Since I started this website back in 2015, this article has been the biggest draw to my site BY FAR. Apparently there are A LOT of collectors out there interested in finding a good vinyl pressing of David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.
And with good reason! Mr. Bowie was perhaps the greatest rock musician EVER to call this planet home and Ziggy Stardust is arguably THE greatest masterpiece of the many he delivered in his all to short lifetime. It’s also one of the best recorded, although you’d have a hard time discerning that from the average vinyl pressing.
Since I wrote the following article a lot has changed, not the least of which being my stereo and how well it can play back a record and reveal its strengths and shortcomings. I don’t own any of the records I write about below and wouldn’t ever bother seeking any of them out again, with the possible exception being the early UK pressing. I expect that record would sound a lot better to me now if I compared it to the others I had at the time.
My reference copy is a later reissue and I when I got it, I still had the early UK orange label I reference below. At that time I shot out those 2 copes and my current copy sounded much better to me. I expect the same would still be true now, as the copy I have now has sounded better and better with every improvement I’ve made to my system.
Which pressing DO I have now, you ask? “I mean, do me a solid buddy and save me some time. Just tell me which one to get! I don’t got all day!”
That’s the way I was thinking back in 2015 when I started this site. Since then my thinking as changed quite a bit and I’ve come to the realization that as much as my readers would no doubt LOVE to let me do all of the heavy lifting and just post which are the best pressings of EVERY great record I just happen to know the stampers for, I’m just not interested it doing that any more. SORRY FOLKS!
Why have I decided to be so selfish, you might ask? Actually, I see it as a form of generosity. If you REALLY want to collect the absolute BEST SOUNDING copies Ziggy or ANY of your favorite records, you need to play a lot of records, train your ear AND reconfigure your audio system to optimize its ability to play back great sounding records. And I’m MORE than wiling to offer advice, encouragement and even some specific recommendations on how to do that.
I can also offer this. If you’re looking for the KILLER pressing of Ziggy or any other title, I might be able to track one down for you. Feel free to contact me by leaving a comment on this post or any other on the site.
Now, if you’d still like to see what I had to say about the 4 copies of Ziggy I wrote about back in 2016, the READ ON!
ORIGINAL ARTICLE BELOW
Here’s the thing about comparing different versions of the same record – you’ve got to love that record. Otherwise it will drive you and anyone unlucky enough to be around at the time completely nuts! Luckily I’m a huge David Bowie fan, and Ziggy Stardust is one of my ALL TIME favorites. Therefore it hasn’t been a hardship doing this shootout.
A couple of years ago, before I started getting into collecting and understood the market better, I was trying to find a copy of this record in record stores. There was one version of Ziggy in stores that looked a little dicey. The colors on the jacket looked off- like it was printed from a scan. The vinyl was translucent yellow which seemed kind of cool, but it was suspicious to me that this particular record had appeared in stores and no other new Bowie records had appeared along with it. So against my better judgement I bought a copy. I didn’t have a vinyl copy of Ziggy in my collection and I really wanted to add one.
It turned out to be a mistake. The record sounds like a needle drop. There’s a lot of background noise and no clarity. Not only that, but on the song “Star” the track just drops out for half a second before resuming. Whoever made this record didn’t even use a flawless record to create the digital copy! Crazy! Here’s that record.
Eventually I started researching versions of this album and before long I learned about the 2012 Remastered 40th anniversary release that a lot of folks on Steve Hoffman Forums were raving about. Bill Hart also mentioned this version on his blog and remarked that on a copy of this version he bought, the track “Star” was “unplayable gibberish.” Apparently early copies of this release had this problem. Pehaps it was a copy of this 40th anniversary issue someone had used for the needle drop to make the yellow vinyl version?
Anyway, I wanted a copy of this 2012 version but I also knew that the same lacquer was used to press the version released with the Five Years Box Set and suspected it would be used to press the forthcoming 2016 version to be released individually along with the other 4 albums from the box set. I decided to wait and see if the 2016 version was the same remastered version. Needless to say when this version was finally released on the heels of Bowie’s unexpected death earlier this year I was pretty excited to listen to it.
Now I had heard that 2012 version was an all analogue remaster. When I picked up my new copy from my local record store I noticed right away that the label said it was made from a “digital remaster”. I checked the matrix from the deadwax and compared it to the matrix numbers from the 2012 version and the matrix was the same, and the release page on Discogs for the 2012 version states that “The vinyl is cut from the original master tapes in a 100% analog signal path.” So I’m still unsure whether this 2012 version is from a digital remaster or is in fact 100% analogue.
Meanwhile I had heard great things about the original UK pressings of this album and started to look around for a decent copy that wasn’t too expensive. It turns out, despite the huge numbers of copies of this record that sold in the UK and around the world, good copies remained expensive. I kept an eye out and finally saw what looked like a great copy priced at 40GBP and went to buy it.
A day later I got a message from the store owner, a very sweet and helpful gentleman called Rhydd at The Vinyl Frontier in Eastbourne, England. He let me know that the copy I had ordered was listed incorrectly by a member of his staff and that it was not, in fact, a UK first press but a somewhat later pressing. He also said he had compared this record side by side with an actual UK first press in his store and that he and others present all agreed it “sounded loads better.”
I did a little research on the record and it turned out to be the 6E/4E matrix version favored by many audiophiles. Based on this and the play test report I got from Rhydd I decided to go ahead an buy the record.
I haven’t been disappointed with this record. It’s got a big, bold sound to it, perhaps a bit at the expense of a some clarity and detail. The drums sound huge and the bass thumps along in a very satisfiying way. There’s a really enjoyable fullness to the soundstage that’s particularly engaging on tracks such as “Soul Love” and “Moonage Daydream”. This record hits a nice sweet spot for me between that classic “analogue” sound that I enjoy with older pressings and a more forward and flashy sound I find with newer records pressed on 180g vinyl. It’s a great listen!
It was also a bit of an investmen. Not huge, but by the time I paid shipping costs it was about $75. Meanwhile I was in my local record store just the other day and noticed my friend there had some used Bowie albums in the bins. I don’t see these very often in record stores these days and they were priced quite reasonably. I took a quick look to make sure they weren’t totally thrashed and then bought them. One turned out to be a US first pressing of Ziggy. Just 3 bucks! Score!
More on this later, but I can see this is one of those records where you can get away with a decent VG copy. This copy is pretty banged up but after a good cleaning it plays great with the surface noise appearing only in the space between tracks. It’s certainly in good enough shape to provide another version to throw into the mix for this post.
So how does the $3 US first pressing of Ziggy compare to the $75 UK version? Pretty well actually. Overall it’s even more laid back sounding than the UK version and much mellower than the 2016, and it’s a bit “brighter” than both. But it has a quality I really like in a record which is that it can tolerate a lot of volume and it keeps giving. I found that as I increased the volume on the UK pressing I started to find the vocals getting a bit muddled.
After all, it says right there on the jacket “TO BE PLAYED AT MAXIMUM VOLUME.” The US pressing didn’t provide the detail of the 2016, and it didn’t have the “Big” sound the UK does, but it was still enjoyable. Copies of a US first pressing in this condition appear to sell in the $20 range on Discogs, but I’m sure there are even cheaper ones out there. Case in point my $3 copy!
From here I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions about which version you might want to buy, and there are of course other versions to consider that I cannot advise you on. I really think in the case of Ziggy Stardust that the question of which version will sound best to your ears will depend what your gear is like and what your listening habits are.