So You Actually Think an OJC Can Beat an Original Black Label Contemporary?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

Yes, we think that, because that’s what the evidence from our most recent shootout in 2025 showed us.

As you can see from the stamper sheet below, the A1/B2 stampers of our OJC, in a blinded test, came out on top.

Better mastering equipment? Better mastering skills? Better vinyl? Better pressing methods?

Who the hell knows?

Better yet, what audiophile or record collector with a lick of sense would even pretend to know?

Not us, that’s for sure. At this point we are very comfortable not having answers for the unanswerable questions we posed above.

But don’t rush off to buy the OJC of the Sonny Rollins record you see pictured. This commentary has nothing to do with that record. For now we’re keeping the title a mystery, consistent with the idea that we give out lots of the bad stampers on this blog, but rarely do we give out the good ones. (That said, here are some of the stampers that win shootouts, and we expect to be posting more soon, mostly for records we can no longer do shootouts for due to: 1.) a lack of interest, or 2.) unacceptably high costs for the best pressings, or 3.) or the fact that we are simply unable to find pressings that play quietly enough for audiophiles.)

So why is it that you can’t tell us the title of this record?

The cost of discovering the right stampers (aka R&D) is usually high, can sometimes take decades, and is fundamentally at the heart of how we make our money: by taking pressings we hope to be good, cleaning them up, playing them, and offering only those that actually do sound good, regardless of when they were made, who made them or why.

Once the shootout is done, the time for hoping and guessing is over. We have the evidence, and in our world that is the only thing that counts. That evidence may be provisional — we could prove ourselves wrong with the next shootout, and there have been times when that has happened — but for now this is the best information we have to work with.

Key Takeaways for this Mystery Record

  • We did not have enough copies with the right stampers to find a 3+ side two. (The other copies earned grades of no better than 2+/2+.)
  • Which simply means that if we’re not hearing faultless or nearly-faultless sound on one side or another, the sound is not White Hot and does not deserve a 3+ grade. Fair’s fair after all.
  • The original pressing you see with D2/D4 stampers had some of that “old record” sound we find on far too many vintage pressings.
  • True, it was very big and full, but lacked top end, causing, among other things, the horns to get hot and hard.
  • Who wants to listen to a Sonny Rollins famous classic jazz record with horns that don’t sound right?

The world is full of old records that just sound like old records. We’ve suffered through them by the tens of thousands.

If in some parallel universe we were in the business of selling original pressings for premium prices to record collectors looking (in all the wrong places) for top quality sound, we would be asking a pretty penny for the clean, Black Label early pressings we managed to find.

No, that’s not the universe we find ourselves in, and thank goodness for that.

In this universe, our business is to find the pressings that actually sound the best, which is why the one OJC that really sounded good on one side commanded the highest price.

We had a Yellow Label 70s reissue in our shootout as well. They have earned grades of 2+ in past shootouts. This time around, with grades of 1.5+/1+, it did not qualify as a Hot Stamper pressing. We will probably end up selling it on Discogs.

The shootout was a bust, but we learned a lesson or two which we expect to apply to our next shootout, getting going in 2026 or 2027 I would guess.

Reissues Vs. Originals

If you want better sounding records, you had better open your mind to the idea that some reissues have the potential to sound better than even the best original pressings.

These, for starters, and there are hundreds more on the blog you can read about here.

Of course this is nothing but bad news for the average audiophile collector, who simply does not have the time or money to go through the hassle of buying, cleaning and playing every pressing he can get his hands on.

But good news for us, because we do.

P.S.

Our previous shootout, the one we did in 2019, came up with very different results. I’m too embarassed to go into the details, so let’s just say the Black Label originals with the same stampers did better in 2019 than they did in 2025.

One reason for the different outcomes over that span of six years might be that our new studio is able to reproduce sound at a higher level than our old one. We’d like to think so, but really, who knows?

Further Reading

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