Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now
One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently (emphasis added):
Hey Tom,
Two fantastic finds; well done once again. The After the Gold Rush you sent is incredibly revealing. The pressing removed the veil. This LP typically sounds dull and I don’t mean the songs.
I dropped the needle on side one and started singing by the end of the first verse. I had planned to have a critical listen first as I always do, so I have a reference in which to make comparisons. If an album is great I start to sing the second time thru. That should tell you what I think of this pressing.
When I played my copy it lasted one verse and one chorus before it was removed from the platter. Exceptional pressing!!!
Re: Rubber Soul. I have 3 copies of this LP, all Parlophone and all earlier pressings than the one I purchased from you. One doesn’t really count because it is from the very first pressings that had problems.
However, the other 2 are very good pressings. One is very transparent but extremely bass shy. The other is very much the opposite. It has lots of whomp but is grainy.
The pressing from Better Records is beautifully transparent, especially in the voice, and is nowhere near as bass shy.
I believe that being closest to the source usually reveals more accuracy.
That goes for most every discipline of study. This pressing, though not being the actual closest, was the winner. Go figure!
Thanks again for doing the research to find these gems.
Mark H.
Mark,
Thanks for writing, and thanks for taking the time to do your own shootout. It’s obvious you were listening critically and heard the same great sound we heard.
The early pressings are rarely the way to go for The Beatles.
“Closer to the source” might be a good rule of thumb, but in the case of Rubber Soul that rule would have prevented you from hearing the record sound the way you are now hearing it, which, not to put too fine a point on it, is much more real and correct than how you used to hear it. Quite a bit more enjoyable too no doubt.
Thanks for your business. We look forward to finding you more “gems.” There’s plenty more where that one came from.
Best, TP
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