Our new customer Michel wrote to tell us how much he likes his Hot Stamper pressing of So.

Hi Tom,

Many of the BR titles I bought I had stopped listening to due to lack of engagement with the music. It just didn’t do it for me anymore. But then I’d buy one of your LPs… it would then destroy my other copies… and now I listen to that LP on a regular basis, enjoying music I love but had stopped listening to.

When I put on a BR record, I am engaged with the music… and of course I keep hearing new nuances, etc. with every play.

Why pay so much for an album?  Well if music floats your boat, then no explanation needed. Just bring your ears to my living room…then you’ll get it!

The real point for me is that I can keep enjoying these new listening experiences over and over again. It is an immeasurable joy really to hear beautiful music reveal itself in all its splendor.

How the f*** does yours sound so much better? Virtually as soon as the music began the difference was obvious.

I remember liking some aspects of the UK… and the same goes for the US… I liked the warmth and rolled back highs in comparison the UK, but it seemed muddy/veiled/mishmashy which was bothersome, so then I stopped listening.

The BR copy somehow has it all. It is by far the most listenable copy of this I’ve ever heard. It can be turned up all the way from start to finish without any worries about what you might hear.

Plenty of shrill-free highs, lots of killer bass… deep low tones with analog warmth, boomy wide room filling sound, etc, etc.  No muddiness in the presentation… clarity with warmth, nothing veiled.

Thank You!!
Michel

Michel,

You make a point that I have been banging on for years. Better sounding pressings are the only way to rediscover music that you’ve lost interest in because the copies you own didn’t have the sound you needed.

If your old copies of So had sounded better, you would have played them, but they didn’t, and so they sat on the shelf.

Knowing the sound was off, you simply stopped playing them. You lost track of So.

Hot Stamper pressings get played. They have the life of the music in their grooves and demand to be heard!

We say music does the driving in this hobby, but that’s not really the whole story for us audiophiles, is it?

Music with good sound is what really does the driving.

Joy to Your World

When you get hold of the pressing that presents the music the way you want to hear it, that’s the record that gets played beause that’s the record that brings joy to the listener.

The other pressings of So sit on the shelf, reminders that badly-mastered, badly-pressed records are the norm, not the exception.

The exceptional pressing is the one that can bring the music you love back from the purgatory of the overcrowded record shelf.

Think of the audiophiles that have thousands and thousands of records on their shelves and never find time to play them. Why is that?

Maybe it’s because there is nothing special about those pressings. Some collectors are so proud of having so many records — look at them all! — but what good are they? To our way of thinking, the man with ten or twenty exceptionally good records is far better off than than the one with a thousand or five thousand mediocrities.

If you want a powerful, immersive, thrilling musical experience, you will need a record that is powerful, immersive, and thrilling.

The thousands of records sitting on your shelf, the ones you haven’t played in years, are the silent reminders that they aren’t nearly as good as you think they are. If they were better, they would call out to you from that graveyard you call a record collection and fight their way back to your turntable.

So Is Back

Now, after all these years, you finally have a pressing of So that demands to be played.

If others of you out there haven’t played your copy of So in a long time, maybe there’s a reason for that.

Thanks for your letter.

Best, TP

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Further Reading

• New to the Blog? Start Here
• Collecting Better Sounding Records
• More Hot Stamper Testimonial Letters
• What Exactly Are Hot Stamper Pressings?