Month: February 2023

Do Reviewers Have What It Takes to Play an Album Like This?

More Albums that Come Alive When You Turn Up Your Volume

Big speakers and expensive equipment might seem like the ticket, but they are not enough.

If you want to hear some smokin’ Peter Frampton power chords from the days when he was with the band, this album captures that sound better than any of their studio releases, and far better than Frampton Comes Alive on even the hottest Hot Stampers.

Grungy guitars that jump out of the speakers, prodigious amounts of punchy deep bass, dynamic vocals and drum work — the best pressings of Rockin’ The Fillmore have more firepower than any live recording we’ve ever heard.

We know quite a few records that rock this hard. We seek them out, and we know how to play them.

Who knew? We didn’t, of course, until not that many years ago (2014 maybe?). But we are in the business of finding these things out. We get paid by our customers to find them the best sounding pressings in the world. It’s our job and we take it very seriously.

Did any audiophile reviewers ever play the album and report on its amazing sound?

Not that I know of.

Do they have the kind of playback systems — the big rooms, the big speakers, the speed, the energy, the power — that are required to get the most from a recording such as this?

Doubtful. Unlikely in the extreme even.

They don’t know how good a record like this can sound because they aren’t able to play it the way it needs to be played.

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We Love Dynamic Choruses, and These Are Amazing

More of the Music of The Cars

The hottest of the Hot Stampers did one easily recognizable thing better than the Also-Rans, and it was apparent pretty much from the get-go. The multi-multi-multi-tracked Power Pop Choruses on the best copies don’t strain (a very common problem), they are bigger and more powerful, they stretch from wall to wall, and the voices that make them up are separated much more than on other copies.

I won’t say you can make out all the players — there are dozens of tracks overdubbed together don’t you know — but you can surely make out some of the voices. At least you can if you have the kind of high resolution front end that we do. Big speakers help a lot too, creating more space for each voice to occupy.

Some copies are huge; others, not so much. The effect of these size differentials is ENORMOUS. The power of the music ramps up like crazy — how could this recording possibly be this BIG and POWERFUL? How did it achieve this kind of scale? You may need twenty copies to find one like this, which begs the question: why don’t the other 19 sound the way this one does? The sound we heard has to be on the master tape in some sense, doesn’t it? Mastering clearly contributes to the sound, but can it really be a factor of this magnitude?

My intuition says no. More likely it’s the mastering of the other copies that is one of the many factors holding them back, along with worn stampers, bad stampers, bad metal mothers, bad plating, bad vinyl, bad needles and all the rest — all of the above and more contributing to the fact that the average copy of this album is just plain average.

More Hot Stamper pressings with huge choruses

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The Free Story – Another Dubby Compilation

Hot Stamper Pressings of British Blues Rock Albums Available Now

This is a Limited Edition Black Label Island Numbered Import 2 LP set.

The sound is passable at best. Unfortunately, like many of the compilations done over the years, this is a very dubby sounding album. It’s smeary, veiled, and lacks space.

The good vintage pressings of the original albums just kill it.

Not all compilation albums are bad. Here are some with the potential for very good sound.

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Letter of the Week “Your Hot Stampers have returned that analog magic to my listening room.”

New to the Blog? Start Here

What Exactly Are Hot Stamper Pressings?

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

Hey Tom,

I just wanted to say thank you to you and your team. Your Hot Stampers have returned that analog magic to my listening room. I am stunned by some of the albums I have gotten. Given my travel schedule, I don’t get to listen to all the albums I buy. I have been catching up over the holidays. You guys have taken critical listening to a whole new level and are consistent in your evaluations and accurate in your write ups. My listening skills and appreciation of great recordings has improved over this past year.

The attitude of your team has made doing business a delightful experience. Fundamentally, at the most basic level after all the “equipment upgrades” in my life, I am truly enjoying listening to music again.

That may not seem very profound, but for me it is a revelation.

The only one not pleased with my new discovery is my wife. She does not appreciate the value equation of your product; my musical selections; nor does she like the amount of time I am spending in my listening room. Often she calls me on my cell phone from other parts of the house asking me when am I coming out!

Please keep up the good work; it is one of a kind.

Mike H.

Mike,

Thanks so much for the kind words. Finding old records that are full of Analog Magic is at the heart of our business. Plenty of other record dealers can find old records, but can they find you an old record that sounds better than any pressing you have ever heard? Better than any audiophile pressing being made today? Dramatically better?

That is a very different animal. Our records may be expensive, but what is the joy of music worth? It’s priceless, is it not?

The value equation is indeed hard for some folks to appreciate. More on that subject here.

More Hot Stamper Testimonial Letters

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk – Miles & Monk at Newport

More Miles Davis

More Thelonious Monk

This original 360 Stereo pressing boasts seriously good Double Plus (A++) live jazz sound from first note to last
Remarkably spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied – this pressing was a big step up over most other copies we played
The energy and presence are wonderful – Monk’s piano has real weight and the brass sounds just right
“On the first side of the LP [are] are a series of high tempo performances of bebop tunes and other staples of the Davis live repertoire from 1958. On the second side [are] a few numbers by Thelonious Monk’s combo, from a 1963 Newport appearance [that] featured the idiosyncratic appearance by clarinetist Pee Wee Russell.”
“[The Miles Davis Sextet’s] rapid version of ‘Ah Leu Cha’ is thunderous and ‘Straight No Chaser’ swings like mad.”

Of special note on the Monk side is the excellent work of Frankie Dunlap on drums, and of course Charlie Rouse is always interesting. Add to those top players someone you wouldn’t normally associate with Monk — Pee Wee Russell on clarinet, here proving that he’s every bit the bop jazz musician that these other guys are.

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Loggins and Messina – On Stage

More Loggins and Messina

More Country and Country Rock

Tubey Magical, lively and clear, with three-dimensionality that will fill your listening room from wall to wall
A pressing this good puts you front and center at these live performances, recorded on two dates, at the famous Orpheum Theatre in Boston and the incomparable Carnegie Hall
4 stars: “After a gorgeous yet subdued introduction by Loggins as a solo performer on a handful of numbers, Messina and the band take the stage and loft the proceedings into a bracing mix of folk- and country-rock.”
If you’re a fan of the band, this 1974 release surely belongs in your collection

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Prokofiev / Lt. Kije (45 RPM)

More Orchestral Spectacular Recordings

With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides, this Japanese import copy is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other recording of Lt. Kije you’ve heard – and it plays as quietly as any copy ever will (and far better than most)
This wonderful LP boasts our favorite performance for this popular 20th century work
Big, clear, present and transparent, with a HUGE bottom end, you better believe that this is some Demo Disc sound
When the brass is the way it is here – rich and clear, not thin and shrill – you have yourself a top quality DG pressing
Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you

*NOTE: There is a mark that plays 18 times (10 moderate, 8 light) at the start of side 1. There is also a mark that plays 7 times at a moderate level at the end of side 2.

This Japanese 45 RPM remastering of our favorite recording of Prokofiev’s wonderful Lt. Kije Suite has DEMONSTRATION QUALITY SOUND. For starters, there are very few records with dynamics comparable to these. Since this is my favorite performance of all time, I can’t recommend the record any more highly.

Once the needle has dropped you will quickly forget about the sound and simply find yourself in the presence of some of the greatest musicians of their generation captured on some of the greatest analog recordings of all time.

This pressing fulfills the promise of the 45 RPM cutting speed so much in vogue these days. We had a pile of these 45s to play through. When we came upon this one halfway through our shootout, it was so big, so clear, so dynamic, so energetic, so extended on the top and bottom, we almost could not believe what we were hearing, especially compared to the others copies we played. There are very few records with dynamics that can compare with these.

The bass drum (drums?) here must be heard to be believed. We know of no Golden Age recording with as believable a presentation of the instrument as this. The drum is clearly and precisely located at the back of the stage. Even better, it’s as huge and powerful and room-filling as it would have been had you attended the session yourself. That’s our idea of hi-fidelity here at Better Records!

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David Bowie – Young Americans

More David Bowie

A seriously good copy of Bowie’s one and only soul album with Hot Stamper sound on both sides
This pressing was simply bigger and fuller than most of the competition, with plenty of funky energy and three-dimensional studio space
On an exceptionally transparent copy such as this one, it’s much easier to pick out all the background vocalists in the relatively dense mixes that Bowie tends to favor
One of our favorites by The Man, with so many killer tracks: “Young Americans,” “Win,” “Fascination,” “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” “Across the Universe” and, of course, “Fame”
We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” with an accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Young Americans is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but would be well advised to get to know better.

The strings have amazing amounts of texture — you can really hear the sound of the rosin on the bow. The highs are silky sweet and the bottom end is punchy and powerful. You won’t believe how lively the cymbal crashes sound — you’re right there in the room with all these guys and gals.

This is one of our favorite Bowie albums. Nobody seems to care about it anymore. They dismiss it as disco junk, but it actually has some of his best music on it. I especially like the song Win. David Sanborn’s saxophone sounds like it’s coming from 60 feet behind Bowie, a nice effect. (more…)

Bill Halverson Is One of Our Favorite Engineers

Bill Halverson Engineered Albums with Hot Stampers

Bill Halverson Engineered Albums We’ve Reviewed

More of Our Favorite Engineers

Bill Halverson is one of our favorite recording and mixing engineers.

Many of his recordings can be found in our Rock and Pop Top 100 List, which we limit to only those titles that we can actually find sufficient copies of with which to do our Hot Stamper shootouts.

New to the Blog? Start Here

What Exactly Are Hot Stamper Pressings?

Basic Concepts and Realities Explained

Improving Your Critical Listening Skills

We Was Wrong about Billy the Kid in 2011

Living Stereo Titles Available Now

The rave review you see below was written in 2011. Recently we played a stack of copies of the album and realized that we was wrong about it.

As you may have noticed, this is a regular feature of The Skeptical Audiophile.

Live and Learn is our motto, and progress in audio is a feature, not a bug, of record collecting at the most advanced levels.

(“Advanced” is a code word for having little to no interest in practically any remastered pressing marketed to the audiophile community. If you want to avoid the worst of them, we will gladly help you do that.)

Our Review from 2011

Super Hot Stamper sound on BOTH sides, with side one so energetic and exciting it would easily qualify as a Demo Disc. This title is almost impossible to find in anything but beat up condition. Records like these got played over and over and few survived the ten grams of stylus pressure and mis-aligned cartridges of the day.

The Big Sound

Side one is a bit recessed sounding at the beginning but it soon comes to life.

The drums and snares are HUGE in this recording, way at the back of the hall where they belong.

The sound just jumps out of the speakers — believe me, not many Living Stereo pressings from 1958 can do that.

If you like your exciting music to have exciting sound, this pressing will do the trick.

A++ is our grade. The loudest massed string passages can be a bit much, but they are tolerable. Many pressings of this album that we’ve played in the past have pretty much been unlistenable.

Rodeo

So dynamic! — you better have your stereo working at the top of its game or this side is going to be hard to sit through. The close-miked xylophone will give your arm and cart a real workout. If you have precise control over your setup, this may be a good record to fine tune it with. VTA is of course ultra-critical on vintage classical albums such as this.

The quieter passages fare best, showing off the Living Stereo Tubey Magic to full advantage.

Hoe-Down sounds like it may be slightly worn; either that or its got some compressor distortion problems.

With Big Bold sound such as this, the engineers had to walk a very fine line in order to balance the dynamic power of the music without letting the quietest passages disappear. (Nowadays loud orchestral music is either dynamic and shrill or compressed to death.)

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