never-again

These are just some of the records that probably won’t go into shootouts again. We encourage you to find your own Hot Stamper pressings of them using the methods we’ve laid out here on the blog.

Charlie Byrd – Delicately

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Guitar

  • Superb sound for Byrd’s 1968 release, with solid Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides of this original 360 Stereo pressing
  • Teo Macero‘s production here is rich, sweet, and highly resolving, with all the space and three-dimensionality that Frank Laico‘s brilliant engineering is known for
  • The music on this enchanting jazz / pop guitar album is every bit as good as the sound quality (and that is rarely the case with these kinds of records – we should know, we’ve played scores of them)

Hearing is definitely believing, especially in our unique corner of the record business — we don’t give a fig about who, why or when a record was made; we just play it and judge it based on what we hear in its grooves. Needless to say. this pressing of the album was judged to be a knockout.

Apparently the album has garnered attention from other audiophiles – HDTracks offers a high-rez digital download of it! (more…)

David Clayton-Thomas – Self-Titled

More Rock and Pop

  • This original copy (the first to ever hit the site) boasts two KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides or close to them
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this incredible copy in our notes: ” big and tubey and weighty”…”wide vox”…”3D and sweet and tubey”…”jumping out of the speakers”…”fully extended from top to bottom”
  • You get clean, clear, full-bodied, lively and musical analog sound from first note to last
  • Don’t waste your money on whatever dead-as-a-doornail Heavy Vinyl record they’re making these days – if you want to hear the Tubey Magic, size and energy of Clayton-Thomas’s 1973 release, a vintage pressing like this one is the only way to go

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Bob Florence / Here And Now – So Tough to Find in Stereo, We Finally Just Gave Up

More of Our Favorite Recordings By Bones Howe

Recordings Engineered by Bones Howe Available Now


A Five Star Album in the All Music Guide. This lively big band LP has excellent sound. We loved the music too.

Wish we could find some. It apparently sold very poorly, so poorly that there simply aren’t any copies around.

At 32, Florence already largely had his writing style together. He utilized top L.A. studio players for this set including such soloists as altoist Bud Shank, the tenors of Bill Perkins and Bob Hardaway, and trombonist Herbie Harper, but it is the tricky charts on the four originals and four standards (including “The Song Is You” and “Straight No Chaser”) that make this an LP worth searching for.” – AMG

This is an older jazz review.

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Cat Stevens – Numbers

More Cat Stevens

More Singer-Songwriter Albums

  • A vintage copy of Cat Stevens’s 1975 concept album (only the second to ever hit the site), here with two incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sides – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • The sound here is rich and Tubey Magical, two qualities the CD made from these tapes surely lacks and two qualities which are crucial if this music is to sound the way Cat Stevens intended
  • This music is definitely not for everyone, but if you’re a fan, you might find this an interesting look into the man’s musical ideas in the mid-70s
  • Forget that critical listening stuff and just notice that these Hot Stamper copies are simply more relaxed, musical and involving than anything you’ve heard – guaranteed or your money back

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Schumann – Concerto in A Minor / Van Cliburn / Reiner

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

More Living Stereo Recordings

  • Solid Double Plus (A++) Living Stereo sound brings Van Cliburn and the Chicago Symphony’s performance of Schumann’s Concerto in A Minor to life on this original Shaded Dog pressing (the first copy to hit the site in years)
  • Both of these sides are remarkably transparent, high-rez, and open – all signs that the cutting was done on very high quality equipment, properly EQ’d and not bandwidth limited or overly compressed
  • Lewis Layton engineered this recording and he nailed it, perfectly capturing the rich, textured sheen on the strings, the hallmark of Living Stereo sound in the 50s and 60s
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these early pressings, but this particular title had so many condition problems that, as good as the music and sound might have been, we may not be able to do a shootout for it again

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Herbie Mann – Impressions of the Middle East

More Jazz Recordings of Interest

More Recordings Engineered by Tom Dowd

  • Impressions of the Middle East debuts on the site on this early Green and Blue Stereo Atlantic pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Exceptionally spacious, tubey and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied — this is the sound of vintage jazz
  • Phil Iehle and Tom Dowd made up the engineering team for these sessions, which explains why the better copies of the album sound so damn good
  • If you’re looking for a little something different, with outstanding vintage 60s jazz sound, this is guaranteed to be worth your while, and if not, just send it back and we’ll let someone else give it a try
  • It’s yet another recording we’ve discovered with (potentially) excellent sound

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Prokofiev / Scythian Suite / Ansermet

More of the Music of Sergei Prokofiev

  • Both sides of this original London pressing of CS 6538 had the big, lively and rich sound we’d been waiting for, earning KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus grades or close them
  • It’s also remarkably quiet — at the high end of Mint Minus Minus — a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • Everything that we listen for in a great classical recording can be heard on this copy – it’s immediate, dynamic, very low distortion, spacious, and alive
  • The bass deserves special mention here – you rarely hear recordings from the 50s and early 60s, the kind of LPs that were mastered with tubes, of course, having this kind of truly deep, punchy bass

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Bonnie Raitt / Self-Titled – Our Shootout Winner (with Liner Notes)

More Bonnie Raitt

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Bonnie Raitt

The average Green Label Warner Bros. copy we played was lackluster to say the least.

The words on some of my notes read flat, veiled, dry, dark, edgy.

[Many years later we would characterize the above shortcomings as the Warner Bros. House Sound.]

None too promising, but we persevered and found a good one.

The reissues we heard tended to be modern and thin. Definitely not our sound. 

Bonnie Raitt fans take note: This album did not sell well. It appears that it never even charted, which means that original copies are hard to come by.

On top of that, clean ones tend to be expensive and prices are climbing.

With those things considered, it is unlikely we would ever do this shootout again.

Side One

A++. By track two the sound is rich and solid, yet clear. Lovely Tubey Magic and an unprocessed live quality make this one sound about as right as it’s going to get. The drums are especially real sounding, with little in the way of EQ and compression (not that those are bad things).

The rich piano and vocals on track three seal the deal — It’s Super Hot.

Note that the first track, a cover of Bluebird, was a bad idea from the start. The sour sound did it no favors either.

Side Two

A++. Yes, it’s a dead room, but on the best pressings there is still ambience and space to be heard. 

The vocals, often edgy on other copies, were not edgy here. The sound is rich and clear, the ideal combination.

Based on what were the winners of this shootout, this album should sound better this way:

For those of you who might be interested in finding their own Hot Stamper pressings of other titles, we here provide more moderately helpful title specific advice.

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Mussorgsky-Ravel / Pictures at an Exhibition / Reiner

More of the Music of Modest Mussorgsky

  • For fans of Reiner’s performance from 1958, we here present a Shaded Dog pressing of this TAS Super Disc, here with outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • Both of these sides are remarkably open and natural in the best Living Stereo tradition, with rich lower strings that have little Golden Age smear.
  • Spacious, rich and smooth – only vintage analog seems capable of reproducing all three of these qualities without sacrificing resolution, staging, imaging or presence

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Kraftwerk – Self-Titled

More Kraftwerk

More Art Rock

  • These original UK Vertigo pressings of the band’s first two German albums boast KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on THREE of the four sides
  • We shot out a number of other imports and the presence, bass, and dynamics on this copy placed it head and shoulders above the competition
  • All four of these sides are huge, spacious and rich, with prodigious amounts of bass, guaranteed to sound better than any other copy you’ve heard
  • “Kraftwerk [1970] is an exploratory art rock album with psych roots first and foremost, with Conny Plank’s brilliant co-production and engineering skills as important as the band performances. Hütter’s work on the [organ] can especially be appreciated with the extended opening drone moan of the all-over-the-place ‘Stratovarius’ combined with Schneider’s eerie violin work.”
  • “Stripped down to the Hütter/Schneider duo for this release [Kraftwerk 2, 1972], and again working with Conrad Plank as coproducer and engineer (this album alone demonstrates his ability to create performances combining technological precision and warmth), Kraftwerk here start exploring the possibilities of keyboards and electronic percussion in detail. Given that the band’s drummers were gone, such a shift was already in the wind, but it’s the enthusiastic grappling with drum machines and their possibilities that makes [the album] noteworthy.”

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