Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Richard Thompson Available Now
UPDATE 2025
Note that this review was written in 2001 when the record came out and we were still selling sealed new releases based on the audition of a single copy. (I had the play copy of this record in my personal collection for years and never got around to playing it, one of the downsides of having to play records all day to make money, resulting in little time to play the recordings of favorite artists that lack a customer base.
We have no idea what Action Packed would sound like these days on the much more revealing system we use now. I do know that the CD is very good. It’s probably the best way to approach the music initially. If you become a fan, consider the vinyl.
We would love to do a shootout for this title, but at a hundred bucks or more a pop it’s hard to imagine that a decision to devote the resources to such a project would be wise on our part.
We already do plenty of shootouts for records that are hard to sell, of titles that should be more popular with audiophiles but for some reason just aren’t.
Our Review from 2001
Another top outing on TWO clear vinyl LP’s from the master of modern electric folk music. It doesn’t get any better than this.
The sound is excellent and the music is some of the best Richard Thompson has ever made. If I had to choose one later Richard Thompson album, this would probably be it.
Almost every one of these pressings is very slightly dished, but this should not have any effect on the sound, which is excellent.
Thompson’s lovely duet with his son on Persuasion is worth the price of the album.
This is an older review.
Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we developed starting in the early 2000s and have since turned into a fine art.
We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the sonic grades and vinyl playgrades are listed separately.)
We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.
Currently, 99% (or more!) of the records we sell are cleaned, then auditioned under rigorously controlled conditions, up against a number of other pressings. We award them sonic grades, and then condition check them for surface noise.
As you may imagine, this approach requires a great deal of time, effort and skill, which is why we currently have a highly trained staff of about ten.
No individual or business without the aid of such a committed group could possibly dig as deep into the sound of records as we have, and it is unlikely that anyone besides us could ever come along to do the kind of work we do.
The term “Hot Stampers” gets thrown around a lot these days, but to us it means only one thing: a record that has been through the shootout process and found to be of exceptionally high quality.
The result of our labor is the hundreds of titles seen here, every one of which is unique and guaranteed to be the best sounding copy of the album you have ever heard or you get your money back