One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased many, many years ago.
Hey Tom,
The two Tull albums I purchased a while back sounded great, especially Aqualung — it didn’t have that murky sound that I remember my original had (same thing with my Black Sabbath albums).
I have a DCC pressing that I compared it to and I do like the Hot Stamper better. The reissues seem to have a little too much sugar coating on them, which makes them sound phony. The Sergio Mendes ‘Equinox’ sounded so much more alive than the copy I have. Keep up the good work.
Shane
Shane,
Records that have less sugar coating and sound more alive are the ones that tend to do well in our shootouts, as you know firsthand being a proud owner of many of them. That’s our sound in a nutshell, and yours too it seems.
Audiophile records are full of colorations, mostly the kind that boost the performance of smaller, less-revealing systems.
Good stereos don’t need their performance boosted; they just need good sounding records to play.
This is precisely why the one piece of advice we give out more than any other is the importance of improving the sound of your system before you waste any more money on audiophile pressings.
To help you to spot the shortcomings of audiophile pressings (at least the ones we’ve auditioned over the years), click here.
And you certainly don’t need to buy our wildly-expensive, obsessively-curated titles in order to get good sounding records.
The methods we’ve developed are sure to guarantee the success of anyone with the dedication, time and money to do the work they entail.
(Robert Brook has been doing shootouts the right way for many years now and has much to teach the readers of his blog. Also, another one of our good customers, Aaron, has documented his own experiences as he travels on the journey to better sound and therefore better sounding records.)
Thanks for your letter.
Best, TP
Further Reading
- More Hot Stamper testimonial letters
- Record collecting for audiophiles from A to Z
- Letters comparing Hot Stamper pressings to their Heavy Vinyl counterparts
