Hot Stamper Pressings of The White Album Available Now
Starting as early as 1984, some pressings of The White Album came with a decidely inferior side one, 5c.
Often it was mated to an equally problematic-sounding side two, -6. Although the -6 stamper can be good, when it has 5c on side one, it’s never as good as it should be.
Even though this copy had less-than-impressive sound on sides three and four — these sides qualify as minimally Hot Stamper pressings — there is nothing inherently wrong with the -2/-3 stamper numbers for those sides.
These later pressings just don’t sound as good as the earlier ones we like.
Not that we like the originals.
The few we’ve played were terrible. They tend to have -1 or -2 stampers for the first two sides, and their mastering tends to add a lot of problems to a recording that already has more than its share.
Want to find your own top quality copy?
Consider taking our moderately helpful advice regarding the pressings that tend to win our shootouts. The White Album sounds its best:
Further Reading
- Listening for the spirit and enthusiasm of The Beatles
- More reviews and commentaries for The White Album
- Letters from customers who really love their Beatles Hot Stamper pressings
It’s exceedingly difficult to find audiophile quality sound on The White Album. The Beatles were breaking apart, often recording independently of each other, with their own favorite engineers as enablers, and George Martin nowhere to be found most of the time. They were also experimenting more and more with sound itself, which resulted in wonderful songs and interesting effects. However, these new approaches and added complexity often result in a loss of sonic “purity.”
Let’s face it, most audiophiles like simplicity: A female vocal, a solo guitar — these things are easy to reproduce and often result in pleasing sound, the kind of sound that doesn’t take a lot of expensive equipment or much effort to reproduce.
Dense mixes with wacky EQ are hard to reproduce (our famous difficulty of reproduction scale comes into play here), and the White Album is full of that sound, taking a break for songs like Blackbird and Julia.
Some of the Tubey Magic that you hear on Pepper is gone for good. (Play With a Little Help from My Friends on a seriously good Hot Stamper pressing to see what has been lost forever. Lovely Rita would probably work just as well, too.)