Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Michael Jackson Available Now

Our good customer who goes by the handle ab_ba on the web wrote to us about his experience with the White Hot Stamper pressing of Michael Jackson’s Thriller he recently acquired.

Part one of his letter can be found here.

Here he tells us about the shootout he conducted, which included a “pricey Japanese pressing” and a pressing that the forums recommended as the “holy grail.”

A few weeks later, on the eve of the closing of the return window, I shot it out against the best of my other copies. They range from the copy I grew up with, one of the few records from childhood that I held onto, to a pricey Japanese pressing in great shape (purchased long ago, when I thought Japanese pressing were where it’s at), to some copies I’ve picked up over the years because they looked to be in good shape and they were just five bucks, and a pressing that the forums told me was the “holy grail.”

None stacked up to the white hot stamper. In fact, they really weren’t even close. Here’s what I found:

The copy I grew up with is bright and edgy. To think, I spent all those years playing and re-playing a record that was bright and edgy, none the wiser to matrix numbers and pressing variations.

Some other lucky kid back then was surely listening to the copy I now own. I wonder if he ever said to himself, “wow, there’s something about this record. It sounds really special.”

The pressing with a sought-after matrix code had phenomenal bass, but the vocals were recessed. I’d so easy to be impressed with those huge drums on Billie Jean, but that alone is not enough to tell you it’s a great pressing. A lot of pressings seem to get that right.

My Japanese pressing was clear and full. But too smooth. The guitars don’t bite. Also, it fatigued me by about halfway through the side. This is energetic music. It might exhaust you, but it doesn’t have to fatigue you. This is an example of where if you don’t have a white hot stamper to compare it to, you’ll just assume your version sounds as good as it can get.

Dear ab_ba,

Most Japanese pressings cater to the sound a mid-fi system would need to sound good and a hi-fi system would find disastrous. They are almost always made from dubbed tapes, which are then brightened up in the mastering phase since that is the sound that appeals to the Japanese market for some reason unknown to me. (Old school audio equipment — horn speakers and vintage tube electronics — would be my guess.)

What you’re describing is the smeary, distorted sound you get from a second-generation and possibly even a third-generation tape.

Less bite on the guitars, more fatiguing harmonic distortion everywhere else, these records are only playable on less-than-revealing systems. I actually liked some Japanese pressings back in the 90s, and I take pride in the fact that I’ve learned a thing or two since then.

After getting my system to a higher level and playing the imports I owned head to head against good domestic and British, Dutch and German import LPs, I said goodbye to most of my Japanese pressings, including all the rock and pop ones I had purchased before I knew better. Thankfully there weren’t many of those.

Some Japanese pressings can be amazing sounding, and those I kept. You can find a short list of Japanese pressings we’ve played with potentially  (you may have noticed that word shows up a lot on this blog)– top quality sound here.

All this happened more than 30 years ago. When played head to head with good vintage pressings, it was simply no contest, the Japanese came up short time and time again. I was actually embarrassed to have them in the house. What a fool I had been to believe what I was told and not to notice how second- and third-rate they were.

Ab_ba continued:

So, at one end of the spectrum, I have my Ricci hot stamper [shown here] that I could sell for what I paid you for it, and now at the other end of the spectrum I have a hot stamper that you probably paid $5 for, but is a true “needle in the haystack.” I wonder how many $5 copies (now, $20) I’d have to buy on my own to find one that sounds this good, and how many hours that’d take me, and what would I do with all the copies I wouldn’t want to keep? I’ll leave all that hassle to you, and I’ll be keeping this copy of Thriller. The price I paid is worth it to me to again love and enjoy this truly phenomenal album.

This is a common criticism levelled at us by audiophiles on forums. They find our pricing of common records outrageous. They seem to think we buy our records for dollars and sell them for hundreds, with percentage markups typically in the thousands.

There was a time when Thriller in Los Angeles might have been a ten or fifteen dollar record. Those days are gone. A clean pressing would easily run $40-50 and maybe even more if it were still in the shrink with the stickers. (At Amoeba records, where we used to shop, a so-so record in a clean cover would always be priced higher than a clean record in a ratty cover. We think that speaks volumes about record buyers and record collectors these days.)

We hear there are stores that have records like Thriller for cheap, but we are not able to drive to those stores, many of which are in other states. We willingly pony up the fifty bucks we have to pay because we love the record and so do our customers.

Our hottest stamper copies have the sound you always wished it had, the perfect sound that really only existed in your head back then. Think of all the money and time you had to put into your stereo to get that perfect sound to come out of your speakers.

And no matter how good your equipment, only a top quality pressing could possibly turn that idea into a reality.

Your experience proves that all the money, time and effort you put into your system was justified, many times over. Without all of your work, and our Hot Stamper, Thriller would just be another album you used to like, one you kind of grew out of, one that doesn’t sound the way you remember it sounding, and it would be sitting there on your shelf collecting dust.

The work you did (with some help from us) paid off. Now Thriller is back, and better than ever. What is that worth?

A PS from ab_ba

I’m really surprised how much I like it. It’s an even bigger “delta” from the run-of-the-mill copies than most of my hot stampers, even White Hot Stampers, are.

ab_ba,

Summing up, we thank you again for another wonderful letter. We love it when our customers take the time and make the effort to do their own shootouts, especially when we win, which is what happens about 99% of the time.

A few other thoughts, on and off the subject.

Thriller is a tough record to master. Lots of boosted EQ in places, hard to get right. Bernie can take great pride in a job well done on his mastering of the originals.

Some of these things are system dependent. Some records “lock-in” to a system in surprising ways and just really take off.

That’s what Bob and Ray does for my system. It just takes off like few other records I own.

Recently a good Brothers in Arms did the same thing. I put it in our Top 100, the first time it ever impressed me that way. It sounded as big as a house.

And the Chris Bellman recut is excellent, earning roughly a 1.5+ grade, about as good as Heavy Vinyl gets. I would put it in the Top two or three per cent of the modern pressings I’ve played. To say that we are rarely impressed by any album on Heavy Vinyl these days is the understatement of the year. Two or three out of a hundred sounds about right to me. Pretty poor odds if you are trying to build a collection of good sounding records.

Best, TP

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Further Reading

• Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
• How to recognize what to listen for on any album
• Customers react to the sound of their White Hot stamper pressing