One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:
Hey Tom,
Wow! this copy of Exile on MS is amazing! It sounded fantastic before my amps even were warm.
The drums sound like they are in the same room as the room with the microphone; the horns sound like……. well like… horns.
The copy I had before was brand new and sucked. This $350 copy is worth the dough and I am surprised. I am tempted to stop buying vinyl at all unless it has been pre-tested by your team (this will be tough).
I had NO IDEA there was this much difference between copies.
Brian S.
Brian,
Thanks for your letter.
Now you know what we know, that there is a huge difference between pressings of an album like Exile on Main Street, and the only way to find the good ones is to keep playing copy after copy until you luck into one.
Here is how we described one we found in one of our recent shootouts:
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- The better copies are also much less gritty and hard, but manage to keep the raw, grungy, heavily tube-compressed sound the Stones and their exceptionally talented engineer, Glyn Johns, were going for
- The sound may be too grungy for some, making Exile fairly difficult to reproduce, but the best sounding pressings — played at good, loud levels on big dynamic speakers, in a large, heavily-treated room — are a blast
The harder you work to get distortion out of your system and room, the more enjoyable you will find this album, which is exactly the reason you want to do all that work in the first place — in order to get the most out of difficult-to-reproduce albums like Exile.
All four sides here have the kind of bass, energy, and presence that is essential for this music to rock the way it wants to. A copy like this conveys the emotional power of The Stones’ performances in a way that most pressings simply fail to do.
This shootout is always a struggle, an uphill battle all the way. You’d have to find, clean and play a ton of copies to come up with four sides that can do this music justice. We’re sure that Stones fans and Hot Stamper die-hards are going to be very pleased with this copy.
This vintage Artisan mastered pressing (the only ones that have any hope of sounding good) has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.
Thanks for your letter.
Best, TP
Further Reading
- More rock and pop albums we think we know well
- Hot Stamper pressings of Glyn John’s recordings available now
- More reviews and commentaries for the music of The Rolling Stones
