Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Frank Sinatra Available Now

In 2024 we did a shootout for the first of Frank’s many releases from 1957, Close to You. We were fortunate to have the Mobile Fidelity pressing from the ’80s box set to play against the mostly original pressings we had accumulated since our last shootout in 2020.

It takes a long time to find enough clean copies to get a shootout going. Four years is fairly typical these days I would imagine.

As you can see from our notes, side one of this MoFi was just awful. Can you blame us if we didn’t bother to play side two?

P.S. I Love You

• Over-textured violin
• Spitty, gritty vocals
• Hollow and dry

Close To You

• Very clean
• Bass and vocals really lacking body and warmth

Our grade, had we given it one, would have had to have been a big fat F.

Is it the worst version of the album ever made?

That’s hard to say. There are a lot of bad sounding Frank Sinatra pressings made from albums from this period. We should know, we’ve played them by the score. In order to find the good ones, you have to play a great many bad ones. That is the task we have set for ourselves, and it’s at the heart of the business we run.

We have learned the hard way over the years that there is simply no getting around any of it if what you’re looking for are the best sounding pressings ever made.

If you’re contemplating spending money on this kind of MoFi trash, our advice is don’t do it. And the same goes for their awful One-Step series, comprising some of the most dreadful remastered pressings we have had the misfortune to play.

Our most recent White Hot stamper pressings were a very different animal.

We were not able to find a killer copy with two good sides and quiet vinyl, so we did the best we could under the circumstances, by pairing up our two best sounding sides that also had the least amount of condition issues.

• A wonderful 2-pack of original MONO Capitol pressings with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on side one of the first disc and Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound on side two of the second disc – just shy of our Shootout Winner
• Here are just a few of the things we have to say about this stunning Triple Plus side one of disc one in our notes: “very detailed”…”big, rich bass” …”lush and rich strings and vox”…”more dynamic and present”
• Rich, sweet, and completely free of phony EQ, this record will put a living, breathing Sinatra right there in your listening room

We added:

Superb Sinatra sound! His voice here is perfection.

These 50s LPs have the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern pressings cannot BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back.

Having done this for so long, we understand and appreciate that rich, full, solid, Tubey Magical sound is key to the presentation of this primarily vocal music. We rate these qualities higher than others we might be listening for (e.g., bass definition, soundstage, depth, etc.). The music is not so much about the details in the recording, but rather in trying to recreate a solid, palpable, real Frank Sinatra singing live in your listening room. The better copies have an uncanny way of doing just that.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of older recordings (this one is now close to 70 years old), I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but less than one out of 100 new records do, if our experience with the hundreds we’ve played can serve as a guide.

If you are still buying these remastered pressings, making the same mistakes that I was making before I knew better, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered LPs.

At the very least let us send you a Hot Stamper pressing — of any album you choose — that can show you what is lacking on your copy of the album.

And if for some reason you disagree with us that our record sounds better than yours, we will happily give you all your money back and wish you the very best.