Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now
Wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling Led Zeppelin power – our most recent Shootout Winning copies of Houses of the Holy knocked us out with their Demo Disc sound.
The Tubey Magical acoustic guitars here should be a wake up call to everyone that any attempt to remaster this album — to outdo Robert Ludwig and his awesome tube compressors and hi-rez transistor cutting equipment — is bound to fail.
This kind of sound is gone and it is never coming back.
Here are our notes for the top two copies from our recent shootout, each of which had one Shootout Winning side and one that came close but did not quite earn the top grade.
Side One
Track Three (Over the Hills and Far Away)
- Upfront and detailed and breathy
- Spacious
- Big and wide when it kicks in
Track One (The Song Remains the Same)
- Huge and rich and weighty
- Vocals are less veiled
- Richest, with the most extension high and low
Note that we played both a rocker as well as a quieter, more acoustic track. This is standard operating procedure. Both of these very different sounding songs have to sound their best.
Side two had a few problems which kept it from doing as well as side one.