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We Were Wrong About the Right Mix in 2018

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

In 2018 we described our Shootout Winner this way:

Amazing sound throughout for Neil’s self-titled debut – shootout winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides. Both sides are rich, full and Tubey Magical with a big bottom end and excellent resolution.

Surely one of Neil’s toughest to find with top quality sound – and only these early pressings with the original mix have the potential to sound as good as this one does.

Six years later, in 2024, we had acquired enough copies of Neil’s debut to do the shootout again. (Yes, it seems that you may have to wait years for a chance to buy a Hot Stamper pressing of the album from us. However, feel free to use the stamper information provided in the blog listing linked here to help you avoid some of the worst sounding stampers of them all, the earliest ones.

To be clear, some of the later label reissues that come in the second cover are even worse sounding than the first mix stamper pressings that come in the first cover.

(A great deal more on the superior sound of some reissues can be found at the bottom of this listing.)

UPDATE 2024

In our latest shootout, the original mix on multiple copies we played did poorly.

We were wrong and for that we apologize. Please ignore what we wrote about the album below back in 2018. The old mix definitely does not beat the new mix.

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Neil Young / Self-Titled

More of the Music of Neil Young

  • Here is a vintage Reprise pressing of Neil’s solo debut with solid Double Plus (A++) grades from start to finish
  • Both sides are rich, full and Tubey Magical with a big bottom end and excellent resolution
  • Surely one of Neil’s toughest to find with top quality sonics – and only certain early pressings have the potential to sound as good as this one does, a subject we discuss on the blog in some detail
  • “…a flowing tributary from the over-all Springfield river of twangs, breathless vocals and slim yet stout instrumentation. Especially vivid is Young’s sense of melancholy and the ingenious clusters of images he employs in his lyrics (printed in full).” – Rolling Stone

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Neil Young – Zuma

More of the Music of Neil Young

  • Boasting two outstanding Double Plus (A++) sides, this copy of Neil’s amazingly well recorded 1975 masterpiece is guaranteed to floor audiophiles and Neil Young fans alike – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Zuma captures a kind of garage band purity that makes practically any other studio album you own sound processed and desiccated in comparison
  • For a hard-rockin’ Neil Young album with Demo Disc quality sound, you’ll have a hard time finding a better choice than a Hot Stamper pressing of Zuma
  • A Must Own Top 100 Title – just drop the needle on “Danger Bird” or “Cortez the Killer” to have your mind blown!

Can any one artist lay claim to two of the best sounding rock albums ever made? Neil Young can!

After the Gold Rush and Zuma are Demo Discs and super discs of the highest order, right up there with Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat, the other two albums by a single artist that deserve to be placed on that rarified plane.

Part of Zuma’s attraction is that it has exceptionally unprocessed sound that seems to have been recorded “live in the studio.”

The fact that Gold Rush and Zuma both involve Neil Young is doubtless not an accident. I would be very surprised to learn that he was not intimately involved with every aspect of the recording of both Masterpieces, from the miking to the final mix and every step in between.

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Neil Young – Time Fades Away

More of the Music of Neil Young

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) front row center sound or BETTER throughout this early Reprise pressing
  • Side two was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • A solid step up from most other copies we played in our most recent shootout – full-bodied, smooth and musical, the classic sound of Neil Young at his performing peak
  • 4 stars: “…sounds very much of a piece with Tonight’s the Night and On the Beach, albums that explored the troubled zeitgeist of America in the mid-70s in a way few rockers had the courage to face. If the performances are often loose and ragged, they’re also brimming with emotional force… Time Fades Away ranks with the bravest and most painfully honest albums of his career… it isn’t for everyone, but you may be surprised by its powerful effects.”

Unlike most “live” albums, this one was made direct to tape, with no fixes or overdubs, and on the best pressings that warts-and-all approach really pays off. There’s good weight, real openness, and the tonality on these better copies is both rich and sweet. This kind of sound can put you right in the front row.

Finding a copy like this is no walk in the park. The stamper numbers are all over the map, providing little if any guidance. Also, since the album didn’t sell all that well and was never released on CD [although it may have been since this was written; we pay very little attention to that sort of thing], there just aren’t that many clean copies floating around.

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Neil Young – Harvest

More of the Music of Neil Young

  • This vintage Reprise pressing was giving us the sound we were looking for on Neil’s undeniable classic, with both sides earning stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • It’s practically impossible to find an early pressing with sound this good and vinyl that plays as quietly as this
  • Marks in the vinyl are another matter, though – those on “Out on the Weekend” are especially bad but if you can tough those out, this copy is going to blow your mind
  • A Top 100 album and a sublime recording no audiophile should be without
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…the love songs and the harrowing portrait of a friend’s descent into heroin addiction, ‘The Needle and the Damage Done,’ remain among Young’s most affecting and memorable songs.”
  • If you’re a Neil Young fan, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this title from 1972 is clearly a Must Own

When you have this kind of open, extended top end, the grit, grain and edge just disappear, leaving you with a clear, Tubey Magical sound that’s way beyond anything you have ever heard for Harvest (or we will happily give you your money back).

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).

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Neil Young – Live Rust

More of the Music of Neil Young

  • You’ll find roughly Shootout Winning Triple (A+++) sound or close to it on all FOUR sides of these vintage Reprise pressings
  • Not many recordings, live or otherwise, give you this kind of unvarnished, front-row experience
  • This killer live set, the ultimate Neil Young acoustic and electric concert collection, combines brilliant early material like “After the Gold Rush” with wonderful later songs such as the amazing “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)” and “Tonight’s the Night”
  • 4 1/2 stars on AllMusic, just check the tracklisting and get ready to hear these NY classics come to life

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Neil Young – Old Ways

More of the Music of Neil Young

  • A vintage pressing with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides
  • Big, full-bodied and energetic, with remarkably present vocals – this kind of rich, analog sound is positively shocking for a recording from 1985, although it should not come as a surprise since Neil Young has often gone against the grain
  • Neil’s unabashed country album is guaranteed to make your MoFI pressing sound like the bad joke it was when it came out in 1996, and you can be sure that it has not aged well
  • “… this turns out to be his most carefully crafted album since Comes a Time… Pretty amazing.” – Rolling Stone
  • “Old Ways [is]…cut in the style of Harvest and Comes a Time, but with a stronger country leaning.”

This is Neil heading out to the sticks with his buddies, authentic country greats such as Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and others (nice friends to have), doing what Neil loves to do — making the music that HE wants to make, not the music that anyone else wants him to, including David Geffen and his lawyers. Old friend Ben Keith (a huge part behind the sound of Harvest) shows up with his pedal steel guitar on a couple of tracks.

This probably wasn’t anyone’s favorite Neil Young album, but when it sounds like it does here it sure makes a lot more sense than it did when we heard it on the more mediocre pressings. The MoFi is a muckfest, as was to be expected from a record mastered during the Anadisq era, the darkest chapter in the dark and disgraceful history of Mobile Fidelity.

Copies with rich lower mids and nice extension up top (to keep the string arrangements from becoming shrill) did the best in our shootout, assuming they weren’t too veiled or smeary, of course. (more…)

Neil Young – Tonight’s the Night

More of the Music of Neil Young

  • An original (and very cool) Black Label Reprise pressing of Neil Young’s brilliant sixth studio album with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on both sides
  • This side one gives you clean, clear, full-bodied, lively and musical analog sound from first note to last, and side two is not far behind in all those areas
  • Spaciousness, richness and freedom from grit and grain are key to the better pressings, and here you will find all three (particularly on side one)
  • 5 stars: “…Young’s musical expression of grief, combined with his rejection of the stardom he had achieved in the late 60s and early 70s … was immediately recognized as a unique masterpiece by critics, and it has continued to be ranked as one of the greatest rock & roll albums ever made.”
  • If you’re a fan of Mr. Young — and what audiophile wouldn’t be? — this dark classic from 1975 belongs in your collection.

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Neil Young – Harvest Moon

More of the Music of Neil Young

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom, this vintage import pressing is doing just about everything right – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • Full-bodied, big, rich and solid, this album has the kind of analog sound we did not expect to find, but were pleasantly surprised, thank goodness
  • Turn this one up good and loud (which you can do when the sound is this good) and you’ll have a living, breathing Neil Young standing right in front of you
  • 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
  • “Harvest Moon manages to be sentimental without being sappy, wistful without being nostalgic… a beautiful album that proudly displays scars, heartaches, and love.”

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Neil Young – Hawks and Doves

More Neil Young

More Country and Country Rock

  • With two INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides, this vintage Reprise pressing is certainly as good a copy as we have ever heard
  • The trick on this album is to find rich, smooth, edge-free sound, and this copy delivers those qualities like nothing else we played all day
  • “Hawks and Doves has a homey feel. ‘Little Wing,’ bare and haltingly lyrical with its miked harp and unaccompanied acoustic, is simpler than anything on the folky Comes a Time, and the rest of the music is defined by Ben Keith’s laconic dobro and steel and Rufus Thobodeaux’s sawing fiddle.” Robert Christgau (A-)
  • If you’re a serious Neil Young fan, this title from 1980 is surely worth hearing on a top quality pressing like this one

On side one, the second track, The Old Homestead, has an especially intimate vocal worth checking out.

Flip the record over and listen to how full-bodied the piano is on the first track on side two, Stayin’ Power.

This is the sound of ANALOG. So many copies are dry and edgy, as is the CD, I would guess, but here the sound is smooth, natural and enjoyable.

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