Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jackson Browne Available Now
One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased quite a while ago:
Hey Tom,
After years of buying the latest reissue LPs at premium pricing and being frustrated with the sound quality, I bought a copy of Jackson Browne’s “The Pretender” from you and was floored by the sound quality and dynamics and realized that your company takes all the BS out of the Audiophile shopping experience. Since then I’ve used your store a bunch.
Rob R.
Rob,
Taking the BS out of buying records is the essence of the service we think we provide, so thanks for that.
We don’t try to make good sounding records. Judging by the crap pressings that we auditioned in 2024, that is a job no one seems able to do. We sure wouldn’t know to where to begin.
The only one we’ve played that sounded like one of our killer White Hot Stamper pressings, this one, was mastered by someone working for Fantasy who didn’t bother to attach his name to the record in question!
Can you imagine? All the big name guys turn out one bad record after another, and the guy who just comes to work in the morning to make a jazz record for the OJC label knocks it out of the park.
And, even better, the guys who notice are the ones who work in some little studio in Westlake, far from where the action is.
We are happy to be as far from where the action is as possible, because the action of making at-best-mediocre records is not the kind of action that we want to be involved in.
What Is the Point?
All the way back in 2007, after playing the Hoffman-Gray remastered Blue, we asked ourselves what was the point of these nothingburger records.
Do they bring anyone even a fraction of the joy the real thing does?
The answer was obvious even back then, close to twenty years ago.
If you are stuck in a Heavy Vinyl rut, we can help you get out of it. We did precisely that for these folks, and we can do it for you.
You may of course not be aware that you are stuck in a rut. Most audiophiles aren’t. The best way out of that predicament is to hear how mediocre these modern records sound compared to the vintage Hot Stampers we offer. Once you hear the difference, your days of buying newly remastered releases will most likely be over. Even if our pricey curated pressings are beyond your budget, you can avail yourself of the methods we describe to find killer records on your own.
Below you will find our reviews of the more than 200 Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years. Feel free to pick your poison.
A Confession
Even as recently as the early 2000s, we were still impressed with many of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings. If we’d never made the progress we’ve worked so hard to make over the course of the last twenty or more years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues so many audiophiles seem impressed by.
We’ll never know of course; that’s a bell that can be unrung. We did the work, we can’t undo it, and the system that resulted from it is merciless in revealing the truth — that these newer pressings are second-rate at best and much more often than not third-rate and even worse.
Some audiophile records sound so bad, I was pissed off enough to create a special list for them.
Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, especially the ones comparing our records to their Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered counterparts, we know that our customers see things the same way.