[3] As a producer of boxed sets and archival music reissues, Zax has been responsible for restoring and remastering the catalogues of Talking Heads, Rod Stewart, Echo & The Bunnymen, Television, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, The Sisters Of Mercy, David Axelrod and Lee Hazlewood, among others.

His reissues of once-obscure cult favorites such as Television's Marquee Moon, John Cale's Paris 1919, Judee Sill and Heart Food by Judee Sill have successfully brought those albums to larger audiences that had eluded them upon their initial release, while his exploration of record company tape vaults has yielded discoveries such as the lost masters of Johnny Mathis's 1981 Chic-produced I Love My Lady.

[4] Describing his approach to musical history, Zax has said: "I like lost causes and I like underdogs and I like people that I feel haven't gotten their due...You know, some records just weren’t of their moment.

"[5]As a result of his experiences working with unique master recordings, Zax has become a passionate advocate on behalf of their preservation and restoration in the wake of archival disasters such as the 2008 Universal Studios fire.

Stereophile concluded in September 2009 that "as the man who spent four years, from initial pitch to finished product, not to mention hours of wading through the personal [and] political muck that surrounds anything with 'Woodstock' in its title, Andy Zax has, semi-reluctantly, become the new 'Mr.

Zax's writing, under his own name and the @Discographies pseudonym, has appeared in The New Yorker,[18][19] Rolling Stone,[20] The Oxford American,[21] iPad newspaper The Daily,[22][23] Exact Change, and Maggot Brain.

In 2014, he received an ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award for his article about the life of composer Tupper Saussy of the Neon Philharmonic, "Scenes From The Chocolate Orchid Piano Bar".

From October 2006 until May 2007, Zax hosted a weekly radio program, Archives of Oblivion, described as "a treasure hunt through the scrapheap of mid-20th Century pop-culture ephemera", showcasing his notoriously eccentric record collection.