Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Bowie Available Now
Sonic Grade: C-
The MoFi pressing is decent, probably better than the average domestic copy I suppose, since those are clearly made from dubbed tapes.
The colorations and limitations of their cutting system would make it far too painful for me to listen to it though, especially the sloppy bass and dynamic compression.
You can do worse but you sure can do a whole lot better, hence the C grade.
MoFi did two of the greatest Bowie albums of all time, Ziggy and Let’s Dance, and neither one of them can hold a candle to the real thing. If you want to settle for a mediocre imitation of either or both of those albums, stick with Mobile Fidelity.
If you want to hear the kind of Demo Disc sound that Bowie’s records are capable of, try a Hot Stamper pressing. It’s guaranteed to blow your mind or your money back.
Further Reading
Okay, sounds good. I’ll just run down to my local shop and pick up the hot pressing…really?
DearSir,
The purpose of this blog is to convince audiophiles that the solution to their problem is not an audiophile record.
Audiophile records have just as many problems as non-audiophile records, if not more.
The way to find a good Ziggy is explained on this blog. Obviously you cannot go to a record store and just pick one at random.
What you can do is learn how to clean your records and do shootouts for the copies you can find so that you can determine which pressings sound better than others and proceed along those lines until a suitably good sounding copy is discovered. It should be much better sounding than the MoFi at the very least.
If that’s too much trouble, I don’t blame you for giving up. Ziggy is one of the hardest records to figure out in the history of recorded music.
The conventional wisdom will lead you in the wrong direction, so figuring Ziggy out will be a job very few record lovers and audiophiles will be up for.
Best, TP