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.
