Hot Stamper Pressings of Roots Rock Albums Available Now
In 2006 we put up a copy with with what we implied were Hot Stampers (before we were using the term regularly) on at least one side:
“Side One sounds tonally right on the money! This is as good as it gets… Robert Ludwig mastered all of the originals of these albums, but some of them have bad vinyl and don’t sound correct.
“I only played side one of the album, so I can’t speak for the other sides, but what I heard was sound about as good as I think this album can have.”
There are some truths along with some half-truths in the above comments, and let’s just say we would be quite a bit more careful in our language were we writing about that copy today.
One side is no indication whatsoever as to the quality of the other three, and without the kind of cleaning technologies we have available to us today, I wouldn’t want to make a “definitive” sonic assessment for any of them.
When you play uncleaned or poorly cleaned records, you’re hearing a lot of garbage that has nothing to do with the sound of the vinyl itself.
Note that we are joking above: there is no such thing as a definitive sonic assessment of a record, from us or anybody else.
Mistaken audiophile thinking? We’ve done our share and then some.
We firmly believe that plenty of audio progress awaits us all, but to realize that progress we must rationally approach the problems encountered in reproducing music in the home, thinking about them critically, not as True Believers, but as skeptics who require empirical evidence to support their beliefs.
It is axiomatic with us that the more skeptical you become, the more successful you will be in pursuing this devilishly difficult hobby of ours.
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