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These albums were instrumental in guiding the changes we made to the playback system we’ve used to audition records since the 70s.

I’ve owned large scale dynamic speakers for five decades, precisely in order to play demanding recordings such as these.

The more tweaking and tuning you do — on your system, room and electricity — the more progress you will make in this hobby, and the bigger and bolder these recordings will come to sound. Many of them are the most difficult-to-reproduce albums we know of.

Again and again it was meeting the challenge of reproducing recordings such as these that allowed those of us at Better Records to achieve higher quality playback, and they can do the same for you.

Detail on Crosby, Stills and Nash – Holy Grail or Audio Trap?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and (Sometimes) Young

Detail may be the Holy Grail to some audiophiles, but listening for the details in a recording can be a trap we too easily fall into unless we are on our guard.

Tonal balance is the key.

Without correct tonal balance, no judgments about the details of the recording have any real value. 

A case in point: As good as the Classic Heavy Vinyl pressing is, the guitar at the opening of Helplessly Hoping tells you everything you need to know about what’s missing. The guitar on the better Hot Stamper domestic copies has a transparency and harmonic integrity that cannot be found on Classic’s version.

The Classic Records pressing gets the tonal balance right, but their guitar lacks the subtlety and harmonic resolution of the real thing.

I’m laboring here to avoid the word “detail,” since many audiophiles like bright, phony sounding records because of all their wonderful detail. Patricia Barber’s albums come to mind, along with scores of audiophile pressings. 

The MoFi guys and the CD guys are constantly falling into the trap of being impressed by the phony detail in some recordings.

The solution is to get the sound tonally balanced first, then see how much detail you have left.

Detail is not the end-all and be-all of audio. Those who think it is have systems that are sure to fall apart at louder levels. If the sound of your system on your best pressings doesn’t get better as it gets louder, you are failing one of the most important tests in all of audio, the turn up your volume test.

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Key Tracks to Play on Belafonte at Carnegie Hall

Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Jazz Vocal Albums Available Now

Harry Pearson brought this record to the attention of audiophiles with his TAS list a long time ago, and rightfully so: it’s an amazing recording.

We happen to love the music too, which makes it one of the most recommendable records we have ever offered. If you can find a better combination of demo disc sound, with music worth the hassle and expense of reproducing it properly, more power to you. We sure can’t.

Because this is a live recording, because it has lots of natural instruments as well as a vocal, because it was recorded in the Golden Age by one of the greatest labels of all time, RCA, by Bob Simpson no less — for this and many other reasons, it has to be considered one of the most amazing recordings in the history of the world.

That said, it is our contention (and the basis of our business model) that the brilliant quality of the recording can only be appreciated if you have the pressing that captured the sound that the engineers recorded. In other words, a Hot Stamper.

From an audiophile point of view, you get to hear live musicians and all the energy they bring to this music, all on the stage at the same time: strings, brass, percussionists, and Harry Belafonte front and center. Tube mics (and not too many of them), a tube tape recorder, RCA’s superb engineering and all-tube mastering chain ensure that the “breath of life” is captured intact.

I know of no better live popular vocal recording on the planet.

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This Mud Slide Slim Rocked Like No Other Pressing We’d Ever Heard

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of James Taylor Available Now

This Shootout Winning copy from 2008 or thereabouts showed us a Mud Slide Slim we had no idea could exist.

We have a name for records like this. We call them breakthrough pressings. They are one of the reasons we play so many thousands of records every year. We’re looking for records that sound as good as this one does, even for titles that no one thinks are particularly well recorded.

No, especially for those titles.

Experience has taught us they can only be found by playing lots of pressings and looking for whatever needles might be hiding in the haystacks. (The haystack for One Man Dog can be seen at the bottom of this post.)

As you will see from our commentary, the first track on side one, Love Has Brought Me Around, is a great test for energy.

If your copy does not seem very energetic to you, then we recommend you keep buying every green label original you see until you find one that does.

Our commentary from the early days of shootouts can be seen below.

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Our Tumbleweed Connection to the Tubey Magical Top Ten

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Elton John Available Now

You don’t need tube equipment to hear the prodigious amounts of Tubey Magic that exist on Tumbleweed Connection. For those of you who’ve experienced top quality analog pressings of Meddle or Dark Side of the Moon, or practically any jazz album on Contemporary, whether played through tubes or transistors, that’s the luscious sound of Tubey Magic, and it is all over Elton John’s Masterpiece, Tumbleweed Connection

Ranked strictly in terms of Tubey Magic, I would have to put Tumbleweed Connection on our list of Most Tubey Magical Rock Recordings of All Time, right up there with, in alphabetical order (limited to one album per artist or band):

This has to be one of the best sounding rock records of all time — certainly worthy of a Top Ten spot on our Top 100 list. Engineered by Robin Geoffrey Cable at Trident, there is no other Elton John recording that is as rich, big, powerful and dynamic as Tumbleweed Connection. (Honky Chateau, the Self-Titled album and Madman Across the Water would not be far behind. All are amazingly good sounding Rock Demo Discs that — on the right pressings of course — will more than likely put to shame 99% of the records you own.)

Many of the albums you see here played an important role in helping me improve my stereo [1], some of them starting as far back as the mid-70s.

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Neil Young’s Guitar Masterpiece – Danger Bird

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

Listen to the way Danger Bird (the second track on side one of  Zuma opens. Each instrument, one by one, slowly, deliberately, one could almost say haltingly, feeds into the mix, until the churning guitars give way to Neil’s spare vocal — fatalistic, doomed, already resigned to some fate he barely understands. 

Even though the song has just begun, you sense that Neil feels a weight and a darkness bearing down on him, that it’s ongoing, that it’s already started, that somehow you’re coming into it in the middle, well after the weight of it has begun to crush and perhaps even kill him. He knows the story of Danger Bird all too well.

It’s as powerful and intense a piece of music as any I have ever experienced; sublime in its simplicity, transcendental in effect. You feel yourself swept along, an out of body experience that you can’t control. When Neil launches into the first of many guitar solos the sense of journeying or exploring with him the imaginary musical world he is creating is palpable. He doesn’t seem to know where it will lead and neither do you. There is no structure to reassure you, no end in sight, only the succession of notes that play from moment to moment, first tensing, then relaxing; cresting, then falling away.

Music has the power to take you out of the world you know and place you in a world of its own making. How it can do that nobody knows. Whatever Neil tapped into to make that happen on Danger Bird, he succeeded completely.

If you’re in the right frame of mind, in the right environment, with everything working audio-wise, a minute into this song you will no longer be sitting in your comfy audio chair. You won’t know where you are, which is exactly where you should be.

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What to Listen For on Birds of Fire

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz-Rock Fusion Albums Available Now

Birds of Fire as a recording is not about depth or soundstage or ambience.

It’s about immediacy, plain and simple.

All the lead instruments positively jump out of the speakers — if you are lucky enough to be playing the right pressing.

This is precisely what we want our best Hot Stampers to do. In most cases, the better they do it, the higher their grade will be.

The main problem with this record is a lack of midrange presence. If the keyboards, drums and guitars are not front and center, your copy does not have the presence it should. On the best copies the musicians are right in the room with you. We know this for a fact because we heard the copies that could present them that way, and we heard it more than once.

Which of course gets to the reason shootouts are the only real way to learn about records.

The best copies will show you qualities in the sound you had no way of knowing were there. Without the freakishly good pressings you run into by chance in a shootout you have no way to know how high is up. On this record up is very high indeed.

A True Demo Disc

Birds of Fire is one of the top two or three Jazz/Rock Fusion Albums of All Time. In my experience, few recordings within this genre can begin to compete with the Dynamics and Energy of the best pressings of the album — if you have the Big Dynamic system for it.

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How Does the Brass Sound on Your Copy of Sticky Fingers?

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

The best copies have texture and real dynamics in the brass.

The bad copies are smeared, grainy and unpleasant when the brass comes in.

Toss those bad ones and start shooting out the good ones.

Believe me, if you find a good one it will be worth all the work.

One customer observed that the recording was “deliberately a bit muddy and smeared…” and he was mostly right about that. We replied as follows;

You are spot on with your observation about the sound being deliberately muddy.

Glyn Johns loves his tube compressors. They can make some tracks murkier than many of us would like, but they work positive wonders most of the time.

A lot of the smearing you reference is from uncleaned or improperly cleaned vinyl. Once we got our cleaning regimen dialed in, a lot of the smear we used to hear so often stopped being a problem.

3-Dimensionality also greatly improves with clean, fully restored vinyl. A lot of old records just sound like old records until you learn how to clean them right.

Play It Loud

Even through the noise of the bad vinyl you can hear the audio magic. The sound is exactly what you want from a Stones album: deep punchy bass and dynamic grungy guitars.

This record is to be played loud like it says on the inner sleeve and the surface noise is to be ignored.

The louder you play it, the less bothersome the noise will be.

This album ROCKS and it was not made to be listened to in a comfy chair with a glass of wine.

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Listening in Depth to The Eagles’ Debut

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Eagles Available Now

We consider this album a Masterpiece.

It’s a recording that belongs in any serious rock music collection.

Let’s talk about the specifics of some of the tracks.

Side One

Take It Easy

On most copies the vocals in the chorus will be a little bit strained. When you hear the vocals sound completely free from harmonic distortion or “edge” of any kind, you have yourself an exceptionally well-mastered, well-pressed copy.

Witchy Woman 

Witchy Woman is one of the key test tracks we use for side one. Take It Easy, the opening song, often sounds amazingly good — it’s got that driving beat and those acoustic guitars and it just seems to be one of those songs that usually sounds right on the original pressings.

Witchy Woman starts out with huge, powerful drums: they should just knock you out. Next comes an acoustic guitar with a lot of echo: the more echo the better, because that means the pressing has lots of resolution. The echo is on the tape, and the more of the tape that ends up on the record the better. Then comes the vocal. It should not be too bright, spitty or grainy. The vocals also have tons of ambience surrounding them on the best copies.

This is a HUGE Demo Quality track. If this song doesn’t knock your socks off something is not working right.

Chug All Night 
Most of Us Are Sad 
Nightingale

Side Two

Train Leaves Here This Morning 

This is my favorite track on the album. In fact I like it so much I think it’s the best Eagles song ever recorded. (Dillard and Clark recorded it on their album as well.) The acoustic guitars and vocal harmonies on this track are simply as good as it gets. If somebody can play me a CD that sounds like this I will eat it.

Take the Devil 
Early Bird 

This is another tough track to master properly. The mix is very complicated, and there’s a banjo that figures prominently in it. Getting that banjo to sound musical is the trick. The bass is very rich on the best copies. On those copies that are a bit on the lean side, the banjo can take on an edgy and aggressive quality.

The best copies get the banjo JUST RIGHT and place it perfectly in the mix. On The Border, their third album and my personal favorite, makes wonderful use of the banjo. When the band changed their sound to take them in the direction of more straight ahead rock (One of These Nights) they lost me. The public felt differently, sending the album to Number One in the charts, which set the stage for the monster success of Hotel California.

Peaceful Easy Feeling 
Tryin’

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Workingman’s Dead – Watch for Strain in Jerry’s Voice

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Grateful Dead Available Now

High Time tells you the most about the sound of side one on any given copy.

If the pressing in question is lean, bright, grainy, transistory or aggressive in any way, Jerry Garcia’s voice will sound strained.

Far from a professionally trained singer, he’s already straining to some degree on even the best copies. 

The better pressings have him sounding ever so slightly dull at the beginning of the track. As the song progresses he starts pushing his pipes pretty hard. The sound will quickly become unpleasant if there is any added brightness when he tries to reach those high notes.

Side One

Uncle John’s Band
High Time

This track tells you the most about side one. If the pressing is lean, bright, grainy, transistory or aggressive in any way, Jerry Garcia’s voice will sound strained. Far from a professionally trained singer, he’s already straining on this track.

The best copies make him sound ever so slightly dull at the beginning of the track; as the song progresses he is going to start pushing his pipes pretty hard and it will become quite unpleasant if there is any trace of brightness when he goes up to hit those higher notes.

Dire Wolf
New Speedway Boogie

Side Two

Cumberland Blues

The toughest track on side two. If the tonal balance is lean, or if the bad domestic vinyl causes the sound to be grainy, this track will be close to unbearable. On a Hot Stamper copy the sound can be absolutely MAGICAL.

Black Peter

Probably the best sounding track on the album. Here Jerry Garcia manages to sing within his range, the guitars are wonderfully sweet, and there is loads of Tubey Magic to go around. I can’t think of a better sounding Grateful Dead song than this one.

On the best pressings you can hear startling immediacy and transparency in the midrange of this track.

Easy Wind
(Not one of their stronger efforts.)

Casey Jones

Touch – A Great Test for Tweeters

Hot Stamper Pressings of Well Recorded Jazz Albums In Stock Now

Mobile Fidelity, maker of some of the worst sounding records in the history of the medium, is the KING on this title. We know of no better pressing than the right version of the MoFi. (There are three different stampers for the MoFi, and only one of them ever wins shootouts.)

Klemmer says pure emotion is what inspired the album’s creation. Whatever he tapped into to find the source of that inspiration he really hit pay dirt with Touch. It’s the heaviest smooth jazz ever recorded. Musically and sonically, this is the pinnacle of Klemmer’s smooth jazz body of work. I know of none better. (If you want to hear him play more straight-ahead jazz try Straight from the Heart on Nautilus Direct to Disc.)

High Frequency Testing

MoFi was famous for demonstrating on an actual scope that the standard domestic ABC pressing had nothing above about 8 or 10 thousand cycles up top, which is why they all sound insufferably dull and dead. Some MoFi copies have no real top end either, which is the reason to we do these shootouts — to find the copies that are actually mastered and pressed right, not just the ones that should have been.

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