Hot Stamper Pressings of Exotica Recordings Available Now

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now

This Bob Thompson record never even made it to the hall of shame. Like hundreds of other albums we’ve played and found wanting, we never bothered to make a listing for it.

I don’t recall its specific shortcomings, but I vaguely remember that it basically just sounded too much like an old record. Some stereo systems of a more forgiving nature can mask the faults of records like these and even make them somewhat enjoyable.

Such is decidedly not the case with our system. Just the opposite in fact. Our stereo is designed to ruthlessly expose the shortcomings of every record we play, precisely the job we need it to do.

We are in the fault-finding business. A stereo such as ours allows us to recognize and describe the manifold problems of hundreds of records that others with — we assume — less revealing equipment do not seem bothered by.

We learned about the strengths and weaknesses of records the old fashioned way. We auditioned them by the thousands over the course of the 37 years we’ve been in business.

Unlike other record dealers catering to audiophile clientele, physically playing old records all day is how we make our money. In the case of this Bob Thompson Living Stereo from 1960, engineered by none other than the often-brilliant Al Schmitt, we were hoping to find top quality sound and music with acceptably broad appeal.

If we found those two things, we could then get hold of a bunch of copies — probably for cheap, let’s be honest — clean them up, shoot them out and sell the best sounding, quietest copies to our customers for prices that would more than cover the time and money it typically takes for our crack staff to carry out each of those operations.

It didn’t work out that way for On the Rocks. Most of the time it doesn’t with albums sporting cool covers from artists that we know practically nothing about. But we do it anyway. It’s how we discover records that few people know have the potential for audiophile sound quality. We know of no other way to do it, and we especially like knowing things that other people don’t know.

The benefit to you, dear reader, is that now you needn’t bother with picking up On the Rocks for the five or ten bucks it might run you at your local record store.

(Alternatively, you could consider the possibility that we got a bad sounding stamper and find some copies of your own to prove us wrong. We’re more than fine with that too.)

Much like all the other information found on this blog, it’s yet another free service provided by your record-loving friends at Better Records.

Bad Music, Bad Sound or Both