Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin
Superb Recordings with Jascha Heifetz Performing
This is one of the pressings we’ve discovered with reversed polarity.
This IMMACULATE set has dry, edgy, screechy sound — until you reverse your absolute phase! Then it sounds pretty good! It certainly will never win any awards, but it’s practically unlistenable without the phase reversed.
Now I can’t say that’s true for all six sides. I play graded all six sides — they range from M- to slightly worse, about as quiet as these Soria pressings ever are — but I only reversed the phase on side one after dropping the needle on the other sides and suffering through the brittle sound.
The box is in excellent condition! It has some very light wear along the corners but is gorgeous overall. It is rated 8+ out of 10. Comes complete with the deluxe Soria full-size booklet, which includes lots of wonderful pictures of the recording session and extensive notes about the music itself.
HEIFETZ, violin with William PRIMROSE, viola,
Leonard PENNARIO, piano &
Gregor PIATIGORSKY, cello +
Guests perform MOZART: Quintet in G min., K.51 +
MENDELSSOHN: Octet in E flat maj., Op. 20 +
BRAHMS: Sextet in G maj., Op. 36 +
FRANCK: Quintet in F min. &
SCHUBERT: Quintet in C maj., Op. 163
This is an Older Classical/Orchestral Review
Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we started developing in the early 2000s and have since turned into a veritable science.
We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the Sonic Grades and Vinyl Playgrades are listed separately.)
We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.
Currently, 99% (or more!) of the records we sell are cleaned, then auditioned under rigorously controlled conditions, up against a number of other pressings. We award them sonic grades, and then condition check them for surface noise.
As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which is why we currently have a highly trained staff of about ten. No individual or business without the aid of such a committed group could possibly dig as deep into the sound of records as we have, and it is unlikely that anyone besides us could ever come along to do the kind of work we do.
The term “Hot Stampers” gets thrown around a lot these days, but to us it means only one thing: a record that has been through the shootout process and found to be of exceptionally high quality.
The result of our labor is the hundreds of titles seen here, every one of which is unique and guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard or you get your money back.
Further Reading