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Strawberry Cut By Far the Best Sounding Pressings of Zenyatta Mondatta

Hot Stamper Pressings of Sting and The Police Available Now

Forget the domestic pressings, forget the lightweight Nautilus Half-Speed, forget whatever lame reissues have come or will come down the pike – if you want to hear this album right, a Hot Stamper UK pressing is the only way to go.

And take it from us, you need to see that little Strawberry marking in the dead wax of your UK pressing to have any hope of hearing audiophile-quality sound.

Why go to all that trouble? Because the album is an absolute classic – it leads off with “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” and never lets up. (Well, toward the end of side two it lets up, but it’s plenty strong before then.)

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that tend to win our shootouts.

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The Police – Zenyatta Mondatta

More Sting and The Police

More Records We Only Sell on Import Vinyl

  • A Zenyatta Mondatta like you’ve never heard, with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout this original UK-pressed copy – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Forget the domestic pressings, forget the lightweight Nautilus Half-Speed, forget whatever lame reissues have come or will come down the pike – if you want to hear this album right, a Hot Stamper import pressing is the only way to go
  • This album is an absolute classic – it leads off with “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” and never lets up
  • 5 stars: “Zenyatta contains perhaps the quintessential new wave anthem, the haunting ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me’… Zenyatta Mondatta remains one of the finest rock albums of all time.”  [That’s a bit much.]

It is brutally difficult to find great copies of this album, which explains why only a handful have gone up since 2006.

This copy was doing practically everything we wanted. The vocals are present, the bass is well-defined, the guitars have harmonic texture, and the drums are punchy and lively.

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Zenyatta Mondatta on Nautilus SuperDisc

More of the Music of Sting and The Police

This commentary was most likely written in the mid-2000s, shortly after we had started to sell Hot Stamper pressings but had to yet to make it our main business, which we did in 2007.

2007 was a long time ago. It was the year we made many breakthroughs. In fact, we made more breakthroughs in that year than in any other in the history of the company, including this singularly important break with the past.

Our Take Back in the Day

And to think we actually used to like the sound of some of these Nautilus pressings!

They suffer from the same shortcomings other Nautilus and Half Speeds in general suffer from — the kind of transparent but lifeless and oh-so-boring sound that we describe in listing after listing.

Three of the Best?

I just did shootouts with three of what I thought were the best Nautilus Half-Speeds: Dreamboat Annie, Ghost in the Machine, and Time Loves a Her0.

None of them sound like the real thing, and especially disappointing was one of my former favorites, the Little Feat album.

On the title track, the Nautilus is amazingly transparent and sweet sounding. There are no real dynamics or bass on that track, so the “pretty” half-speed does what it does best and shines. But all the other tracks suck in exactly the same way Night and Day does. Cutting the balls off Little Feat is not my idea of hi-fidelity.

We put audiophile beaters up for sale every week. Each and every one of them is a lesson on what makes one record sound better than another. If you want a wall full of good sounding records, we can help you make that happen. In fact it will be our pleasure. Down with audiophile junk and up with Better Records. (more…)