Month: September 2020

Letter of the Week – “I am beyond pleased! Looking forward to the next order coming in”

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

Just wanted to express my excitement with the ELP Tarkus and Hampton Hawes Trio Vol 2 LP’s! Wow!!! Great sound as described and played quieter than described, beyond near mint ! The ELP only had one moderate pop on the opening of “The Only Way” track 3 on side two. Otherwise dead quiet all through !!!!

I am beyond pleased!!! Looking forward to the next order coming in !!! Lastly, can you show me where you get those terrific rice paper inner sleeves? They are nice and thick ply!! Better than MFSL or Quality RP…!!!

Thanks again!

I will surely be doing business in the future with you and have your accurate descriptions locked in to what I prefer surface wise.

Thanks for your letter!

TP

Bob Marley – Natty Dread

TWO EXCELLENT SIDES on quiet vinyl, including an AMAZING A++ TO A+++ SIDE ONE! This is one of the very best Bob Marley and the Wailers albums, and you’re going to have a hard time finding better sound for it than what you get on this SUPERB pressing. Both sides are incredibly rich, full and open with the kind of massive bottom end you’ve just gotta have for reggae music.

We recently undertook a big shootout for this album and were quite pleased with the sound of this copy, especially in relation to all the mediocre copies that hit our table that day. Side one features nothing but hits (Lively Up Yourself, No Woman No Cry, Them Belly Full and Rebel Music — what a lineup) and all four tracks sound wonderful here.

We don’t find killer Bob Marley pressings very often, so you shouldn’t let this one get by you if you want to hear the King of Reggae sound amazing! (more…)

Year Of The Cat – Our Shootout Winner from 2009

For the first time on our site, TRIPLE PLUS MASTER TAPE SOUND ON BOTH SIDES! We play stacks of copies of this one a few times every year, but I don’t recall ever hearing one that sounded so correct from the first song to the last.

Let me tell you — when this album sounds as bad as most copies do, the music just plain does not work. So many copies add a nasty layer of grit to the vocals, and the effect is positively painful. This copy shows you a Year Of The Cat that is just not available on the typical copy, and certainly not on the MoFi pressing either.

This White Hot Stamper is the UNDISPUTED WINNER and Current Heavyweight Champion of our latest Hot Stamper shootout for Al Stewart’s Masterpiece, Year of the Cat. How come more of these don’t turn up on the site? Simple — most copies of this record just plain SUCK. We kept asking ourselves Where is the Famous Alan Parsons’ Dark Side of the Moon Magic that’s supposed to be on this recording? This record was THE Demo Disc in every stereo store in town when it came out back in the day, but we could not find any correlation between that fact and the sound we were hearing on copy after copy. The full, rich sound we knew so well from other Alan Parsons’ productions was simply nowhere to be found.

Until this bad boy copy came along. Folks, here is the True Audiophile Demo Disc Sound you remember. It wasn’t all a dream. It was real! Rich acoustic guitars, tubey-magical sweetness on the vocals, ambience around everything and everyone, huge amounts of space revealed by the breathtaking transparency of this pressing, top and bottom extension completely unlike the average copy. Everything that this album was supposed to do was finally happening when we dropped the needle on this side one. Talk about BIG SOUND, here it was! (more…)

Nina Simone – Forbidden Fruit

  • A stunning copy of Nina Simone’s superb 1961 release on Colpix with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout
  • This may be the best sounding Nina Simone record we’ve ever played – at the very least it’s one of the best, and worlds better than most
  • There’s real Tubey Magic on this album, along with breathy vocals and in-your-listening-room midrange presence – don’t be surprised if you find yourself singing along
  • “… brilliant end to end. It rolls and weaves, suggests and states, looks under the skirts of the music… There’s not a mediocre song or rendition here. And you’ll never hear anyone else do any of them the way she does.”

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David Lee Roth – Eat ‘Em and Smile

More David Lee Roth

More Van Halen

  • David Lee Roth’s solo debut finally arrives on the site with nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound from start to finish – just shy of our Shootout Winner – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • The overall sound here is incredibly full-bodied, musical, clear and spacious with tons of energy and a solid bottom end
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Few would argue that David Lee Roth’s first solo EP was a complete comedy send-up, albeit a very successful one that gained him enough favor with the MTV peanut gallery to solidify his potential as a solo artist… arguably Roth’s most legitimate piece of art ever.”

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Record Cleaning Tips – Why Clean the Average Record?

Proper Record Cleaning Can Help You Find Your Own Hot Stamper Pressings

We gave the following advice to a customer who had just bought a record cleaning machine and was about to go on a tear cleaning his whole record collection — many of which were still sealed — to find the Hot Stampers lurking within.

We explained that this was not such a good idea. For one thing, you can’t find Hot Stampers without doing shootouts, and that means you need piles of the same title, which practically no one has.

You might find good sounding pressings among your old records, but even that will entail a great deal of work.

Since the average record sounds pretty average, and sealed records are unknowns in terms of pressing, mastering, etc., I would say it’s always a good idea to do a quick needle drop on a record before taking the time to clean it. The average record isn’t really worth cleaning, because it doesn’t really sound very good, so why waste the time?

Once you figure out what’s good and what’s not, you can start to target the better sounding records. This process typically takes about twenty years, but there’s no time like the present! If you want to skip all that time and effort, we are happy to get you the good stuff and save you from the bad. Such is the service we offer.

And one more thing: until you get your system cooking and really set up right, make a point not to buy any audiophile pressing of any kind. Once your stereo is working properly those pressings will more often than not show themselves to be lackluster if not downright awful. You won’t want to have too much time or money invested in that trash once you’ve learned just how bad it really is.

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Squeeze – A Great Band that Deserves More Respect from Audiophiles

More Hot Stamper Pressings We Only Offer on Import Vinyl Available Now

If you’re a fan of Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, Nick Lowe, Joe Jackson and even quite a few other lesser-knowns from this era, Squeeze is the band for you. I put them right up there with Elvis Costello and Peter Gabriel in the pantheon of Best British Pop Music of All Time.

If you think you might enjoy the mashup of Pub Rock and New Wave that this group unleashed on the pop music scene of the ’70s and ’80s I could not recommend any album of theirs more highly than Argybargy. It’s a MASTERPIECE.

Squeeze’s prime period with Jools Holland on keyboards encompasses four albums, any of which is worth owning. The band really gets going with their second album, Cool for Cats (1979), then pulls it all together and takes it to another level for their breakthrough third, Argybargy (1980).

The band then produces two more of high quality, East Side Story (1981, produced mostly by Elvis Costello) and the darker but equally brilliant Sweets from a Stranger (1982).

I’m a huge fan of all four, as well as two from their later days, the amazing-to-this-day Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti (1985) and the weaker but still enjoyable Babylon and On (1987).

I play all of them on a regular basis and enjoy the hell out of them whenever I do.

Squeeze Background

Squeeze are a British band that came to prominence in the United Kingdom during the new wave period of the late 1970s, and continued recording successfully in the 1980s and 1990s.

They are known in the UK for their hit songs “Cool for Cats”, “Up the Junction”, “Tempted”, “Labelled with Love”, “Black Coffee in Bed”, “Another Nail in My Heart”, “Pulling Mussels (from the Shell)” and “Hourglass”. Though not as commercially successful in the United States, Squeeze had American chart hits with “Tempted”, “Hourglass” and “853-5937”, and they have a dedicated following there and continue to attract new fans.

All of Squeeze’s hits were written by band members Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook, with the former penning the lyrics and the latter handling the composition. The duo were hailed as “the heirs to Lennon and McCartney’s throne” during their peak of popularity in the early 1980s.

Wikipedia

Very Tall and Very Awful on MFSL Anadisq

Reviews and Commentaries for Mobile Fidelity Records

If you made the mistake of buying the atrocious Anadisq pressing MoFi put out in the ’90s, our Hot Stamper pressings will let you hear what a wonderful recording Val Valentin cooked up with these cats back in the day.

FURTHER READING on Half-Speed Mastered Records

The best place to start is here:

How come you guys don’t like Half-Speed Mastered records?

To learn more about records that sound dramatically better than any Half-Speed ever made (with one rare exception, John Klemmer’s Touch), please consult our FAQs:

More Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Below you will find our breakdown of the best and worst Half-Speed mastered records we have auditioned over the years.

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Gabor Szabo – Blowin’ Some Old Smoke – Our Shootout Winner from 2006

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Guitar

Reviews and Commentaries for Gabor Szabo

This Buddah Records LP has got the energy and presence that were missing in action from the other copies we played. The sound is richer and sweeter than we’ve heard before for this fun compilation. You may find better sound on the best originals, but here’s a great way to get some of the best tracks in one place, with better than average sound. It’s quite difficult to find Szabo’s albums in clean condition, let alone ones that sound any good. 

This excellent sounding LP features a selection of tracks from Gabor Szabo’s late 1960’s sessions for Skye Records, including his great version of Dear Prudence. Since many of Szabo’s albums can be a bit tedious, this compilation is probably the best way to go for most people who want to get into his cool guitar groove. Check out the cool rendition of Donovan’s Sunshine Superman!