Tubey Magical Analog Sound. The acoustic guitars are lush and delicate, the bass is deep and well-defined, and the vocals are completely natural and free from bad mastering or phony EQ.

Zep Unplugged

The three Zep albums with out of this world acoustic guitars are the first album, III and Houses of the Holy. (All three are currently on our Top 100 list, along with II and IV. All five can be amazing sounding on the right pressings, but those pressings tend to be tough to come by in clean condition.)

The guitars are every bit as rich, tubey, sweet, delicate and harmonically correct as those found on Tea For the Tillerman, Rubber Soul, Comes a Time or any of the other phenomenally good recordings we rave about on the site.

Of course, without the right pressing, you would never know that. Later copies, Classic Records copies, typical domestic and import copies — none of them are going to sound like this one. We guarantee it.

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Led Zeppelin – Houses of the Holy

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  • With two outstanding Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, this copy is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Houses of the Holy you’ve heard
  • Side two was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • For this album, Mint Minus Minus is as QUIET as we can find them
  • Only the pressings mastered by Robert Ludwig have any hope of doing well in our shootouts, and those are the only ones we have ever offered, beginning all the way back in 2006
  • Wall to wall, floor to ceiling Led Zeppelin power – this copy delivers like you will not believe, or your money back
  • A Better Records Top 100 album (along with 4 other Zep titles), 5 stars in AMG and a true Zeppelin Must Own classic
  • The Tubey Magical acoustic guitars here should be a wake up call to everyone that any and all attempts to remaster this album are bound to fail – that sound is gone and it is never coming back
  • 5 stars: “Jimmy Page’s riffs rely on ringing, folky hooks as much as they do on thundering blues-rock, giving the album a lighter, more open atmosphere…”
  • If you’re a fan of the band, this title from 1973 is clearly one of their best, and inarguably one of their best sounding

This copy has the kind of BIG, BOLD ROCK SOUND that takes this music to places you’ve only dreamed it could go. The HUGE drums on this copy are going to blow your mind — and probably your neighbors’ minds as well.

And what would a Zep record be without bass? Not much, yet this is precisely the area where so many copies fail. Not so here. The bottom end is big and meaty with superb definition, allowing the record to ROCK, just the way the band wanted it to.

The vocals too are tonally correct. None of the phony upper-midrange boost that the Classic Records reissue suffers from is evident on this copy.

The louder Robert Plant screams, the better he sounds and the more I like it.

The Classic Records pressing makes me wince, and Jimmy Page’s remaster is not much better.

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Led Zeppelin / Self-Titled

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  • A truly excellent import of Zep’s amazing debut with outstanding sound from first note to last
  • Arguably the biggest, clearest and most Tubey Magical Zeppelin album ever recorded, thanks to the engineering genius of Glyn Johns (and production genius of Jimmy Page, who paid for the whole thing out of his own pocket)
  • Just look at the track list – the lucky owner of this LP will be hearing those songs come to life like never before
  • The band’s first album is a permanent member of our Top 100 and a Big Speaker Demo Disc like you will not believe
  • 5 stars: “Taking the heavy, distorted electric blues of Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Cream to an extreme… But the key to the group’s attack was subtlety: it wasn’t just an onslaught of guitar noise, it was shaded and textured, filled with alternating dynamics and tempos.”

For the real Led Zep magic, you just can’t do much better than their debut — and here’s a copy that really shows you why. From the opening chords of “Good Times Bad Times” to the wild ending of “How Many More Times” (“times” start the album and end it, too, it seems) this copy will have you rockin’ out!

Both sides have the BIG ZEP SOUND. Right from the start we noticed how clean the cymbals sounded and how well-defined the bass was, after hearing way too many copies with smeared cymbals and blubbery bass.

When you have a tight, punchy copy like this one, “Good Times Bad Times” does what it is supposed to do — it really rock! With this much life, it’s lightyears ahead of the typically dull, dead, boring copy. The drum sound is perfection.

Drop the needle on “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” to hear how amazing Robert Plant’s voice sounds. It’s breathy and full-bodied with in-the-room presence. The overall sound is warm, rich, sweet, and very analog, with tons of energy. “Dazed and Confused” sounds just right — you’re gonna flip out over all the ambience!

“Communication Breakdown” sounds superb — the sound of Jimmy Page’s guitar during the solo is shockingly good.

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Led Zeppelin – Presence

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  • Massive amounts of Zeppelin rock and roll energy on this copy, with both sides earning INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades
  • Here is a pressing with the power, the dynamic contrasts, the low end WHOMP, as well as the in-the-room midrange presence (pun only slightly intended) you’ve been waiting for
  • Featuring a stripped down, harder rock sound, Presence really benefits from the outstanding bottom end found on this early LP
  • “Presence has more majestic epics than its predecessor, opening with the surging, ten-minute ‘Achilles Last Stand’ and closing with the meandering, nearly ten-minute ‘Tea for One.'”

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Led Zeppelin / Led Zeppelin II

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  • An incredible copy of Zep II with killer sound from start to finish – this one is guaranteed to rock your world like no other!
  • The sound is freakishly good – we created a Top Ten list just to put this album on it
  • Years ago we gave up on everything but these killer RL (and SS) pressings, because nothing else can hold a candle to them
  • With copies selling for $1000+ on ebay, sometimes $3000+, we’re forced to pay big bucks for Zep II these days, but if any album is worth it — to us and our customers — it’s this one
  • A Must Own Zep classic from 1969 that belongs in every right-thinking audiophile’s collection
  • It’s our pick for the band’s best sounding album. Roughly 150 other listings for the Best by an Artist or Group can be found here.

At least 80% of the copies we buy these days — for many, many hundreds of dollars each I might add, more than a grand on occasion — go right back to the seller. The biggest problem we run into besides obvious scratches that play and worn out grooves is easy to spot: just play the song “Thank You” at the end of side one. Most of the time there is inner groove damage so bad that the track becomes virtually unlistenable.

It’s become a common dealbreaker for the records we buy on the internet. We get them in, we play that track, we hear it distort and we pack the record up and send it back to the seller.

UPDATE 2023

This was true ten years ago, but we have since found better sources for our copies. The sellers we tend to buy from know not to send us groove-damaged, scratched copies. Something closer to 20% get returned now.

But this copy plays clean all the way to the end on both sides — assuming you have a highly-tweaked, high-performance front end of course.

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Led Zeppelin – The Song Remains The Same

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More Live Recordings of Interest

  • Amazing sound for this Zep live album, with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on sides one, two and four, and seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound on side three
  • Insane live rock and roll energy like nothing you have ever heard – the sound is full-bodied and reasonably smooth, making it possible to get the volume up good and high where it belongs
  • An incredibly tough album to find with the right sound and audiophile surfaces – this is one of the best copies for both
  • Packed with Zep classics, including “The Song Remains The Same,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Stairway to Heaven,” and more

It’s exceedingly rare that we come across a copy that sounds this good. Most we’ve played sound like bad, second-generation bootleg cassettes. We still pick them up every time we see them — hey, it’s Zep, man — but we weren’t sure we’d ever hear a decent copy. We dropped the needle on this one and were blown away by how hard it rocked.

It’s got the big sound that you look for on a Zep LP — great bass, huge drums, and immediacy to the vocals. The sound is silky up top, punchy down low, and very transparent.

Turn this one way up and you might just find yourself right in the middle of a killer live Zep concert.

The only song here that didn’t totally blow our minds was the version of “Dazed and Confused,” which sounded a bit compressed during the big jam. Other than that, all the big hits (“Rock And Roll,” “The Rain Song,” “No Quarter,” “Stairway,” etc.) sound Right On The Money.

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Led Zeppelin / Coda – Our Shootout Winner from 2010

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A distinguished member of the Better Records Rock Hall of Fame and another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you Turn Up Your Volume.

TWO GREAT SIDES and QUIET VINYL on this Swan Song pressing, one of the few good sounding copies we’ve ever played. We just sat down with the dozen-plus copies of Coda that made it through our preliminary round and only found a few that were worth writing home around. Most copies are too dry, grainy, and/or dull to get excited about, but this one is a MONSTER.

The best material on here — We’re Gonna Groove, Poor Tom, and the great live take of I Can’t Quit You Baby, just to name a few of our favorites — sounds darn good.

Of course, this probably isn’t — and shouldn’t be — anyone’s favorite Zep album. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth your time. Drop the needle on the smoldering version of I Can’t Quit You Baby and I’m pretty sure you’ll be a happy man. (more…)