ledzeledze2

Cartridge Tweaking and Turntable Setup Advice

More Turntable Setup Advice

Playing so many records every day means that we wear out our Dynavector 17DX cartridges much more often than most consumers would. They typically last us about three or four months.

This requires us to regularly mount a new cartridge in our Triplanar arm.

Once a new cartridge is broken in (50 hours minimum), we then proceed to carry out the fine setup work required to get it sounding its best. We do that by adjusting the VTA, azimuth and tracking weight for maximum fidelity using recordings we have been playing for decades and know well.

For the longest time our favorite test discs for this purpose have been these three:

  1. Bob and Ray Throw a Stereo Spectacular,
  2. Tea for the Tillerman, and
  3. Led Zeppelin II.

To be honest, I was the only guy on the listening panel using Bob and Ray. I have played that record at least 500 times, perhaps 1000, and would be lost without it.

Our listening guys — much younger and not nearly as interested in correctly reproducing The Song of the Volga Boatmen as I was — preferred numbers two and three, and of course those work fine too. In fact, when setting up our new studio, I came to realize Bob and Ray were not enough to get the room right, a subject I wrote about here.

We are in the process of making some lists (more lists! You can never have too many!) for records we’ve found to be good for testing, tweaking and tuning your system, your room and your front end setup, among other things. You may want to check them out.

These are the records that challenged me and helped me to achieve more progress in audio. If you are serious about improving your playback, these are some of the best records we know of to help get you to the next level.

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Led Zeppelin II on Classic Records – Seriously, What Could Be Sadder?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

An unmitigated disaster — ridiculously bright and ridiculously crude.

In short, a completely unlistenable piece of garbage, and, along with the MoFi pressing from 1982, one of the worst sounding versions of the album ever made.

Over the years we have done many Led Zeppelin shootouts, often including the Classic Heavy Vinyl Pressings as a “reference.” After all, the Classic pressings are considered by many — if not most — audiophiles as superior to other pressings.

What could be sadder?

In fact, you will find very few critics of the Classic Zep LPs outside of those of us (me and the rat in my pocket) who write for this Better Records, and even we used to recommend three of the Zep titles on Classic: Led Zeppelin I, IV and Presence when they first came out.

Wrong on all counts.

Since then we’ve made it a point to review most of the Classic Zeps, a public service of Better Records. We don’t actually like any of them now, although the first album is still by far the best of the bunch.

Below you will find our reviews of the more than 200 Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years.

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Letter of the Week – “The copy I bought from you 100% blew my mind, with no wiggle room….completely blown!”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing he purchased recently:

Hi Tom,
I’ve been waiting for the right time to play the RL WHS LZII. It finally happened last night. I do have a LZ II with RL on side 1, and I was previously quite happy with it. I did prefer it over all the other copies, both regular and audiophile.

However, the copy I bought from you 100% blew my mind, with no wiggle room….completely blown!

JB’s drum kit is coming right out of the speakers like there is no tomorrow. I think I lost my mind while listening to Heartbreaker, a song I like but never really fully enjoyed……until NOW.

The room is never big enough for this one. Those punches of sound were so punchy, like George Foreman hitting Ali… massive.

Side 2 of this album is nothing short of phenomenal. I’m not sure if I own another LP that rocks like this RL one does. No wonder you made a top ten list just so you could put this one on it.

Someone will ask me or comment…why on earth would you spend $2400 on a record? To that person I will say… I am not buying a record. I am buying an experience that I can repeat as many times as I like, over and over again. To me, listening to this music in this way is priceless.

I truly don’t have the words to express what utter joy my being felt while listening to this. Can’t wait to do it again.

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Led Zeppelin / II – Jimmy Page Remasters a Classic, Part III

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

One of our customers did his own comparison with two pressings he had on hand. (Emphasis added.)

I briefly listened to the recent JP copy against the RL pressing I have from Presswell. I think that (according to Robert Brook) the Monarch or Specialty ones usually win your shootouts, and that the Presswells don’t often sound as transparent. The copy I have is pretty good but probably still falls into this category.

Having said that, my main takeaway was the almost complete absence of reverb on the JP copy. This was especially apparent when listening to the big drums and the vocals. The RL cut seems to give a much better sense of the studio and more space around the instruments, on my system.

The imaging and placement of the musicians is clear and distinct, but not as spacious as the RL pressing. The tonality and timbre on the JP cut are very good though, and the mix is not muddy and does not fall apart in loud complex passages like most other modern pressings I have heard. But this may have been his intention: to focus the instruments and tighten up the way the compositions come across without the “echoey” quality of the reverb and the overwhelming bass of the RL cut.

Also the JP cut is a bit more angular sounding and less tubey magic, but that could be my pressing — which is definitely tubey.

The overall sound of the JP is surprisingly good, but it sounds a more compressed to me than the RL, and the dynamic range also seems a bit more constricted.

Ian

Ian,

A lot of what you are hearing I would have to check again, since a lot of what you note is not something that stuck out to me, although it ties in to the one big issue that is fundamental to the difference in sound between the two pressings.

I’ve just been reading what different reviewers have said about the sound of the new album versus the old one, and most of it does not sound very much like the albums I played, but double-checking all this now that I live in GA is going to be hard!

I may have my main guy Riley give it another listen for some things, like reverb and compressed dynamics, and see what he thinks.

Best, TP

Click here to read the original story from January, 2023

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Led Zeppelin / II – Jimmy Page Remasters a Classic, Updated

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

A customer who bought one of our Hot Stampers was sent the Page remaster, free of charge of course. He wrote us a nice letter about what a thrill it was to hear such an amazing record — the original, not the reissue — and we made the following comment to him about the shootout he said he was going to do.

Bill,

Pay special attention in your shootout to The Lemon Song. I am going to discuss some things I learned about it recently. See how all your versions do on the song and what you think each version is doing right and wrong.

Enjoy and have fun.

Click here to read the whole story from January, 2023

Letter of the Week – “I break out into a cold sweat whenever I think about the fact that I was willing to shell out $2000 for one record.”

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

One of our good customers had some questions about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently. We’ve added an addendum to the bottom of his letter because it turns out he traded in his $2000 copy for a $2500 copy.

This Zeppelin 2 hot stamper is killing me, Tom. I love it. It’s not perfect, but it’s significantly better than almost any other copies I’ve heard. Enough that I’d stop my quest with this one, I really believe.

But, I break out into a cold sweat whenever I think about the fact that I was willing to shell out $2000 for one record. I never saw this coming. But then, I play it, I love it, and I can’t think of letting it go. (I rationalize the expenditure by reminding myself of all the ~$2000 audio purchases that bring me less joy than this one record does – headphones, cartridges, preamps, etc.)

It’s not like I’m a surgeon or a dentist – I’ve got a limit, and I’m past it. I’m inclined to keep it, but would you please help me conceptualize this? I have some questions maybe you won’t mind answering:

Is this the most expensive record you’ve ever sold?

I don’t recall any record selling for more than that, so yes, probably.

I actually think this thing might hold some of its value. This record in this condition might sell for $700+ on ebay or discogs, even if people can’t actually listen to it. I wonder what this record in this good shape will be selling for in ten years.

This copy might sell for $2000 today! I have seen them go for more than that. The right guy will pay it because it is unlike 90+% of the copies that come up for sale, which are groove-damaged, noisy and scratched.

Have you got “super hot stampers” or other white hots of Zep II on-hand to list?

If so, will the prices be significantly less than the $2K I just paid?

I don’t want to end up feeling even more buyer’s remorse if I felt like something nearly as good was available for significantly less…

There will probably never be a time when the price of that record comes down, unless you are talking about a copy with serious condition issues.

The prices we pay preclude any lowering of prices for good copies. If anything we are going to have to charge more, and that goes for all the big titles. Harvest? Used to be 500-600. Now? 800-1200. This is the world we live in now, and if we can’t charge those prices, we won’t do the shootouts and we won’t have copies to sell of those titles.

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Led Zeppelin II – An Overview

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

Below you will find the story of my first encounter with an amazing sounding copy of Zep II back in 1995 or thereabouts.

I had a friend who had come into possession of a White Label Demo pressing of the album and wanted to trade it in to me for the Mobile Fidelity pressing that I had played for him once or twice over the years, and which we both thought was The King on that album.

To my shock and dismay, his stupid American copy killed the MoFi. It trounced it in every way. The bass was deeper and punchier. Everything was more dynamic. The vocals were more natural and correct sounding. The highs were sweeter and more extended. The whole pressing was just full of life in a way that the Mobile Fidelity wasn’t.

The Mobile Fidelity didn’t sound bad. It sounded not as good. More importantly, in comparison with the good domestic copy, in many ways it now sounded wrong.

Let me tell you, it was a defining moment in my growth as a record collector. I had long ago discovered that many MoFi’s weren’t all they were cracked up to be. But this was a MoFi I liked. And it had killed the other copies I’d heard in the past.

So I learned something very important that day.

I learned that hearing a better pressing is clearly the surest way to appreciate what’s wrong with the pressing I thought sounded right.

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Led Zeppelin / II – Jimmy Page Remasters a Classic

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

The more appropriate title for this commentary might be The Two Game, in honor of The Blue Game we created way back in 2007.

That year was indeed a watershed in the history of Better Records. It was the year we officially gave up on Heavy Vinyl, having come to the conclusion that the modern remastered LP was a lost cause. One thick slab of vinyl after another was ordered up and placed on our turntable, where it lay half-dead until someone took it off and relieved us of our misery.

Signs of improvement were nowhere to be found. A slough of dubious pressings released in the fifteen years since then have only confirmed the wisdom of our decision. It seems we got out just in time!

Fittingly, it was actually Blue that finally tipped the scales.

Geoff Edgers, the writer for the Washington Post investigating the world of audiophiles, visited me in 2021 to hear what this crazy Hot Stamper thing was all about. [1]

He brought with him a number of records to hear on our reference system, including the 2014 remaster of Led Zeppelin II (excellent), the remaster of Brothers in Arms that Chris Bellman cut, released in 2021 (also excellent, review to come), and last and definitely least, the pricey Craft Recordings remaster by Bernie Grundman of Lush Life (astonishingly bad, review coming).

That last one will cost you a couple of hundred dollars minimum, but you should save your money. It’s not worth a plugged nickel if good sound is what you are after. If you like being the only one on your block with a limited edition pressing, then I suppose you can tell your audiophile friends you own one and that it looks nice on the shelf. Whatever you do, don’t play it.

Retirement Changed My Plans

I’ve been meaning to write about Page’s version of the second Zeppelin album for more than a year. The more times I played the album, and the longer I thought about it, the more remarkable the sound of the record seemed to me, remarkable in the sense that some very interesting things were going on in the sound that would be worth writing about for the benefit of our customers and readers.

But then I retired and had lots of other things to do in order to get out of California. The review would have to wait.

In 2021 and for some time thereafter, I was so impressed with the sound that I considered buying a dozen, cleaning them up and doing a shootout with them. The sound was good enough to qualify as a Hot Stamper, probably in the range of 1.5+, which is what we would typically call good, not great sound.

Still, worlds better than the truly awful sounding audiophile pressings we’ve been reviewing over the last couple of years.

I actually did buy a second copy, had it cleaned and played it against the first one we bought. It sounded virtually identical. Whatever the differences, they were minor, although if I’d bought ten copies, I suspect that the differences between the best and the worst would have been significant, but that’s really only a guess.

(Many years ago, back in 2008 I think, we had done a shootout using a Heavy Vinyl title, Sting’s Mercury Falling. We have not done many since, for the simple reason that we know of no Heavy Vinyl pressings with sound good enough to be considered Hot Stampers.)

UPDATE 2025

Actually we now know of one, which proves it can be done!)

The guys who do the listening now and I all agreed about what the new version was doing, right and wrong. [2]

I wanted to talk about the good and the bad in depth because I thought I knew what was going on with the sound that nobody else would outside of our little group of three. I felt I had unlocked its secrets, secrets no one, to my knowledge, had discussed or examined. (If you know of a good review, please send it my way. I have yet to read a good one.)

The Hot Stamper Remaster

We don’t list albums with One Plus grades anymore, but in this case we could make the argument — and back it up! — that the best pressings of Page’s version are better than any reissue ever made. No audiophile version is any good, that’s for sure. We’ve played them and reviewed them and put them where they belong, in our audiophile hall of shame. [3]

Our latest thinking is that we will give one of the Page remasters to our customers for free when they buy one of our Hot Stamper pressings, so that they can compare the two for themselves. This is currently our policy.

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Led Zeppelin / II – A Top Ten Title

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

Hot Stamper Pressings of Top Ten Titles Available Now

You may have seen our Top 100 list of the best sounding rock and pop records on the site.

We recently picked out a Top Ten from that list and you will not be surprised to learn that Led Zeppelin II made the cut. (It may in fact deserve to be at the top of the list. That’s how good the best copies are.)

The blog you are on, as well as our website, are dedicated to very special records such as these.

It is the very definition of a Demo Disc for big speakers that play at loud levels. The better pressings have the kind of ENERGY in their grooves that are sure to leave most audiophile systems begging for mercy.

This is the audio challenge that awaits you. If you don’t have a stereo designed to play records with this kind of sonic firepower, don’t expect to hear them the way the band, the engineers and everybody else involved in the production wanted you to.

This album wants to rock your world, and that’s exactly what our Hot Stamper pressings do best.

The Evolution of an Audiophile 

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Listening in Depth to Led Zeppelin II

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

Reviews and Commentaries for Led Zeppelin II

The best copies of Zep II have the kind of rock and roll firepower that’s guaranteed to bring any system to its knees.

That’s what makes it a Top Test Disc.

And if you’re looking for rock and pop albums that are very hard to reproduce, here are some that should fit the bill nicely.

Side One

Whole Lotta Love

This album is unique in one sense: both sides of ZEP II start our with MONSTER ROCK AND ROLL tracks with unbelievable dynamics, energy and bass. Most bands would be lucky to get one song like this on an album. This album has about five!

The middle section with the cymbals and panning instruments is key to the best copies. When it starts they goose the volume — not subtly mind you — and a big room opens up in which everything starts bouncing around, reflecting off the walls of the studio. It’s a cool effect, there’s no denying it.

This is the loudest, most dynamic cut on side one. If it doesn’t knock you out, keep turning up the volume and playing it again until it does.

What Is and What Should Never Be

Amazing presence. Plant is right there!

The Lemon Song

The bass parts always sounded muddy on the sub-gen copies I often found. The definition and note-like quality here is superb and it’s only found on these good originals.

There are real dynamics here — the middle part is at a much lower level than the guitars that follow. This song, like so many on II, is really designed to assault you, to give you the sense that guitars are being broken over your head. That’s the kind of power this track has. It’s also relatively smooth and sweet compared to the rest of the album as a whole.

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