Hot Stamper Pressings of Pop and Rock Records Available Now
It’s not that most copies of Lee Michaels’ 5th sound bad; it’s that most of them just sound like old records — thick, dull, opaque, smeary, closed-in, two-dimensional, lifeless and uninspired.
You know that sound. It’s on a lot of the records we play, and no doubt on a lot of the records you own, especially the records you haven’t cleaned and played in a while. It’s there; you just aren’t aware of it.
Pull out your old copy of 5th. Back in the day it sounded just fine, but if you’ve been listening to mostly better records lately (assuming you haven’t fallen into the Heavy Vinyl trap), doubtlessly on much improved equipment than you had 40 years ago, your old A&M copy probably doesn’t sound as good as you remember it.
The records may not have changed, but your stereo and your standards should have.
Couple that with improved listening skills and before long the average old record starts to sound a lot more average than you wish it did. Even today’s better pot can’t fix the problems of most vintage pressings (or the Heavy Vinyl and CD reissues, which have to be seen for what they are: two of the biggest jokes ever played on the audiophile public).
But we can fix the problems — well, not really: we’re just finding the copies that managed to be mastered and pressed without the problems, and then giving them a good cleaning — and our Hot Stampers are 100% legal to boot.
Further Reading
- Basic concepts and realities explained
- Important lessons we learned from record experiments
- The science of Hot Stampers – incomplete, imperfect, and provisional
“5th” was a treasured title in my parents’ record collection. I’ll have to follow this suggestion and pull it out for another listen!
Nobody warned me that I might get more cynical in this process, and start to think the primary reason for the digital revolution was so that record execs could resell their existing catalog and make themselves rich as lords.
Austin,
Thanks for writing. Most of the highest quality, more mainstream records I bought I managed to pick up at Record Surplus in Los Angeles all through the 90s and 2000s. Many of them were promos and many of them were pristine. Some were even still sealed. Most came from record execs of one kind or another. The stores were paying pennies on the dollar back in those days, and the execs were happy to part with the remnants of a failed technology that had been superceeded by a much superior one, the compact disc.
All those records are gone now. The execs who had them retired a long time ago, collection-free. The stores are empty of pristine vintage pressings. If they have any, they charge a fortune for them.
Nobody, as far as I know, got rich. Many of the record store owners I know went out of business in the 90s. The others struggled to survive.
Some people think we are making a fortune selling records for the prices we do.
Like the execs and the record store owners back in the day, nobody is actually getting rich, we’re just making a living.
The guys who get rich are the producers of the modern Heavy Vinyl pressing. Chad Kassem comes to mind. When you pay two million dollars for the rights to the Steely Dan catalog, you must have a lot more money than I will ever have, that’s for damn sure!
Best, TP