Month: May 2025

Debussy & Ravel – A Tale of Two Top Copies

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Claude Debussy Available Now

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Maurice Ravel Available Now

In 2024 we did a shootout for this recording of quartets, LSC 2413, our first in 19 years.

For the shootout winning pressing, we wrote the following:

Juilliard String Quartet’s performance of these wonderful classical works appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides of this original Shaded Dog pressing.

Having just played some killer copies of Death and the Maiden, we’re tempted to say that this Debussy record has the potential for even better sound — it’s richer and sweeter, but every bit as real and immediate as any chamber recording we know of.

Here are the notes for the actual record we played. Side one really blew our minds, earning a grade of at least 3+.

The second place finisher may not have been quite as good on side one, but it was still so good that it had no problem earning the full three pluses. It had the same stampers as the copy above by the way.

Side two however lacked the space of the very best pressings we played, and we marked it down one half plus for that shortcoming. Although it was “so tubey and 3-D” it did not have “all the space but not hot at all and natural and sweet.”

It’s very unlikely that the person who bought this copy would feel there was any problem with side two. We had two killer side two’s to play against each other back to back, and that’s about the only way these kinds of very subtle differences can be recognized, assuming you have a system that can resolve the space of the recording at an extremely high level to begin with.

The big rooms with high ceilings that systems like those require are not usually found in listening rooms that have not been custom built.

More on this wonderful record:

The Living Stereo sound here is Tubey Magical, lively and clear, with the kind of transparency that puts living, breathing musicians right in your listening room in the way that only the best vintage vinyl pressings can.

Lewis Layton engineered this recording (along with Ed Begley) and he nailed it, perfectly capturing the rich, textured sheen on the strings, the hallmark of Living Stereo sound in the 50s and 60s.

He recorded both the Schubert (LSC 2378) mentioned above and this wonderful Debussy/Ravel record for RCA in 1960 — it would be quite the understatement to say he had a gift for recordings of this kind.

Another superb recording from the 60s, brought to you by your vinyl-loving friends at Better Records.

It’s an exceptional Living Stereo all analog recording from 1960 – nothing else sounds like it.

When you’ve played as many Living Stereo titles as we have (250+ and counting), you’re bound to run into this kind of Demo Disc sound from time to time – it’s what makes record collecting fun.

It’s an amazing find, the kind of record we live for here at Better Records.

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Discovering Even Better Pressings Is the Most Rewarding Part of Our Job

Welcome to the World of Better Records

The best part of our job is when we manage to discover even better pressings of favorite albums than the ones we had previously thought were the best.

Doing new shootouts for the same titles year after year — sometimes twice a year, as is the case with most of albums by The Beatles, sometimes once every ten years as happens with many of the rarer titles we do — we often find ourselves learning something new by continuing to audition new batches of familiar records.

Yes, we actually love proving ourselves wrong and we go out of our way every day to do it in our Hot Stamper shootouts.

It might be a good idea here to point out that blinded, carefully-controlled shootouts are the only way to prove anything when it comes to records, as they are the only source of real evidence to judge the strengths and weaknesses of records. Opinions are not evidence of anything and are almost always worth exactly what you pay for them.

As Jonathan Swift famously remarked:

“You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday.”

The other best part of the job is discovering great recordings of wonderful music that most people have never heard of, some of which can be found here.

For those of you interested in classical and orchestral discoveries — we call them “sleeper” pressings — go here.

Yes, That’s Me

The guy you see pictured above with an old London Rachmaninoff album under his arm has spent much of the last forty years wandering around used record stores looking for better records (ahem).

Before that he wandered around stores that were selling new records because he didn’t know how good old used records could be.

He would spend a great deal of time with his newly-purchased records, playing them over and over again on the best stereo equipment he could afford.

He thinks everyone would be better off spending more of their time playing records, especially old ones.

For every twenty records he bought, he would consider himself lucky to end up falling in love with one. The vast majority of those “best of twenty” titles have somehow stood the test of time and continue to be played regularly to this day.

Roughly 275 of those Desert Island Discs have been identified to date.

About 50 of them are currently available in Hot Stamper form on the site as of the date of this post.

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John Coltrane – Expression on the Green Label

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

The best pressings have huge space, size and clarity, with Tubey Magical richness befitting the 1967 recording dates of these sessions at Van Gelder Studio.

That Tubey Magic is surely long gone by now, so those of you looking for this kind of sound on a modern pressing should face facts — that ship has sailed.

The Green Label ABC/Impulse label pressings did not retain much of the magic that we heard on the  real Impulse pressings, so best to avoid them.

They’re clean but dry and small, not big and bold like the real thing. The CD is probably better.

4 stars: “Recorded at two sessions in early 1967, Expression represents John Coltrane’s final recording sessions just months before his death. It’s remarkable that [the album] is not some world-weary harbinger of death and sickness, but an endlessly jubilant affair. Even in what must have been a time of tremendous pain and darkness, Coltrane’s single-minded quest for understanding and transcendence took him to places of new exploration and light.”

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In the Land of Hi-Fi – A Very Good Speakers Corner Reissue

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cannonball Adderley Available Now

Soon after the album was released in 2000, we wrote the following short review (three words!) in our catalog:

“Outstanding! Top recommendation!”

Ten years or so later, we added this caveat:

A fairly good Speakers Corner jazz album. Hard to know what we would think of this pressing today, but for the thirty bucks you might pay for it, it’s probably worth a listen. 

Well, we recently got one in and gave it that listen. Shockingly, it has held up fairly well for a Heavy Vinyl pressing.

With the mono switch out (inactive) on the EAR 324P, we noted:

Big, loose bass.

Horns are rich and nice but veiled.

With the mono switch in (active), the sound is a bit less veiled but not too different.

It’s not a bad sounding pressing — with a grade of 1.5+, it might qualify for our good, not great sounding LPs section, depending on how side two sounds. We didn’t play side two because 1.5+ is not a grade that makes us want to put any more time into it. It’s our lowest Hot Stamper grade, and it barely qualified for it, meaning there is a good chance that the next one could be 1+ and not worth anybody’s trouble.

The right vintage pressings are a big step up in class sonically, but boy are they hard to find in clean condition. We’ve tried for years and don’t have much to show for our efforts yet.

At a cheap price it’s not a bad record, depending on how you feel about the midrange being veiled.

I can’t stand that sound myself, but since a very large percentage of Heavy Vinyl pressings that we’ve auditioned over the years have suffered from that problem to one degree or another, I guess other music lovers and audiophiles feel differently. (This link will take you to some of the other records we’ve reviewed with veiled sound.)

The average copy on Discogs sells for $29.10. That seems like a decent price for a decent-sounding record.

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Letter of the Week – “This copy is a completely different musical experience.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Grover Washington, Jr. Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased:

Hey Tom, 

I really liked the Oscar Peterson West Side Story and appreciate the effort you put in to find me a Hot Stamper. This was an album my mother bought for me and I have fond memories of lying on my back under my parents RCA console stereo looking up at the glowing tubes and listening to it. Thank you. Much better than the DCC CD. It now sounds like I remember it.

Mr. Magic was also a surprise. It never sounded that good and was better than I remember it. 

The one that has completely blown me away was the Jackson Browne 3+ side one.

It never sounded like that ever. I had a 1.5 and it was good; kind of like I remember it.

This copy is a completely different musical experience. I enjoy the presentation more and have a much better appreciation of the music. You guys did it again.

Thanks as usual,
Mike H.

Mike,

Thanks for your letter.

A 3+ Jackson Browne first album is a very special record indeed, so rich and smooth.

Would make a great Demo Disc, the opposite of the kind of phony trash they play at audio shows.

Other letters from customers recounting the incredibly powerful experiences they’ve had while playing one of our shootout winning pressings can be found here.

If you think you would enjoy kicking your musical satisfaction up a notch or two, nothing can get you to the next level faster than playing one of our killer Hot Stamper LPs.

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The Yes Album – What a Recording!

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Yes Available Now

At its best, this album is a Big Speaker Prog-Rock opus with tremendous power and dynamic range, but it takes a special pressing to really bring the album to life. 

These guys — and by that I mean this particular iteration of the band, the actual players that were involved in the making of this album — came together for the first time and created the sound of Yes on this very album, rather aptly titled when you think about it.

With the amazing Eddie Offord at the board, as well as the best batch of songs ever to appear on a single Yes album, they produced both their sonic and musical masterpiece — good news for audiophiles with Big Speakers!

Drop the needle on a top copy and you will find yourself on a Yes journey the likes of which you have never known.

And that’s what I’m in this audiophile game for.

The Heavy Vinyl crowd can have their dead-as-a-doornail, wake-me-when-it’s-over pressings that are typically cheap to buy and tend to play quietly.  Here’s one I couldn’t sit through with a gun to my head.

The amount of effort that went into the recording of this album is comparable to that expended by the engineers and producers of bands like Supertramp, ELP, The Who, Jethro Tull, Ambrosia, Pink Floyd and far too many others to list.

It seems that no effort or cost was spared in making the home listening experience as compelling as the recording technology of the day permitted. Tubey Magical British Prog Rock just doesn’t get any better.

Obsession

Yes, we admit to being obsessed with The Yes Album.

It is our belief that to reach the most advanced levels of audio,you have to do two things:

  1. You must become obsessed with getting your favorite albums to sound their best, and,
  2. You must then turn your obsession into concrete action.

What kind of action?

Finding better sounding pressings and improving your stereo and room.

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To Find Hot Stamper Pressings, Make the Same Mistakes, Only Sooner

Our Guide to Record Collecting for Audiophiles

Wise men and women throughout the ages have commented on the value of making mistakes.

Here is one of our favorite quotes on the subject.

If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.

We can thank Tallulah Bankhead for that one.

When I think of the 20-odd years (early 70s to early 90s) I wasted trying to figure out how audio works before I had discovered how to develop my critical listening skills, it brings to mind the old Faces’ song, “I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger.”

The more mistakes you make, the more you learn.

The more you learn, the easier it is to recognize good records.

Like many of our customers who’ve found their standards raised by our Hot Stamper pressings, you may be so exhausted and disappointed by the mediocrities churned out by one label after another these days that you finally make the pledge to swear off bad records for good.

Acquiring better sounding pressings and getting rid of those that are no longer satisfying will result in a collection that is a joy to own, a collection that will provide a great deal more satisfaction than one made up primarily of collectible records.

One Test to Rule Them All

There is only one true test for records: Which ones do you want to play?

Collect those and sell off all the rest.

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B.B. King – Indianola Mississippi Seeds

More Electric Blues

  • Indianola Mississippi Seeds debuts on the site with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them throughout this original ABC pressing
  • This side one is big, full-bodied and Tubey Magical, yet still pretty clear, spacious and open, and side two is not far behind in all those areas
  • Credit Bill Szymczyk for the punchy, huge and energetic sound he produced and engineered
  • An exceedingly tough album to find with audiophile surfaces – the top copy and two of the better second-tier copies from our recent shootout didn’t even make it to the site due to vinyl issues, which means that what we’re offering here is as good as it gets for the foreseeable future
  • 4 stars: “B.B. King hasn’t made many better pop-flavored albums than this. Joining King here were Leon Russell, Joe Walsh and Carole King; several pop luminaries who did more than just hang on for the ride.”

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Detail on Crosby, Stills and Nash – Holy Grail or Audio Trap?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and (Sometimes) Young

Detail may be the Holy Grail to some audiophiles, but listening for the details in a recording can be a trap we too easily fall into unless we are on our guard.

Tonal balance is the key.

Without correct tonal balance, no judgments about the details of the recording have any real value. 

A case in point: As good as the Classic Heavy Vinyl pressing is, the guitar at the opening of Helplessly Hoping tells you everything you need to know about what’s missing. The guitar on the better Hot Stamper domestic copies has a transparency and harmonic integrity that cannot be found on Classic’s version.

The Classic Records pressing gets the tonal balance right, but their guitar lacks the subtlety and harmonic resolution of the real thing.

I’m laboring here to avoid the word “detail,” since many audiophiles like bright, phony sounding records because of all their wonderful detail. Patricia Barber’s albums come to mind, along with scores of audiophile pressings. 

The MoFi guys and the CD guys are constantly falling into the trap of being impressed by the phony detail in some recordings.

The solution is to get the sound tonally balanced first, then see how much detail you have left.

Detail is not the end-all and be-all of audio. Those who think it is have systems that are sure to fall apart at louder levels. If the sound of your system on your best pressings doesn’t get better as it gets louder, you are failing one of the most important tests in all of audio, the turn up your volume test.

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Letter of the Week – “Who needs an equipment upgrade with records like these?”

Hot Stamper Pressing of Miles’s Albums Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

Listening to Kind Of Blue. Who needs an equipment upgrade with records like these?

Our reply:

So true!

It’s actually one of the common faults of audiophile thinking, present company excluded, that if you can make a record like KOB sound great, you must have a good stereo system.

The opposite is true; the real test is to get difficult to reproduce recordings to sound good, not easy to reproduce recordings.

If you want to test the limits of your system, here are some difficult to reproduce records that will allow you to do it.

And if you want to buy some records that sound great but are difficult to reproduce because you love or challenge, or for any other reason, these Hot Stamper pressings should do the trick.

Either way, KOB is killer, and the MoFi of it is a joke, but don’t tell this guy, who appears to be rather new to this whole “reviewing” thing.  Watch it here. If you can stomach more than two minutes worth, you may be reading the wrong blog.

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