worst-version

Are these the worst pressings of these albums ever released on vinyl?

Possibly. Of course there’s really no way to know. We haven’t played every version of every one of these albums ever pressed.

What we can tell you is that they are bad enough to make us think they are in the running. Which is our way of saying, whatever you do, don’t buy them.

And if you already own any, play them and read our reviews to see if they have some shortcomings you might have missed. Then get rid of them.

Gaucho According to MCA Masterphile

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

The Masterphile Half-Speed is a pathetic shadow of the real thing, the real thing being an early Masterdisk pressing cut by Robert Ludwig.

We’ve played at least a hundred of the original pressings, and I would be surprised if every one of them did not sound better than this compressed, desiccated audiophile piece of trash.

With sound like that, the MCA Masterphile gets our vote for the worst version of the album ever made.

Of all the great albums Steely Dan released, and that means their seven original albums and nothing that came after, there are only three in our opinion that actually support their reputation as studio wizards and recording geniuses. Chronologically they are Pretzel Logic, Aja, and Gaucho.

Every sound captured on these albums is so carefully crafted and considered that it practically brings one to tears to contemplate what the defective DBX noise reduction system did to the work of genius that is Katy Lied, their best album and the worst sounding. (Those cymbal crashes can really mess with your mind if you let them. To get a better picture of the DBX sound just bang two trash can lids together as close to your head as possible.)

The first two albums can sound very good, as can Royal Scam, but none of those can compete with The Big Three mentioned above for sonics. A Hot Stamper copy of any of them would be a serious DEMO DISC on anyone’s system system.

Mistakes Were Made

If you are still buying these modern remastered pressings, making the same mistakes that I was making before I knew better, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed Mastered LPs.

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Who on Earth Could Possibly Take the Sound of this Ridiculous Remaster Seriously?

Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca and London Available Now

There actually is such a person who does exactly that, can you imagine?

Only an Audiophile True Believer could be fooled by sound so ridiculously unnatural.

But the world is full of such people. They bought into the audiophile BS of Mobile Fidelity in the 80s and apparently haven’t learned much since.

Now they think Heavy Vinyl is the answer to the world’s problems. The more things change…

If your stereo is any good at all, you should have no trouble hearing the sonic qualities of this album we describe below. If you are on this blog, and you have tried some of our Hot Stamper pressings, there is a good chance you’re hearing pretty much what we’re hearing. Why else why would you pay our prices?

One thing I can tell you: we would never charge money for a record that sounds as weird and wrong as this MoFi.

A well-known reviewer has many kind things to say about this pressing, but we think it sounds like a hi-fi-ish version of a 70s London, which means it’s opaque and the strings are badly lacking in Tubey Magical sheen and richness.

The bass is like jello on the MoFi, unlike the real London, which has fairly decent bass.

If an audiophile reviewer cannot hear the obvious faults of this pressing, I would say there’s a good chance one or both of the following is true:

  1. His equipment is not telling him what the record is really doing, and/or,
  2. His listening skills are not sufficiently developed to notice the shortcomings in the sound.

The result is the worst kind of reviewer malpractice.

But is it really the worst kind? It seems to be the only kind!

MoFi had a bad habit of making bright classical records. I suppose you could say they had a bad habit of making bright records in general. A few are dull, some are just right, but most of them are bright in one way or another.

Dull playback equipment? An attempt to confuse detail with resolution? Whatever the reasons, the better and more accurate your equipment becomes, the more obvious this shortcoming will be. My tolerance for their phony EQ is at an all time low. But hey, that’s me.

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Letter of the Week – “Just enough midrange to give the impression there was a good recording back in there somewhere”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music Al Stewart Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a record he played a while back:

Hey Tom, 

I know you’ve got this on my Want List, but I also know it is a hard one to find. So thought I would try a cheap used MoFi from Discogs. Cover was shot so didn’t cost much, what the heck, right? Wow, what a lesson! Clean and quiet is the best I can say. Forget about it being almost too warped to play, that was not described, but almost beside the point. What we care about is sound quality, and this MoFi is abysmal!

I mean never mind Hot Stamper, it does not compare even to my old original random played-a-million times copy! The sound is pallid, sapped of all life, rolled off on the top, missing entirely on the bottom, and with just enough midrange to give the impression there was a good recording back in there somewhere, once upon a time. Before MoFi stepped all over it.

That’s not even the worst! Track 2, On the Border, begins with two piano notes alternating back and forth setting the tempo. Where are they??? There is no piano! None! Strings come suddenly out of nowhere! I thought MoFi was supposed to use Original Master Tape??

Easily the worst MoFi ever. Although quite honestly none of them can hold a candle to one of your Hot Stampers. Genuine diamonds in the rough.

Anyway, thought I would let you know. Good luck finding my YOTC. Truly would love to hear what it’s supposed to sound like. (more…)

Oh, So That’s Who Butchered Neil Young’s Greatest Hits

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

When I reviewed the Classic Records pressing of Neil Young’s Greatest Hits in 2005, I had never heard of Chris Bellman. As it turns out, he’s the guy who cut this piece of crap. I had no idea. And why would I care anyway?

UPDATE 2025

The median price the album sells for on Discogs as of 10/2025 is $142.92, and it has sold for as much as $288 and change in the past. There are bigger wastes of money in the world of records — this guy can be counted on to produce more than his share, some at prices that even make us blush — but it is hard to imagine how anyone could get less for his $142 than by buying this 2 disc set.

The most shocking thing about the fact that he cut the album is not how awful it sounds.

No, there are plenty of awful sounding Heavy Vinyl pressings in the world, enough to fill up the glossy-paged catalogs of every mail order audiophile record dealer from here to Timbuktu.

What is shocking is that there are audiophiles — self-identified lovers of sound, who are supposedly capable of telling a good sounding record from a hole in the ground — that defend this man’s work.

How does anyone take this guy’s records seriously?

To be fair, it should be said that I actually like one of the records Mr Bellman has cut, the 45 of Brothers in Arms, discussed here. An excerpt:

[In this video] I’m asked if I like any modern mastering engineers, and the only one I can think of is Chris Bellman, because he mastered one of the few Heavy Vinyl pressings I know of that sounds any good, Brothers in Arms, released in 2021. I played it when Edgers [Geoff Edgers from WAPO] brought it by the studio when he first visited me in preparation for his article.

My best copy was clearly better in some important ways, but Bellman’s mostly sounds right, and that surprised me because most of these modern records sound funny and weird and almost never sound right.

(Geoff brought over three records that day: Brothers in Arms, the remastered Zep II, and a ridiculously bad sounding Craft pressing of Lush Life, which was mastered by Kevin Gray, and one which I have not had time to review yet. It was my introduction to the Craft series, and let’s just say we got off on the wrong foot. I told Geoff it sounded like a bad CD, and that’s pretty much all I remember of it. The average price for that pressing on Discogs is roughly $69 these days. The CD is cheaper and there is very little doubt in my mind that it would be better sounding to boot.)

I stand by my admiration for Brothers in Arms, a very good reissue, something that might give one of our lowest level Hot Stamper pressings a run for its money.

But he has a lot of explaining to do when it comes to the other records of his we (and Robert Brook) have played. Reviews are coming, late as always, but for now here is what we’ve written about the records he’s credited with remastering.

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Hey Speakers Corner, What The Hell Were You Thinking?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Blood, Sweat and Tears Available Now

An audiophile hall of shame pressing and a Heavy Vinyl disaster if there ever was one (and oh yes, there are plenty).

When this record came out back in 2007, we auditioned one and were dumbfounded at the quality of the sound. We noted:

This is the worst sounding Heavy Vinyl Reissue LP I have heard in longer than I can remember.

To make a record sound this bad you have to work at it. What the hell were they thinking?

Any audiophile record dealer that would sell you this record should be run out of town on a rail.

Of course that will never happen, because every last one of them (present company excluded) will carry it, of that you can be sure.

Just when you think it can’t get any worse, out comes a record like this to prove that no matter how negative you are about the quality of audiophile record production these days, things can always get worse, and they have.

Is it the worst version of the album ever made? Hard to imagine it would have much competition in that regard.

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Just Say No to The Yes Album on Rhino

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Yes Available Now

You can find this one in our audiophile record hall of shame, along with almost 300 others that, in our opinion, make a mockery of the term “audiophile record.”

Is it the worst version ever?

Hard to imagine it would have much competition. The CD I own is dramatically better sounding, and it can probably be had for ten bucks or less. (Make sure Joe Gastwirt had nothing to do with whatever version you buy. His stuff is usually no-noised garbage.)

That notorious hack Ron McMaster strikes again.

Rhino Records bills their releases as pressed on “180 gram High Performance Vinyl.” However, if they are using performance to refer to sound quality, we have found the performance of their vinyl to be quite low, lower than the average copy one might stumble upon in the used record bins.

The CD versions of most of the LP titles they released early on are far better sounding than the lifeless, flat, pinched, so-called audiophile pressings they produced starting around 2000.

The mastering engineer for this junk title actually has the nerve to feature his name in the ads for the records. He should be run out of town, not promoted as a keeper of the faith and defender of the virtues of “vinyl.” If this is what vinyl sounds like I’d would have switched to CD years ago.

And the amazing thing is, as bad as these records are, there are people who like them. I’ve read postings on the internet from people who say the sound on these records is just fine. It’s sad.

Their Grateful Dead titles sound as bad as the cheapest Super Saver reissue copies I have ever heard. And those are terrible!

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“There is nothing to be learned from the second kick of a mule.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Revolver Available Now

In 2022 we finally reviewed the newly remixed Revolver.

As I was reading the newspaper today, I chanced upon Mark Twain’s famous quote and immediately recognized a way to put it to good use. I had been searching my brain for a good way to start a commentary detailing the multitudinous problems with the remixed, half-speed mastered Revolver LP. Kicked in the head was exactly what I needed.

In 2020 I had reviewed the Abbey Road remix and was astonished that anyone would release a record of such utter sonic worthlessness. A few choice lines:

The Half-Speed mastered remixed Abbey Road has to be one of the worst sounding Beatles records we have ever had the displeasure to play.

Hard to imagine you could make Abbey Road sound any worse. It’s absolutely disgraceful.

I will be writing more about its specific shortcomings down the road, but for now let this serve as a warning that you are throwing your money away if you buy this newly remixed LP.

Of course I never did write more about it. The thought of listening critically to the album in order to detail its manifold shortcomings was more than I could bear and onto the back burner the idea went, where it remains to this day.

In 2020 I warned the audiophile community not to go down this foolish half-speed mastered road, and now that they have been kicked in the head a second time, perhaps when they wake up they will come to their senses, although I doubt very much that they will.

Giles Martin is the guilty party here, and I hope it is clear by now that he simply has no clue as to how a Beatles record should sound. If he did have such a clue, this new Revolver would never have seen the light of day.

Getting Down to Brass Tacks

Here are the notes our crack listening panel (our very own Wrecking Crew) made as they listened to the new Revolver.

Note that they listened to side two first, playing a Super Hot stamper ’70s UK pressing head to head with the new release, so we have listed our notes for side two above those for side one.

They listened to the first two tracks on side two in this order:

Good Day Sunshine, And Your Bird Can Sing.

On side one they played the first three tracks and listened to them in this order:

I’m Only Sleeping, Taxman, Eleanor Rigby.

Some of the highlights from side two:

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The Mono Recut of Revolver from 1981 Is a Ripoff

Hot Stamper Pressings of Revolver Available Now

A great sounding record in stereo, potentially anyway, but this later reissue in mono is so awful it deserves a special place in our hall of shame.

My notes for side one: hard, sour, no bass.

Side two: dumbass small mono, so unclear.

Is it the worst version of the album ever made? That’s hard to say. There is no shortage of competition, that’s for sure.

But it may be the worst sounding version of the album we’ve ever played, and that should be good enough for any audiophile contemplating spending money on this kind of rubbish.

We love the mono mix of For No One, but not when it sounds like this.

The only Beatles vinyl we offer on our site are stereo pressings. Our reasons for doing this are straightforward enough.

The Beatles records in mono, contrary to the opinion of audiophiles and music lovers alike, virtually never have the presence, energy and resolution found on the best stereo copies. If your stereo cannot resolve all the information on the tape, sure, Twin Track Stereo (used on the first two albums, hard-panned multi-track afterwards) ends up sounding like some of the instruments are stuck in the speakers, hard left and hard right, with nothing but a hole in the middle.

But there is a great deal of information spreading into the middle when we play those records here, and nothing feels stuck in the speakers that doesn’t sound like it was supposed to be heard coming directly from one of the speakers.

It is our contention that the best audio equipment, properly tweaked, can show you a world of musical information that exists only on the stereo pressings, information that the mono mixes mostly obscure.

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Houses of the Holy on Classic Records Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

We can describe the sound of this miserable Bernie Grundman remaster in two words: ridiculously bright.

Honestly, what more do you need to know? It’s almost as bad as the Zep II he cut, and that record is an abomination.

Is it the worst version of the album ever made? Hard to imagine it would have much competition.

(Oh but it does – this misbegotten series out of Japan will do nicely to illustrate how brighter is not necessarily better, it’s just brighter.)

Over the years we have done many Led Zeppelin shootouts, often including the Classic Heavy Vinyl pressings for comparison purposes. After all, these Classic LPs are what many — perhaps most — audiophiles consider superior to other pressings.

We sure don’t, but everybody else seems to. You will find very few critics of the Classic Zeps LPs outside of those who write for this blog, and even we used to recommend three of the Zep titles on Classic: Led Zeppelin I, IV and Presence.

Wrong on all counts.

We don’t actually like any of them now, although the first album is still by far the best of the bunch.

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The Wall Sounds Terrible on these “Audiophile” Rip-offs

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

This Japanese import is one of the dullest, muddiest, worst sounding copies of The Wall we have ever played. It is clearly made from a second generation tape (or worse!).

Is it the worst version of the album ever made? Hard to imagine it would have much competition.

And somehow this pressing, or one very much like it, ended up as on the TAS Super Disc List. I would hope that the copy Harry played sounded a whole lot better than this one.

The version on the TAS Super Disc list is EMI 4814, which I believe is the British original. Conventional wisdom? Is The Absolute Sound capable of any other?

And the CBS Half-Speed is every bit the mudfest that the Half-Speed is.

How is it that the worst sounding pressings are so often marketed to audiophiles as superior to their mass-produced counterparts? In our experience, more often than not they are just plain awful, inferior in every way but one: surface quality.

And the knock on these CBS Half-Speeds is that they are made from the same vinyl CBS used to press all their other records.

I remember buying them back in the late-70s at Tower Records. They were only $12.99 when Mobile Fidelity pressings were $17.99, garnering a premium price because they were pressed in Japan. Fool that I was, I bought plenty of both, not to mention those made by Nautilus, Direct Disk Labs and plenty of others too painful to think about.

Dear audiophiles, stop collecting crappy audiophile pressings with quiet vinyl and just switch to CD already. You’ll be getting better sound and saving yourself a lot of money to boot. You simply cannot defend analog with this kind of junk.

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