Hot Stamper Pressings of Percussion Recordings Available Now
This is the follow-up to Sounds Unheard Of!, the duo’s 1962 stereo test and demo record released on the Contemporary label.
How did we find the killer Hot Stamper pressings we offered for sale starting in 2023? The same way we learned about every record we list on the site. It is simplicity itself:
For our shootout for Sounds!, we had at our disposal a variety of pressings that had the potential for Hot Stamper sound. We cleaned them carefully, then unplugged everything in the house we could, warmed up the system, Talisman’d it, found the right VTA for our Triplanar arm (by ear of course) and proceeded to spend the next hour or so playing copy after copy on side one, after which we repeated the process for side two.
If you have five or more copies of a record and play them over and over against each other, the process itself teaches you what’s right and what’s wrong with the sound of the album. Once your ears are completely tuned to what the best pressings do well that the other pressings do not do as well, using a few carefully chosen passages of music, it quickly becomes obvious how well a given copy can reproduce those passages. You’ll hear what’s better and worse — right and wrong would be another way of putting it — about the sound.
This approach is simplicity itself. First, you go deep into the sound. There you find a critically important passage in the music, one which most copies struggle — or fail — to reproduce as well as the best. Now, with the hard-won knowledge of precisely what to listen for, you are perfectly positioned to critique any and all pressings that come your way.
It may be a lot of work but it sure ain’t rocket science, and we’ve never pretended otherwise. Just the opposite: from day one we’ve explained step by step precisely how to go about finding the Hot Stampers in your own collection. Not the good sounding pressings you happen to own — those may or may not have Hot Stampers — but the records you actually cleaned, shot out, and declared victorious.
Want to find your own top quality copy?
Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that consistently win our Hot Stamper shootouts.
This record has been sounding its best for many years, in shootout after shootout, this way:
Further Reading
- New to the blog? Start here
- More stamper and pressing information
- Important lessons we learned from record experiments
