It’s fascinating to me how every American president sets a tone for the country that profoundly influences the state of mind of its citizens. Carter tried to get Americans to embrace social responsibility and environmental stewardship and basically bummed everyone out. Reagan reassured us that we were entitled to let the good times roll and to embrace prosperity and personal freedom, even if it’s at the expense of the planet and our less fortunate fellow citizens.
The first Bush tried to carry the Reagan torch “four more years”, but as that torch dimmed we needed Clinton to make burning the candle at both ends sexy again. Then weary of 8 years of working our asses off, the second Bush reminded us it was still possible to loaf our way to success and that running a country and fighting a war wasn’t all THAT hard if you enough smart people around to tell you what to do.
But with business as usual in American politics losing it’s luster we needed Obama to come in and rain hope and promise and remind us that having a leader of the free world who was our intellectual equal wasn’t such a bad thing, and that maybe we should see if this social responsibility thing that Carter was going on about might be worth another look.
Alas, it wasn’t. Cue Donald Trump, our collective Id, and letting our inner spoiled brats run roughshod on anything and anyone that we don’t like and everything they’ve ever cared about. For nearly 4 years we’ve had permission to behave as though this was our last 4 years on the planet and the planet revolves around us and our “God given” personal freedoms.
At the start of the Trump presidency I realized I was diving pretty deep into this audiophile rabbit hole and started doing some serious soul searching about the time and the money I was spending, alone, and consuming precious resources to play record after record with no possible benefit to anyone beyond myself. I wrote a post about it in which I tried to acknowledge the inherent problems with this hobby while celebrating the reasons we audiophiles embrace it.
While writing that post, which you can read here, I realized that this audiophile hobby CAN be done right. When it is it can literally bring joy to the hobbyist. That’s been my experience at least, and I believe that of may other audiophiles out there. And forgive the cliche’ but don’t we all need a little more joy in our lives?
Speaking of joy, four years ago I bought a new pair of speakers after not making any significant changes to my system in decades. Those speakers served to rekindle my passion for audio and led to upgrades of every key component in my system. Every one of those upgrades and the wonderful sounding records they’ve helped me find have been a source of joy to me, and I have absolutely no regrets now about diving back in.
With the 4 year anniversary of The Broken Record and another presidential election just around the corner, I figured it was time to look back and see where I started. It turns out that where I started, of all places, was Led Zeppelin’s 3rd and possibly (dare I say it!) best album.
On the day I went into the audio store to pick up my new speakers the salesperson told me about Discogs and was the first person to inform me of the fact that there are many different pressings of the same record out there and that not all of them are created equal. This new found knowledge captured my attention in a way that I never would have expected, and I literally became obsessed with the finding the best sounding copies of every record that I would ever want to occupy a place in my collection.
When I started out collecting for sound, I really had no idea what I was doing. So I did the obvious thing and started numerous “best sounding version of…” Google searches with numerous stops on Steve Hoffman Forums and a few other sites where I’d sift through numerous opines in the hopes of fining a small scrap of usable advice on what pressings to look for. I mostly found bad advice that I often took and followed with predictably disappointing outcomes.
But we all have to start somewhere, and where I decided to start was Led Zeppelin 3. I had never owned a copy, really wasn’t all that familiar with it and as a life long Zeppelin fan it seemed a perfect fit for my new endeavor. Little did I know I had picked one of the most difficult records in history to find good sounding copies of.
I have to admit I’m a little embarrassed by some of my early posts. Luckily most are so buried in the archives that no-one reads them. But if you’re still reading this post then I kind of feel I owe you, and therefore I’m going to direct you to an early days post on Zep 3 so you can get a chuckle at how green I was when I wrote it. You can read that post here.
My early efforts at finding a good copy of Zep 3 were such a disaster that when I found an even decent sounding one I thought I’d landed the ultimate copy. That copy, a Canadian red label which you can read about here, ultimately didn’t stand the test of time. Every time I made a significant system upgrade I would pull out that record and every time it sounded worse than the last time I played it.
What was the problem with all of these Zep 3 pressings? Feel free to read the aforementioned posts for more details, but the long and short of it is this – Zep 3 is a difficult record to get to sound right. Most of the time it’s not mastered properly and when it’s not mastered properly the record somehow just doesn’t make any sense. It’s as though the mastering engineer just couldn’t figure out how to put every part of the mix in the right place and in the right proportion to the others. Case in point Jimmy Page’s own mastering catastrophe, the 2014 180g reissue I talk about in my very first Zep 3 post.
Ah, but when it IS mastered properly I find myself fielding platitudes to put words to how good it can sound. About a year ago, after yet another poor showing from the Canadian red label pressing I finally relented and bought a super hot import copy from Better Records with a 2+ side 1. Playing that copy for the very first time was almost more relief than thrill. Finally I could just settle in and listen to the album through without scrolling through copies on Discogs looking for an alternative.
A few months ago during a listening session at a friend’s place, I noticed he had a couple of different versions of Zep 3 that included a first US pressing, the first version I’d originally bought and one that I’d dismissed so quickly that I felt it needed a revisit, and the highly touted Classic Records 180g reissue from 2000, repressed on 200g vinyl again 2007. So even though I thought I was finally “done” with Zep 3 pressings, nostalgia and curiosity won the day and I asked my friend to loan me his 2 copies so I could, maybe, finally, put this title to rest for good.
At the time of this writing there are no copies of the 180g Classic Records Zep 3 available on Discogs and the cheapest copy of the 2007 repress and the only one for sale in the US is rated VG for vinyl and priced at $125. Clearly this is a sought after version and therefore one that should be seriously considered by any collector seeking a good one. OG US’s are pretty available, but have also gone up in price. I remember I sold mine which was in excellent shape for $15. Now it looks like you’d have to pay 3 times that.
Yesterday I had a chance to sit down with these 3 versions. After playing them I was pleasantly surprised by the US original and realized I may have dismissed it too quickly before. Yes it’s thin, and bright and lacks bass, but it’s a decent listen and not too far off the mark with its mastering. It’s a very far cry from my Hot Stamper but I could see living with it for a little while if I had no alternative.
But what shocked me was the Classic Records reissue! If you’ve read anything else on this site you’ll likely know I’m rarely a fan of modern 180g reissues, but this one, holy cow! It is SO bad it’s hard to comprehend. What’s wrong with it? The better question is what’s not wrong with it – bloated, mushy bass, no top end extension, no ambience, no transparency. Wow!
If you currently own a copy of either of the Classic Records reissues of Zep 3, allow me to give you some advice. Sell your copy and buy a Hot Stamper. I paid Better Records $160 for my Hot Stamper of Zep 3 (at 20% off). That may sound like a lot of money, but with copies of the Classic Records version in good condition averaging $125, only the one copy currently for sale in the US and most copies in Europe priced higher than that, you’ll likely net enough on the sale of your crappy but valuable version to break even at Better Records.
With what promises to be a massively ugly 2020 presidential election looming, not to mention the ongoing pandemic, I have to say I’m grateful for this audiophile hobby. With my system currently sounding better than ever, just 20 minutes with a great sounding record provides a welcome, joyful sanctuary from the craziness.
My view, we analog audiophiles owe it to ourselves to stop wasting time playing records that only serve to irritate our nerves and push us further away from our favorite artists and their performances. We in this country are divided enough already.