Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Recordings Available Now
Many of the Oval Label pressings we’ve played recently have fared poorly in our shootouts.
As you can see from the notes below for this particular Starker record, one side was passable, earning our 1.5+ grade. It’s a decent sounding record I suppose, but a long, long, long way from the best.
1.5+ is four grades down from the top copy. That’s a steep dropoff as far as we’re concerned. 1.5+ only hints at how good a recording SR 90370 can be on the best vintage pressings.
To see more records that earned the 1.5+ grade, please click here. (Incidentally, some of them are even on Heavy Vinyl. The better modern pressings have sometimes, if rarely, been known to earn Hot Stamper grades, and one shocked the hell out of us by actually winning a shootout. Wouldn’t you like to know which one!)
For those who might be interested, there’s more on our grading scale here.
We often tell audiophiles that it’s never a good idea to judge records by their labels, so when it came time to do a shootout for this famous Bach recording from Mercury, it was only fitting that we play every pressing we had on the shelf, including the later Ovals, which are by far the easiest to find for any of the Starker Mercury titles.
Well, now we know. This is some weak tea, probably not too different from the Philips-pressed Golden Imports we gave up on long ago.
You might have been tempted back in the late-60s and well into the 70s to pick up this famous title for the very attractive price of $1.87 (or less — the one pictured on the left was $1.59!), but you would not have been buying a record with sound remotely as good as the earlier pressings that Mercury released.
There is no shortage of other records that we’ve run into over the years with obvious shortcomings.
Here are some of them, a very small fraction of what we’ve auditioned, broken down into the three major labels that account for most of the best classical and orchestral titles we’ve had the pleasure to play.
- London/Decca records with weak sound or performances
- Mercury records with weak sound or performances
- RCA records with weak sound or performances
We’ve listened to countless pressings in the 37 years we’ve been in business — buying, cleaning and playing them by the thousands.
This is how we find the best sounding vinyl pressings ever made, through trial and error. We make lots of mistakes, some of which turn out to be quite costly.
It may be expensive and time consuming, but there is simply no other method for finding better records that works. If you know of one, please write me!
We are not the least bit interested in records that are “known” to sound the best.
Known by whom? Which audiophiles — hobbyists or professionals, take your pick — can be trusted to know what they are talking about when it comes to the sound of records? Any records.
I have never met one, outside of those of us who work for Better Records. I remain skeptical of the existence of such a creature. The audiophile experts and reviewers I’ve encountered on the web seem hopelessly lost to me.
Woops, I take that back. I have met one, a certain Mr. Robert Brook. He has been conducting his own shootouts for a few years now and makes his findings available on his blog, The Broken Record. This is information you can trust.
(A fellow who goes by the name of ab_ba is a newer convert. You can read about some of his shootouts here.)
We’re looking for records that actually do sound the best.
If you’re an audiophile with an ear for top quality sound on vintage vinyl, we’d be happy to send you the Hot Stamper pressing guaranteed to beat anything and everything you’ve heard, especially if you have any pressing marketed as suitable for an audiophile.
Those, with few exceptions, are rarely better than mediocre. Some of the worst can be found here.
And if we can’t beat whatever LP you own or have heard, you get your money back. It’s as simple as that.
Further Reading