tubey-mag-r/p

These are some of the most Tubey Magical rock and pop recordings we have had the good fortune to play.

The Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones

  • With outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom, this copy will be very hard to beat – reasonably quiet vinyl too, about as quiet as we can find them
  • If you have never heard one of our Hot Stamper pressings of the album, you (probably) cannot begin to appreciate just how amazing the sound is
  • A landmark Glyn Johns / Andy Johns recording, our favorite by the Stones, a Top 100 Title (of course) and 5 stars on Allmusic (ditto)
  • Q magazine said this was “the Stones at their assured, showboating peak … A magic formula of heavy soul, junkie blues and macho rock.”
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – those on “Wild Horses” are especially bad – but if you can tough those out, this copy is going to blow your mind
  • 5 stars: “With its offhand mixture of decadence, roots music, and outright malevolence, Sticky Fingers set the tone for the rest of the decade for the Stones.”
  • If I had to compile a list of my favorite rock albums from 1971, this album would definitely be on it

This is the best record the Stones ever made, with Let It Bleed and Beggars Banquet right up there with it but just a half-step behind. Today I would probably modify that assessment to say that Sticky Fingers is better understood as being first among equals, primus inter pares, rather than ahead of the brilliant Let It Bleed and Beggars Banquet.

The sound is exactly what you want from a Stones album, with 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 while sipping wine.

Tubey Magical acoustic guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this recording. Simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum, along with richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and especially from modern remasterings).

Play I Got the Blues to hear exactly what we mean.

A QUICK TEST: 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 obvious and worth whatever you had to pay for it.

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Roxy Music / Self-Titled

More of the Music of Roxy Music

  • This vintage UK pressing of Roxy’s amazing debut LP (one of only a handful of copies to hit the site in twenty-two months) boasts KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them throughout – this is some of the most dynamic sound the band achieved
  • Andy Hendriksen’s engineering (over the course of a week!) is superb in all respects – we think the best pressings of this first album reveal a recording that is superior to any other by the band
  • A Top 100 album, Roxy’s masterpiece, and a Must Own desert island disc of glamorous Arty Rock
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Falling halfway between musical primitivism and art rock ambition, Roxy Music’s eponymous debut remains a startling redefinition of rock’s boundaries. Simultaneously embracing kitschy glamour and avant-pop, Roxy Music shimmers with seductive style and pulsates with disturbing synthetic textures.”
  • When it comes to rock and pop music in 1972, our picks for the best of the best, numbering at the moment a mere 21 titles, can be found here
  • This link will take you to the Hot Stamper pressings of our hardest rockin’ albums currently available
  • Here are the titles that have earned a place on our none rocks harder list

Folks, this is a true Demo Disc in the world of Art Rock. It’s rare to find a recording of popular music with dynamics like these. The guitar solo at the end of “Ladytron” rocks like you will not believe.

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The Eagles – Self-Titled

More Eagles

  • You will be floored by the huge, rich, Tubey Magical guitars exploding out from your speakers on “Take It Easy” on this  side one – it will make a fantastic Demo Disc to blow your audiophile friends’ minds
  • These early pressings are extremely hard to find in audiophile playing condition, and one that sounds as good as this one might take you quite a few years to track down
  • This is exactly the kind of record that makes virtually any audiophile pressing pale in comparison – just about everything you could ask for as an audiophile is here, and more
  • One of the best sounding rock records ever made, a member of our Top Ten and without a doubt Glyn Johns‘s engineering (and producing) Masterpiece
  • A Top 100 Tubey Magical Demo Disc that is guaranteed to blow your mind on a pressing that sounds as good as this one does

It will not take the lucky owner of this record long to recognize what we’ve known for years: the Eagles first album is clearly and inarguably one of the best sounding rock records ever made. Almost all the qualities we look for on this album can be found on this very copy.

We’ve been up on our soapbox for years telling people how amazing this record can be, and here’s a copy that backs up our position from start to finish. (more…)

Elton John / Tumbleweed Connection

More Elton John


  • Both sides of this early DJM import pressing have superb sound for Elton John’s 1970 Masterpiece, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • The sound here is richer, with much less transistory grain, and more of the all important Tubey Magic than most other copies we played
  • An incredible recording and longtime member of our Top 100 — our pick for Elton’s very best music and sound
  • 5 stars: “….[Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s] most ambitious record to date… A loose concept album about the American West… draws from country and blues in equal measures…”
  • If you’re an Elton John fan, this is a classic from 1970 that belongs in your collection
  • We consider this album to be a Masterpiece. It’s a recording that should be part of any serious popular music collection.
  • As is sometimes the case, there is one and only one set of stampers that consistently wins shootouts for this album.  Click on this link to see other titles with one set of stamper numbers that always come out on top

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 big and powerful as Tumbleweed.

A copy like this really tells you why we love this album so. The highs are silky sweet, the vocals are full-bodied and breathy, and the tonal balance is perfection from top to bottom. And big drums — monstrously big. Can’t forget those.

By the way, if you have any doubts that Elton was a pop music genius, simply play this album a few dozen times. It’s all the proof you will need. Tumbleweed Connection and Honky Chateau are the two titles that are as close to perfect pop recordings as will ever exist in this world. 10 on a scale of 1 to 10.

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Elton John / Honky Chateau – A Must Own Classic

More Elton John

  • This vintage UK import pressing boasts superb Tubey Magical British Rock sound, with excellent Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides
  • A monster Demo Disc – the bottom end is huge, the top is open and extended, and the overall tonality rich and balanced
  • An amazing recording and a founding member of our Top 100 – it’s a shame we rarely find them with sound this good and audiophile quality surfaces (DJM see-through vinyl being what it is)
  • 5 stars: “The most focused and accomplished set of songs Elton John and Bernie Taupin ever wrote.”
  • This is a Must Own album from 1972, one that deserves a place in any audiophile’s collection
  • Honky Chateau is also one of those albums with one set of very special stampers that consistently win shootouts.

If you doubt that Elton John was an unusually gifted Pop Music Genius for much of the ’70s, just play this record. These eleven tracks should serve as all the proof you could possibly need. There’s not a dog in the bunch, and most of these songs are positively brilliant. Drop the needle on any track, you simply can’t go wrong.

Honky Chateau has to be one of the best sounding rock records of all time — certainly worthy of a prized spot on our Rock and Pop Top 100 List. It’s a shining example of just how good High-Production-Value rock music of the ’70s can be.

The amount of effort that went into the recording of Honky Chateau is comparable to that expended by the engineers and producers of bands like Supertramp, The Who, Jethro Tull, Ambrosia, Pink Floyd and far too many others to list. It seems that no effort or cost was spared in making the home listening experience as compelling as the recording technology of the day permitted.

The sides that had sound that jumped out of the speakers, with driving rhythmic energy, worked the best for us. They really brought this music to life and allowed us to make sense of it. This is yet another definition of a Hot Stamper — it’s the copy that lets the music work as music.

Big Production Tubey Magical British Rock just does not get much better than Honky Chateau. (more…)

Traffic – The Best of Traffic

More Music on Island Records

For those who wish to find their own Hot Stamper pressings of the album, we say more power to you. Our helpful advice can be found at the bottom of the listing,

  • This original Pink Label Island pressing was doing just about everything right, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • Side one was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • Here are the full-bodied mids, punchy lows and clear, open, extended highs that let this 1969 release come alive
  • This amazing compilation boasts superb sound, often dramatically better than the very same tracks on many of the original British releases
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • Top 100 and 4 stars: “The entire second side of the LP, comprising ‘Medicated Goo,’ ‘Forty Thousand Headmen,’ ‘Feelin’ Alright,’ ‘Shanghai Noodle Factory,’ and ‘Dear Mr. Fantasy,’ was the kind of progressive rock that would define Traffic and give it its place in the rock pantheon.”
  • For our current take on the sound of the various labels and stampers for Mr. Fantasy and The Best of Traffic, please click here.

This British Pink Label Island pressing has some of the best Traffic sound you’ll ever hear! We’ve been flipping out over Hot Stamper copies of this greatest hits comp for ages for a very simple, yet likely shocking, reason — the sound on the best copies can be better than the best original pressings! How can that be you ask, dumbfounded by the sheer ridiculousness of such a statement? Well, dear reader, I’ll tell you. Follow me over the jump to find out.

It’s a dirty little secret in the record biz that sometimes the master for the anticipated “hit single” (or singles) is pulled from the album’s final two-track master and used to make the 45, the thinking being that the 45 is what people are going to buy, or, having heard it sound so good on the radio, cause them to buy the album. One way or another, it’s the single that will do the selling of Traffic’s music.

A dub is then made of the master tape that was used to cut the 45 and spliced back onto the album master, so that the single (or singles) is one generation down from the master for the other songs on the side.

This explains why the “hit single” from so many albums is often the worst-sounding song on the album — most likely to suffer from bad radio EQ and distorted, smeary, sub-gen sound. And it also explains another anomaly those of us who play tons of records run into from time to time: songs on greatest hits albums sounding better than their counterparts on the original albums from which they are taken. That’s crazy talk, but this Traffic record is all the evidence you need to demonstrate that as it crazy as it seems, every once in a while it turns out to be true. This is one of those times.

Heaven Is In Your Mind

Best proof: “Heaven Is In Your Mind,” the second track on side one. It is amazing sounding here and such a disappointment on every Pink Label Island original (and some reissues) we’ve played. Once you know how good that song can sound — by playing a Hot Stamper copy of Best of Traffic like this one — going back to the original version of the song found on the album is not just a letdown, it’s positively painful.

Where’s the analog magic? The weight to the piano? The startling clarity and super-spaciousness of the soundfield? The life and energy of the performance?

They’re gone, brother. Not entirely gone, mind you, more a shadow of what they should be. But once you’ve heard the real thing, it’s no fun listening to a shadow. It’s just a drag.

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Joni Mitchell – For The Roses

More Joni Mitchell

  • With STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides, this early White Label Asylum pressing could not be beat
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this incredible copy in our notes: “tubey, present vox”…”lots of body and detail”…”best bass + the richest + sweetest” (side one)…”silky and upfront,”….big, lively and rich”…”top detail” (side two)
  • The sound is rich, warm and natural, with wonderful immediacy to Joni’s vocals and Tubey Magic for days – this is the amazing sound of Asylum in the Seventies, a subject nobody seems to talk about but us
  • One of the best sounding Joni records, on a par with Court and Spark and Blue – fine company indeed
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The lyrics here are among Mitchell’s best, continuing in the vein of gripping honesty and heartfelt depth exhibited on Blue…. More than a bridge between great albums, this excellent disc is a top-notch listen in its own right.”

This copy has real energy and dynamics that just could not be heard on most of the pressings we played. With dynamics and the warmth and richness found here, this copy will be hard to beat.

Listen to how huge the piano is. No two copies will show you the same piano, which makes it a great test for sound. Both sides have clear, present, breathy vocals, about as good as Joni can sound on vinyl, which is saying a lot.

What to Listen For

The second track on side one, “Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire,” is a great test. Here the guitars are full-bodied, harmonically rich, with more reverb and space than practically any side one we have ever played. The Tubey Magical liquidity of the sound is what vintage analog is all about. No reissue and no CD will ever get that sound the way this copy does.

That’s the sound we love here at Better Records. Even if your system is all transistor, that guitar will sound like you own the most Tubey Magical equipment in the world. The magic is on the tape and it was transferred beautifully to this piece of vinyl.

Live and Learn

About ten years ago we thought For The Roses was the best sounding of all Joni’s albums, as you can see from the commentary below.

This is probably the most underrated Joni Mitchell album, both in terms of sonics and music. It seems that everyone wants a great copy of Blue or Court And Spark, but this album ranks right up there with them and does not deserve to be overlooked.

Let’s face it, we love Blue (1971), but most pressings suffer from a raft of sonic problems, as does Ladies of the Canyon (1970).

By the time Joni had fully indulged her jazzier inclinations with Court and Spark, some of the recording quality had been lost in the quest for slicker production values. The complexity of the instrumentation required more multi-tracking and overdubbing, and as good as that record can sound on the best copies, in a head to head matchup with For the Roses, the latter would probably win, although probably by no more than a nose.

We take it all back. As we have made more and more improvements to the stereo, room, record cleaning and such, Court and Spark has pulled ahead in the race for the Best Sounding Joni Mitchell Album, and Blue is up there too.

I would still rank them Court and Spark, For the Roses and then Blue.

But three better sounding records by one artist — assuming you have good copies to work with — would be hard to find.

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Roxy Music – For Your Pleasure

More Roxy Music 

More Brian Eno

  • With two INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides, we guarantee you’ve never heard For Your Pleasure sound this good
  • Roxy and their engineers and producers manage to capture a deliciously Tubey Magical keyboard sound on their first two albums that few bands in the history of the world can lay claim to
  • It took us a long time to figure what pressings had the sound we were looking for, more than a decade, bit it was worth the wait because For Your Pleasure now sounds the way you want it to sound – big and bold
  • There are some bad marks (as is sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records) on “Grey Lagoons,” but once you hear just how amazing sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • 5 stars: “… another extraordinary record from Roxy Music, one that demonstrates even more clearly than the debut how avant-garde ideas can flourish in a pop setting.”
  • If you’re a Roxy fan, For Your Pleasure has to be considered a Must Own Title of theirs from 1973

Spacious, dynamic, present, with HUGE MEATY BASS and tons of energy, the sound is every bit as good as the music. (At least on this copy it is. That’s precisely what Hot Stampers are all about.)

Strictly in terms of recording quality, For Your Pleasure is on the same plane as the other best sounding record the band ever made, their self-titled debut.

Siren, Avalon and Country Life are all musically sublime, but the first album and this one are the only two with the kind of dynamic, energetic, powerful sound that Roxy’s other records simply cannot show us (with the exception of Country Life, was is powerful but a bit too aggressive).

The super-tubey keyboards that anchor practically every song on the first two albums are only found there. If you want to know what Tubey Magic sounds like in 1972-73, play one of our better Hot Stamper Roxy albums.

Roxy and their engineers and producers manage to capture a keyboard sound on their first two albums that few bands in the history of the world can lay claim to. I love the band’s later albums, but none of them sound like these two. The closest one can get is Stranded, their third, but it’s still a bit of a step down. (more…)

Simon & Garfunkel / Bookends

More Simon and Garfunkel

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, this early Stereo 360 pressing will be very hard to beat
  • Side one was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be amazed at how big and rich the sound is
  • This copy has lovely Midrange Magic on the guitars and voices, as well as plenty of studio ambience on most tracks, especially the simpler, more folky ones
  • An album that has become much tougher to come by, especially copies with sides that play as well as these do, although marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • A high percentage of pressings had condition problems this time around, including our Shootout Winner, so those of you looking for the best sound might have to wait until late-2025 or even 2026 it seems
  • Top 100, Five Stars – side two alone has four classics: “Fakin’ It,” “Mrs. Robinson,” “A Hazy Shade of Winter” and “At the Zoo”
  • If you’re a fan of this phenomenal folk duo, this early domestic pressing of their 1968 classic belongs in your collection.

The better copies of Bookends and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme are a sonic step up in class from anything else these two guys ever released. If you’re looking for the Ultimate Audiophile Simon & Garfunkel record, you just can’t do better than a killer Hot Stamper pressing of either title.

Do you know how hard it is to find a clean copy of this record? I’ll bet we look at 50 every year and probably buy no more than a few, which, after cleaning and going into a shootout may or may not sound good or have audiophile quality surfaces.

What We’re Listening For On Bookends

The bigger production songs on this album have a tendency to get congested on even the best pressings, which is not uncommon for Four Track recordings from the 60s. Those of you with properly set up high-dollar front ends should have less of a problem than some. $3000 cartridges can usually deal with this kind of complex information better than $300 ones.

But not always. Expensive does not always mean better since painstaking and exacting set up is so essential to proper playback.

The supremely talented Roy Halee handled the engineering duties. Not the most “natural” sounding record he ever made, but that’s clearly not what he or the duo were going for. The three of them would obviously take their sound much farther in that direction with the Grammy-winning Bridge Over Troubled Water from 1970.

The Wrecking Crew provided top quality backup, with Hal Blaine on drums and percussion, Joe Osborn on bass and Larry Knechtel on piano and keyboards.

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Phil Manzanera / Diamond Head (Island Pressing)

More of the Music of Roxy Music

  • With two outstanding Double Plus (A++) sides, this UK Island pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Diamond Head you’ve heard – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Demo Disc quality sound barely begins to describe the size and power of this recording
  • This album is an amazing sonic blockbuster, with sound that will leap right out of your speakers like practically nothing you have every heard
  • A shockingly well-recorded album from the ultra-talented Rhett Davies – this is his engineering masterpiece
  • Don’t waste your money on the domestic pressings, or anything else for that matter – the right UK pressings are in a league of their own
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Phil Manzanera’s first post-Roxy foray into solo albums is a terrific all-star affair that still holds up enormously well. Calling on favors from Roxy members present and past, and those from the Cambridge/British art rock scene, Manzanera assembled a supergroup for every song.”

The wind is at your back here because this is one seriously well-recorded album. If this copy doesn’t wake up your stereo nothing will.

Like its brother, 801 Live, this album is an amazing sonic blockbuster, with sound that positively leaps out of the speakers. Why shouldn’t it? It was engineered by the superbly talented Rhett Davies at Island, the genius behind Taking Tiger Mountain, the aforementioned 801 Live, Avalon, Dire Straits’ first album, and many many more.

If we could regularly find copies of this Audiophile Blockbuster (and frankly, if more people appreciated the album) it would definitely go on our Top 100 Rock and Pop List. In fact, it would easily make the Top Twenty from that list, it’s that good.

Looking for Tubey Magic? Rhett Davies is your man. Just think about the sound of the first Dire Straits album or Avalon. The better pressings of those albums — those with truly Hot Stampers — are swimming in it.

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