Founded 2014 · Redfern Volume 12 · Issue 33 · March MMXXVI Vinyl since the dust settled

Rotation 33.

An independent vinyl record shop and quarterly publication. Three thousand titles on the floor, four-hundred-and-fifty rare on the wall, one Garrard 401 in the listening room.
Volume 12 · Issue 33 · The new pressings issue
A note from the shop · Issue 33

The 180-gram pressing is not the answer.

By Henry Park · Founder · 16 March 2026 · 10-minute read

Every season, a major label releases another "180-gram audiophile pressing" of a record we already own. We always check. Sometimes the pressing is genuinely better — the most recent Blue Note Tone Poet series is the obvious example. More often, it is the same digital master cut to a heavier piece of vinyl in the same plant. Heavier vinyl. Same digital cut. The marketing department wins; the audiophile loses fifty dollars.

Rotation 33 will not stock a pressing without listening to it first. If it is the same digital cut as the previous run, we tell you. If it is genuinely the analogue tape, we tell you. We are not always right. We are always trying.

This issue: ten new pressings we have stocked this season; ten we have declined; one rare find on the wall that arrived from Tokyo last week and will not be there long.

The shop is open Tuesday through Sunday. The listening room is open Saturdays. The diary is on the wall.

No. I · This month

Charles Mingus · Mingus Ah Um

By Henry Park · 18 March

The new Speakers Corner 180g pressing. All-analogue cut from the original 1959 mono tape. The best pressing of this record we have heard since the original Columbia six-eye.

No. II · Rare wall

Sun Ra · The Magic City

From the Tokyo trip · 11 March

A near-mint original Saturn 1965 pressing arrived last week from a Tokyo collector retiring his sleeve. One copy. On the wall. Priced for a serious collector.

No. III · From the archive

The Magnificent Goldberg

By Henry Park · Vol. 10

A re-run of Volume 10's most-read piece. Why Glenn Gould's 1955 mono Goldberg remains the only reading of the work some shop visitors will ever play. The stereo 1981 is in conversation, never replacement.

— Three new pressings this month

Three records worth the wall space.

No. 01 · 180g all-analogue

Mingus Ah Um

Charles Mingus · Columbia 1959

Speakers Corner 180g pressing. All-analogue. Mono cut. The best new pressing of this record we have heard since the original six-eye.

$78
No. 02 · Tone Poet 180g

Out to Lunch

Eric Dolphy · Blue Note 1964

Kevin Gray cut from the original mono master. Stoughton tip-on jacket, faithful to the 1964 first pressing. The Tone Poet series at its peak.

$72
No. 03 · Music On Vinyl 180g

Solid Air

John Martyn · Island 1973

A new MoV pressing that finally does the original mastering justice. The first cut to bring out the Echoplex without smearing.

$58
— Browse the shop

Eight rooms, by sleeve.

i.

Jazz 1950–1975

The shop's biggest room. Blue Note, Impulse!, Pacific, Riverside. About nine-hundred titles on the floor most weeks.

ii.

Classical chamber + solo

Decca SXL, DGG tulip-label, Lyrita, Hyperion. Catalogued by performer-first, never by composer.

iii.

Soul, R&B + funk

Motown, Stax, Hi, Sussex. New black-Country reissues on Numero Group as they arrive.

iv.

Folk & singer-songwriter

Vanguard, Elektra, Island, Asylum. Joni, Nick Drake, Joan Armatrading, John Martyn. Best in the city.

v.

Australian independent

The Go-Betweens, the Triffids, the Saints. Small-press Sydney Conservatorium recordings. By appointment.

vi.

Reissues + Tone Poet

The current wave of audiophile reissues. We listen before we stock. We tell you when we have declined.

vii.

Rare on the wall

Originals, white labels, test pressings, Japanese OBI strips. Around 450 titles, never less than 30 changing per quarter.

viii.

The Listening Room

By Saturday appointment. Garrard 401, Ortofon SPU, Quad ESL-57, Leak Stereo 30. One record at a time.

— Plates from the floor

Three studies, this issue.

Fig. 01 · The Jazz wall
Nine-hundred sleeves on the floor most weeks. Catalogued performer-first.
Fig. 02 · The crate-dig table
Tuesday afternoons. Boxes from the Tokyo trip, freshly unpacked, before the wall.
Fig. 03 · The needle drop
An Ortofon SPU mono. The first test pressing of every record we stock passes through it.
— A note from the masthead
"We listen before we stock. We say so when a pressing is just thicker vinyl on the same digital cut. It is the smallest possible service to anyone who ever bought a record before."
— Rotation 33 · Volume 1, June 2014
— The Listening Room

Saturday afternoons by appointment.

One Garrard 401 with the original SME 3009 arm, an Ortofon SPU mono and an Ortofon Cadenza Bronze stereo, a Leak Stereo 30, and the original 1957 Quad ESL panels.

Sessions run 90 minutes. You bring the records (or ask us to bring them). We do not charge for the room. We do ask that you book through HotDoc on Saturday mornings only — slots open at 09:00.

"This is the room some records were always meant to be heard in. We open it once a week so they have somewhere to go."
— From the archive

Volume 12 back-catalogue.

No. 28 · Sleeve study

The mono jacket question, plainly answered.

No. 30 · The Tokyo trip

Three crates, four flights, one Saturn pressing.

No. 31 · The Quad room

Why the 1957 ESL panels matter on Mingus.

No. 32 · The masthead

Twelve years of opinions about thick vinyl.

— Visit

The shop, Volume 12 onwards.

Open Tuesday through Sunday. The Listening Room opens Saturdays 12:00 — 17:00, by appointment only.

Address

Level 1, 122 Regent Street
Redfern NSW 2016

Hours

Tue – Fri · 11:00 – 19:00
Sat – Sun · 10:00 – 17:00

Reach

+61 2 9698 2245
shop@rotation33.com.au