Jethro Tull – Aqualung

Kicks my Steven Wilson remix out of the park.!
Bellman did a damn good job!

Is the Classic really all that bad? Not at all; it’s actually pretty good for a Heavy Vinyl reissue, considering how dreadful most of them are. It’s tonally correct from top to bottom, with almost none of the boosted upper midrange vocal presence we have come to expect from Classic Records — the bad EQ that ruins so many great Zep albums for example.

But it suffers from two problems endemic to these modern remasterings from practically any label you can name: Lack of Ambience, and Lack of Whomp Factor.he lack of ambience is of course the most obvious. So many fine instrumental details simply go missing on most of these new pressings. The subtle harmonics of the gently strummed acoustic guitar at the opening of My God. The air in Anderson’s flute throughout the album. The snap to Dammond’s snare. And how about all the fuzz on Barre’s fuzzed out guitar on the song Aqualung? Sure, there’s guitar fuzz on the Classic, but there’s SO MUCH MORE on the real thing. When you hear it right, the sound of that guitar makes you really sit up and take notice of how amazing Barre’s solos are. (The guy is criminally underrated as both an innovator and technically accomplished guitarist.) The distortion is perfection and so is the playing. This is what a Hot Stamper is all about: more life, more energy, more character to the music, all brought about by better sound.

That Aqualung Feeling

The Classic is not a bad record. But it can’t ROCK. It lacks whomp. It’s clean and clear; it’s made from the real tape, of that I have no doubt.

Without real weight from about a hundred cycles down, the kind found only on the real thing (domestic, by the way; no import had it, a somewhat shocking finding), no matter how loud you play the new one, you can’t get that Aqualung feeling, the one you had when you first heard this music blasting out of your car radio or from your old JBLs. The music has no POWER on the new Classic.have to it I liked it at first. I didn’t hear anything wrong with it. It was only when I started pulling out the good originals that it became clear what was missing. Most audiophiles will find the Classic acceptable for this very reason: they have nothing better to compare it to. The MOFI is a disaster, with the murky bloated DCC not far ahead of it. The original Brits we played were pretty hopeless too: tubey magical but midrangy, bass-shy and compressed.

The American Pressing Is Still King (or should that be President?)

Like we’ve noted so many times before, this British band, like many of their brethren, had their master tapes sent to America to make our much-maligned domestic pressings. I maligned them myself, wrongly I now realize. It takes an amazing stereo and a top quality Hot Stamper pressing to get this music to work its magic. If you are lucky enough to have those two things, you will not believe how good this album sounds, so much better than you ever thought possible. It’s not perfect, but with the right pressing you can hear why Anderson, his bandmates, the engineer and producer all thought they had put a real winner down on tape. They had, but it took us a long time to find a good LP and be able to play it right.

Outstanding pressing...CB had his hands on this and once again he never disappoints!

Well, I just listened to my newly acquired Steve Wilson remastered copy of Aqualung
https://discogs.futbolgratis.org/Jethro-Tull-Aqualung/release/7041910
It's kind of like adding a turbo to your 4 cylinder Toyota, but it is a product of equalization in which the ultimate tone control is added (or subtracted) to each of the 32 tracks on the master tape by Steve Wilson. I will say that he has a good ear and has added a lot of dynamic slam to an otherwise lifeless recording, especially if you don't have one of the few decent pressings of this LP. Weighing the pros and cons for most people, this is a great place to start and a vast improvement to what you would encounter otherwise.
If I were to nitpick as a purist, the midrange accuracy of IA's vocals and the acoustic instruments on the UK 1st pressing is plowed over and needs to be heavily attenuated (or ignored) in the upper s to be in balance with this turbocharged remaster.
At any rate, money well spent an a welcome addition to my record collection.
I wasn't as happy with his remaster of Benefit, and prefer the UK and German 1st pressings in that order.
This review, and five dollars, will get you a ride on the subway!

I just compared the Classic Records copy listed to my original UK 1st (yes, 1st pressing w/ Island logo) and it wasn't a clear slam dunk for either. Classic seems to have maximized the dynamic headroom because it is louder than my UK at the same volume level. Nice slam and a great effort in comparison to what else is available if you can't get a 1st issue UK pressing that hasn't seen better days. My UK copy has a touch more high frequency detail and still remains my go to. I just purchased a sealed Steve Wilson green vinyl pressing and will let you know if there's anything worth sharing. I have heard some AMAZING things from him, and equally disappointing remasters.
My playback equipment (albeit as subjective as anyone else's) has very high efficiency speakers (Klipsch La Scala's with ALK extreme slope xovers and elliptrac horns replacing the original midrange horns). I'm told that Nelson owns a pair with the same modifications for testing his amplifiers. They are driven by a pair of McIntosh MC30's, and this combination has the luxury of unlimited dynamic headroom, but it's efficiency amplifies the anomalies in substandard recordings, and in the case of Aqualung there are very few that make the grade.
I haven't heard everything out there but I own 13 different pressings and these two are the best I have, with the original having a slight edge over the Classic. FWIW.

I own this one for quite some time and I really like how it sounds, i.e. warm and transparent at the same time. The sound leaves no doubts that it was pressed from analogue source. The LP is perfectly flat and is absolutely top notch.

My copy of this Classic Records reissue has tons of surface noise and still sounds dead and boring like every other version pressed from the original master tapes. The bass is muddy and weak, the mids sound hollow like the voices are in a cardboard box, it's all terrible. The Steve Wilson remixed LP in the 40th anniversary box set is hands down the one to own.