vin-smooth

These vintage pressings are smooth in a good way.

Elton John / Honky Chateau – A Must Own Classic

More Elton John

Reviews and Commentaries for Honky Chateau

  • 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…)

Stevie Wonder – Innervisions

More Stevie Wonder

More Soul, Blues and R&B

  • With outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades throughout, this copy is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Innervisions you’ve heard – it also plays about as quietly as this title ever does in our experience
  • A Stevie Wonder classic as well as a proud member of our Top 100, but you will need a copy like this one to prove that it belongs there
  • Richness, warmth, Tubey Magic, and clarity are important to the sound, and here you will find plenty of all four
  • 5 stars: “Stevie Wonder applied his tremendous songwriting talents to the unsettled social morass that was the early ’70s and produced one of his greatest, most important works, a rich panoply of songs addressing drugs, spirituality, political ethics, and what looked to be the failure of the ’60s dream – all set within a collection of charts as funky and catchy as any he’d written before.”
  • This is our pick for Free’s best sounding album. Roughly 150 other listings for the best recording by an artist or group can be found here on the blog.
  • If any record can be called a Must Own, Stevie Wonder’s masterpiece from 1973 is one, slotting in nicely right at the top of any list of the greatest soul albums of all time, if not THE greatest

Millions of these were made, but most of them weren’t made right.

Years ago we made some progress with regard to the various stampers and pressing plants we liked best, but trying to find clean copies with the right matrix numbers has proved challenging. Even when you do get the copies with good stampers, they often don’t sound all that amazing. I had practically given up on making this shootout happen until about ten years ago, when a friend dropped off a copy that had seriously good sound.

It didn’t turn out to be the ultimate copy — that’s why shootouts are crucially important to the discovery of the best pressings — but it was so enjoyable that we decided to give Innervisions another try, and since that time we’ve gotten better and better at finding, cleaning and playing Stevie Wonder’s Masterpiece, a record that should be played regularly and one that belongs in any right-thinking audiophile’s collection.

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The Doors / Waiting For the Sun

More of The Doors

More Psych Rock

  • With two seriously good Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this vintage Gold Label pressing
  • The sound is present, lively and tonally correct, with Jim Morrison’s baritone reproduced with the palpable weight and presence that the reissues barely begin to reproduce
  • It’s tough (not to mention expensive) to find these early pressings with this kind of sound and reasonably quiet vinyl, but we found this one, and it blew our mind
  • “Krieger, Ray Manzarek and John Densmore were never more lucid… This was a band at its most dexterous, creative, and musically diverse …”
  • If I were to make a list of my favorite rock and pop albums from 1968, this album would definitely be on it, close to the top I should think
  • Our review detailing the somewhat surprising shortcomings of the DCC pressing can be found here, and the story of how long it took me to figure out The Doors on vinyl (30 years or so!) can be found here

Here is THE BIG SOUND that makes Doors records such a thrill to play. Morrison’s vocals sound just right — full-bodied, breathy and immediate. The transparency makes it possible to easily pick out Bruce Botnick’s double tracking of Morrison’s leads.

For a thrill just drop the needle on Not To Touch The Earth. Halfway through the song the members have sort of a duel — Robbie Krieger wailing on the guitar in one channel, Ray Manzarek pounding on the keyboards in the other, and John Densmore responding with drum fills behind them.

On the average copy, the parts get congested and lose their power, but when you can easily pick out each musician, their part will raise the hair on your arms.

It’s absolutely chilling, and it will no doubt remind you why you fell in love with The Doors in the first place. Who else can do this kind of voodoo the way that they do?

Check out the piano on Yes The River Knows on side two (such an underrated song!) or the big snare thwacks on Five To One to hear that Hot Stamper magic.

The overall sound is airy, open, and spacious — you can really hear INTO the soundfield on a track like Yes The River Knows. The opaque quality that so many pressings of this album suffer from is nowhere to be found here.

Not only that, but you will not believe how hard these sides rock. (more…)

Linda Ronstadt – Prisoner In Disguise

More Linda Ronstadt

More Women Who Rock

    • Prisoner In Disguise returns to the site for the first time in over two years, here with Linda’s trademark punchy, lively Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on both sides of this vintage Asylum pressing
    • Here are just a few of our notes for this killer copy: “silky and breathy vox,” “big and punchy,” “huge, rich and silky,” “tons of space and detail,” “so tubey.”
    • This is an amazing recording, but it takes a special copy like this one to reveal all the magic that we know had to have been on the tape in 1975, almost fifty years ago
    • 4 1/2 stars – “Love Is a Rose,” “Tracks of My Tears” and “Heat Wave” were hits, but Linda really pours her heart into “Hey Mister, That’s Me Up On The Jukebox”
    • Andrew Gold (so critical to the success of HLAW) is still heavily involved, along with EmmyLou Harris, James Taylor, Lowell George, David Lindley, JD Souther, and of course Peter Asher

The soundfield has a three-dimensional quality that was nonexistent on some of the other copies we played. Drop the needle on “Many Rivers To Cross” and check out the amazing sound of the organ coming from the back of the room. Only the highest resolution copies give you that kind of soundstage depth.

The piano sounds natural and weighty. The fiddle on “The Sweetest Gift” (played by our man David Lindley) is full of rosiny texture.

Emmylou Harris, dueting here with Linda, sings beautifully throughout.

All in all, you will find truly Demo Disc Quality sound on the best copies.

The acoustic guitars are tonally right on the money, neither bright nor dull, with transient information that is captured perfectly as long as the pressing itself is not smeary, which the better Hot Stamper pressings won’t be.

Listen to the opening guitar in the right channel of “The Sweetest Gift”; we used it as a test track and when that guitar is right there you know you have a copy with Hot Stampers.

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The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band

Hot Stamper Pressings of The Beatles Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Beatles

  • Huge, spacious and detailed, with the Tubey Magic of a fresh tape, this is the way to hear Sgt. Pepper in all its analog glory, not remixed and not remastered
  • Most pressings – especially the new ones – have nothing approaching the Tubey Magic, space and energy of this LP
  • A Better Records Top 100 title – “It’s possible to argue that there are better Beatles albums, yet no album is as historically important as this.”
  • It’s hard to conceive of any list of the best rock and pop albums of 1967 that would not have this record on it, and there is a very good chance it would be perched right at the top of that list
  • Quite a few customers have written us letters telling us how much they enjoyed the Hot Stamper pressing of Sgt. Pepper we sent them

The sound here is so big and rich, so clear and transparent, that we would be very surprised, shocked even, if you’ve ever imagined that any pressing of Sgt. Pepper could sound this powerful and REAL. (more…)

Little Feat / Time Loves A Hero

Little Feat Albums with Hot Stampers

Little Feat Albums We’ve Reviewed

  • Time Loves A Hero is back on the site for only the second time in years, here with seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades throughout this vintage pressing
  • Credit Donn Landee (and Ted Templeman too) with the rich, smooth, oh-so-analog sound found on the better sides
  • You get lovely extension up top, good weight down low, as well as remarkable transparency in the midrange, all qualities that were much less evident on the average copy we played
  • The blog has plenty of commentary on the Nautilus pressing, a record I admit to liking way back when, but no Hot Stamper would ever be as anemic and thin as that remastered record is, not when played back on the high-quality equipment we run today
  • “‘Old Folks Boogie’ beats anything on the last two albums…and “Rocket in My Pocket” is a Lowell George readymade like you didn’t think he had in him anymore.” – Robert Christgau

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The Beach Boys – Surf’s Up

More of The Beach Boys

  • Surf’s Up is back on the site for the first time in over two and a half years, here with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on both sides of this original Reprise pressing
  • The Beach Boys revolutionized the popular music of their day with their genius for harmony, and this copy succeeds where others may fail – it gets their voices right
  • Includes classics “Long Promised Road,” “Till I Die,” and of course the title smash hit, “Surf’s Up”
  • The vinyl for all the Brothers Records titles we play is at best audiophile-unfriendly, but since the only pressings that sound any good on this title are the originals, our options are limited
  • We buy the nicest looking copies we can find, clean them up as best we can and let the chips fall where they may
  • 4 stars: “A masterpiece [which] defined the Beach Boys’ tumultuous career better than any other album … The album closer, ‘Surf’s Up,’ is a masterpiece of baroque psychedelia, probably the most compelling track from the Smile period.”

When it works, boy can this album sound amazing. Full of Tubey Magic, not to mention analog warmth and sweetness, this is clearly one of the band’s best albums of the 70s.

What’s magical about The Beach Boys? Their voices of course, what else could it be? It’s not a trick question. Any good pressing must sound correct on their voices or it has no practical value whatsoever. A Beach Boys record with bad sound in the midrange — like most of them — is to us a worthless record.

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George Benson – Breezin’

More George Benson

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Guitar

  • Superb sound throughout this vintage pressing, with both sides earning Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • Tubey Magical richness and plenty of note-like bass are two of the important qualities that separate the winners from the also-rans, but smooth, grain-free, present vocals for “This Masquerade” are a big part of the best pressings too, so make that three important qualities
  • This copy will blow the doors off your old copy or any MoFi pressing — guaranteed!
  • It’s got all the elements this smooth masterpiece needs to come to life today, almost 50 years later if you can believe it
  • You hear right into the music, something that is only possible on the most transparent copies – exactly the quality that the modern Heavy Vinyl reissue cannot reproduce
  • Marks and 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
  • If like us you’re a fan of jazz guitar, this is a killer album from 1976 that belongs in your collection.

This album features the huge hit “This Masquerade” and lots of other strong material as well. Benson is at the top of his game, with blazing guitar lines accompanied by his scat vocals at many times. No one else ever did music like this so well again, in our humble opinion.

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Stevie Wonder – Songs In The Key Of Life

More Stevie Wonder

  • Tubey Magical Richness, with the immediacy and transparency too few copies offer – here you will find the qualities that are essential to getting the best sound from Stevie’s magnum opus
  • A true musical genius (according to Eddie Murphy) here joins forces with other legends including Herbie Hancock, George Benson, and Deniece Williams
  • 5 stars: “…Stevie Wonder’s longest, most ambitious collection of songs… that — just as the title promised — touched on nearly every issue under the sun, and did it all with ambitious (even for him), wide-ranging arrangements and some of the best performances of Wonder’s career.”
  • Songs In the Key of Life is a Grammy Winning Must Own album from 1976,

Double albums are usually very tedious work for us, but this one had us smiling and tapping our feet all the way through to the end of the last side. I’m sure you don’t need a rundown of why this is such a great album, but the 5 star AMG review is an excellent read for those who want to be reminded. (more…)

The Eagles – Self-Titled

More Eagles

More Country and Country Rock

  • The Eagles’ debut album returns site for only the second time in fifteen months, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER on both sides of this early Asylum pressing
  • You will be floored by the huge, rich, Tubey Magical guitars exploding out from your speakers on “Take It Easy” on this Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) side one – it’s just shy of our Shootout Winner and 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 does might take you 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

Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in clean shape. Most of them will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG, and it will probably be VG+. If you are picky about your covers please let us know in advance so that we can be sure we have a nice cover for you.

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 recordings ever made. Almost all the qualities we look for on this album can be found on this very copy.

The Eagles first album is without a doubt Glyn Johns‘ masterpiece — rock records simply do not sound any better in our experience. It’s exactly the kind of record that makes virtually ANY Audiophile pressing pale in comparison. Everything you could ask for as an audiophile is here, and more.

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…)