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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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It Took Us More than Twenty Years to Figure Out What Was the Problem

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

Years ago — precisely how many we can’t really say, the old listings for those records have been deleted — we thought the original pressings in the nameless cover you see pictured had the best sound.

We thought the pressings that came in this early cover were the ones that were made from the original mix, the mix that Neil later disowned. (More on that below.)

We had played a number of copies that came in the original cover, and they sounded better to us than the others we had auditioned.

Our mistake was not understanding that pressings made with the first mix and pressings made with the second mix both came in the early cover, and both were pressed on the Reprise Two Tone label.

Here is what we wrote some years ago:

It turns out the remixed pressings we’d been selling for years were not the way to hear this album at its best. Neil wanted his voice to sound clearer and more present than the first mix, but the approach the engineers took to increase the clarity and presence was simply to boost the middle and upper midrange, a boost that seriously compromises the wonderful Tubey Magic found in the rich lower midrange of the original mix.

Neil may have liked the sound of his voice better on the new mix, played back on whatever mediocre-at-best stereo he was using at the time, but we here at Better Records are of a decidedly different opinion. On a modern, highly-resolving system Neil’s voice will not sound the least bit “buried” on the original mix, not on the better pressings anyway. Of course, the better ones are the only ones we sell.

If you want to hear this album sound right, we strongly believe that the original mix is the only way to go. And if you want to hear this album sound really right, better-than-you-ever-thought-possible right, you need a copy that was mastered, pressed and cleaned properly, and that means a Hot Stamper from Better Records.

It turns out the stampers for the pressings we like are the ones made from the remixed tapes.

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