Steely Dan Aja on Vinyl at 50: Every Pressing Compared, Best Sounding and What It's Worth

ABC Records released Aja on 23 September 1977. It peaked at No. 3 in the US and No. 5 in the UK, and it went double platinum. It also won the Grammy for Best Engineered Recording, Non-Classical, and in 2010 it was added to the National Recording Registry. Rolling Stone ranked it No. 145 among the 500 greatest albums in 2003 and 2012, and No. 63 in 2020. On Rolling Stone's own description, "If you were an audiophile in the late Seventies, you owned Aja."

That last point explains this page. Nearly everything written online about Aja on vinyl is about which pressing sounds best: forum shoot-outs, YouTube comparisons, shop pages selling the latest audiophile edition. Nobody puts every edition into one table with a plain verdict. That is what this guide does, along with the identification details for the 1977 original and the dated sale prices we could find.

As of 12 October 2026, no 50th-anniversary edition had been announced. The Steely Dan Newsletter, on the album's 49th birthday, could only hope that "something special is lined up". If one is announced, it will go into the comparison below.

The first pressings carry catalogue number AB-1006. Discogs explains why there is a second number: "AB" was an ABC price code, and about two weeks after the album came out ABC raised the price by a dollar, so later pressings were issued as AA-1006. Some transitional copies have an AB-1006 spine with AA-1006 labels, and on some the "B" is visibly struck through in the runout.

A US original has these features:

• A glossy cardstock gatefold and a printed card inner sleeve with lyrics and credits.
• Mastering at A&M Studios by Bernie Grundman. The engineers were Roger Nichols, Elliot Scheiner, Bill Schnee and Al Schmitt.
• Spine price code 0798, and labels reading AB-1006-A / AB-1006-B.
• Runouts with a plant letter, for example 1 S AB 1006(RE-3)-A for Santa Maria or T1 AB 1006(RE-3)-B-1 for Terre Haute. Discogs also lists 1977 US pressings from Pitman, Keel and Specialty, and record-club copies from RCA Music Service (R-123475).
• Some copies have a gold "Demonstration - Not For Sale" stamp.

Not everyone agrees on the numbering. A popsike seller insisted that AA-1006 is "the one and only true first pressing", and a Hoffman forum poster reported a muffled AA copy. Most sources, including the Discogs notes, treat AB-1006 as first. For the general method of reading a runout, see our first pressing identification guide.

ABC was distributed abroad by local companies, so the first issues outside the US have their own catalogue numbers and cuts:

• UK: ABCL 5225, marketed by Anchor Records. Discogs documents copies cut at CBS in London (with "Timtom" in the runout) and copies with "ALLEN" in the runout, pressed at CBS Aston Clinton. The sleeve was printed by Garrod & Lofthouse.
• Germany: 25 046 XOT, pressed by Sonopress, with stamped runouts reading 25046 A-1 /77 S Made in Germany.
• Japan: YX-8114-AB, released 25 November 1977 by Nippon Columbia at ¥2,500, with a glossy lyric inner sleeve and Japanese liner notes.
• Canada: 9022-1006, made by GRT of Canada and pressed by Quality. One documented Canadian variant has the left and right channels reversed: what plays on the right on other pressings plays on the left. If your Canadian copy sounds oddly mirrored, that is why.

For listening, the US and UK originals are the ones collectors compare. For value, condition matters far more than country. Discogs lists 178 vinyl versions of the album in total, and most of them are national variants or MCA-era represses.

The table below picks the editions that matter from those 178 versions: the 1977 originals and their variants, the record-club copy, the MCA reissues, and the audiophile line. The runout column shows side A.

And the verdict, edition by edition:

Mobile Fidelity's MFSL 1-033 came out in 1980 as part of the Original Master Recording series. Its jacket says it was made from the original stereo master tape and half-speed mastered by Stan Ricker and Gary Giorgi. The plating and pressing were done in Japan, on what MoFi called "Super High Definition Vinyl". The runouts are easy to recognise: MFSL-1-033-A3 A SR/2 ORTOFON A 30MAY80. That is Stan Ricker's initials, the Ortofon cutting system and the cutting date, 30 May 1980. A 1979 test pressing is also documented, and Discogs lists no later MoFi vinyl of Aja.

How it sounds is the classic MoFi argument. Half-speed mastering gives a particular top end and a particular bass, and listeners disagree on whether it suits this record. If you want the 1977 sound, buy an original. If you want a period audiophile artefact, the MoFi is one.

Price: AnalogPlanet reported a near-mint 1980 MoFi selling for $75 in 2023. That was a single sale, and early MoFis vary widely with condition. For what half-speed mastering actually does, see our guide to half-speed mastering.

Cisco Music CLP-1006 (2007) was sold as the "30th Anniversary All-Analog HQ-180 LP". It is limited and numbered, and it was cut by Kevin Gray and Robert Pincus at AcousTech: the runout reads MR RECORD & DR GROOVE @ ATM. It was pressed at RTI, with a gold numbered sticker on the outer sleeve. One retailer said it was "Authorized by Walter Becker, Donald Fagen" and engineer Elliot Scheiner. It is long discontinued. A sealed copy sold for $220 on eBay in December 2013, according to the popsike archive.

Analogue Productions UHQR 0014-45 (2023) is the current top of the line: two discs at 45 rpm on 200g Clarity vinyl, pressed by hand at Quality Record Pressings, limited to 30,000 numbered copies, in a slipcase. Bernie Grundman cut the lacquers, and his name is etched in the runouts. Acoustic Sounds listed it at $150 and in stock on 12 October 2026. Michael Fremer's Tracking Angle review in October 2023 was headlined "The Best Aja You Will Ever Hear and It's Not Even Close". "Deacon Blues" gets a full 45 rpm side to itself.

One caveat: the tape source is described differently by different people. Acoustic Sounds says a quarter-inch, non-Dolby EQ'd 15 ips copy. Fremer described a half-inch Dolby A copy and said the whereabouts of the original master are unknown. Either way, it is an analogue copy tape, not the original master. A sealed UHQR sold together with a UMe LP for $320 on eBay in June 2025 (popsike).

In 2023 Geffen and UMe reissued the Steely Dan catalogue on vinyl, overseen by Donald Fagen and mastered by Bernie Grundman. Aja came out on 29 September 2023 as B0035028-01, a 180g single LP at 33⅓ rpm in a gatefold. Its runouts carry the cutting date 6/6/23 and "AA", for Alex Abrash at AA Mastering, who cut the lacquers. Discogs lists it as pressed by GZ.

The detail that matters: according to UMG's press release, the album was remastered from an analogue tape copy, but the lacquers were cut from high-resolution digital files of Grundman's masters. Michael Fremer's headline put it bluntly: "For UMe edition 'mastered from analog' means cut from digital file". The press release also names Aja and Gaucho as the exceptions in the series, the two albums not sourced from original tapes. The same UMG release announced the analogue-cut UHQR, which is the reason to pay more for that edition.

For most listeners, the UMe LP is the easy new copy. The original list price was $29.99, according to AnalogPlanet in 2023. A clean ABC original is a credible alternative at a similar price. For what "audiophile" claims mean in general, see audiophile vinyl pressings explained.

Aja sold in the millions. About 22,500 Discogs users list the AB-1006 Santa Maria original and 12,800 an AA-1006 Terre Haute copy. That keeps originals affordable. These are the dated eBay sales we found in the popsike archive:

Single sales are examples, not a price list. Condition, completeness (the inner sleeve) and the seller's description move the number a lot. AnalogPlanet wrote in 2023 that near-mint originals "tend to go for upwards of $70-$100", which tells you a played copy goes for less. The UHQR is still available new at $150, so a sealed second-hand copy has little reason to trade far above that while stock lasts.

Grade honestly before you buy or sell: our vinyl grading guide explains the scale. To identify a copy from a photo of its label, the VinylAI app matches the exact pressing, from AB-1006 to the UHQR, and adds it to your collection.

The forum consensus is not unanimous, and the Hoffman shoot-out thread runs to 65 pages. What critics agree on is that the UHQR is a step above, and that a clean original remains a fine-sounding record. If you already own a good AB-1006, the upgrade is a matter of taste and budget, not necessity.

Whichever you choose, condition is the multiplier. A noisy UHQR is a waste of $150; a quiet ABC copy is a joy.