One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing of Back in Black he purchased a while back (emphasis added).
It must have been quite a long time ago, mostly because the Aurios he mentions have not been made for more than a decade. Not to worrry: The Seismic Platform we tout here on the blog will make an even more dramatic improvement to your playback and can be purchased directly from Townshend, eliminating the middleman, us.
Hey Tom,
I’ve been spending time this week listening to the seven records that arrived from you last week, and have been having a fabulous time doing it. So I thought I’d write to say THANKS – you guys really know how to pick ‘em!
Top honors in the batch definitely goes to the AC/DC Back in Black Hot Stamper. Wow, does it ever ROCK! And it’s not even the best one you had – which makes me wonder just how amazing the best copies sound. It really beats the pants off of my George Marino remaster, to say nothing of my old Canadian pressing.
The sheer energy that leaps off the vinyl is incredible.
To me, this record supports again the hypothesis that I first tested when I bought my Joni Mitchell Hot Stamper from you last fall: That I don’t have to wait until I manage to put together a really top notch stereo system before I can enjoy at least some of what Hot Stampers have to offer.
Obviously, as my system gets better I imagine I’ll enjoy them even more; but even with my current budget-ish system, recently much improved with Aurios and an EAR 834p (both recommended by you – thank you!), the Back in Black Hot Stamper shines. There’s truly nothing finer than listening to a record that sounds that good!
Anyway, all in all, it’s a pleasure purchasing from you, so thanks again. I’ll be back for more once my budget allows.
Martin H.
Martin,
Happy to help. We’re convinced that the better your system sounds, the bigger the difference will be between our Hot Stampers and everything else out there in record land.
Sometimes the difference is so great that even a modest system makes it obvious just how much better a Hot Stamper LP is than anything being pressed these days on modern Heavy Vinyl, famous mastering engineer or no famous mastering engineer.
UPDATE 2025
After George Marino cut this pressing of Tea for the Tillerman, I lost all respect for him. He was undoubtedly a good mastering engineer back in his day, but he stayed too long at the party and lost whatever skills he might have possessed, judging from the single disc TFTT he cut as well as the 45 2 disc set.
Regarding the importance of energy in the pressings we audition, this commentary on Zuma may be of some interest.
There is an abundance of audiophile collector hype surrounding the hundreds of Heavy Vinyl pressings currently in print. I read a lot about how wonderful their sound is, but when I actually play them, I rarely find them to be any better than mediocre, and many of them are awful.
Music Matters made this garbage remaster. Did anyone notice how awful it sounded? I could list a hundred more that range from bad to worse — and I have! Take your pick: there are more than 150 entries in our Heavy Vinyl Disasters section, each one worse sounding than the next.
Audiophiles seem to have approached these records naively instead of skeptically.
(But wait a minute. Who am I to talk? I did the same thing when I first got into audio and record collecting in the Seventies.)
How could so many be fooled so badly? Surely some of these people have good enough equipment to allow them to hear how bad these records sound.
There have to be at least some group of audiophiles out there, however small their number might be, with decent equipment and two working ears, right? Excluding our customers of course, they have to know what is going on to spend the kind of money they spend on our records. And then write us all those enthusiastic letters.
Thanks again,
TP
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