Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now
A classic example of live and learn. In 2008 we had simply not done our homework properly.
Keep in mind that I had been an audiophile for at least 33 years by that date, and a professional audiophile record dealer for 21. Had a pretty nice rig back then too. However, in all those years, I and my staff had never been able to crack the code for Zep III.
Sure, by 2008 we had auditioned plenty of the pressings that we thought were the most likely to sound good: the original and later domestic pressings, the early and later British LPs, some early and later German pressings, maybe a Japanese import or two. In other words, the usual suspects.
We already knew how bad sounding the Classic Records Heavy Vinyl was; no need to put that in a shootout. It earned an “F” right out of the gate for its bright and harsh sound.
The result? We were roughly in the same position as most serious record collecting audiophiles, if not actually in a better one: who do you know that has played at least ten different pressings of Led Zeppelin III, or any other album for that matter?
We had auditioned a number pressings of the album and thought we knew enough about the sound to pick a winner. We thought the best original British Plum and Orange label pressings had the goods that no other copies could or would have. (Years later we would get hold of another one, clean it up and put it in a shootout.)
But of course, like most audiophiles who judge records with an insufficiently large sample size, we turned out to be mistaken.
Logic simply hadn’t worked.
None of the originals would end up winning another shootout once we’d discovered the right reissues.
