Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now
One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper copy of Who’s Next he bought a while back:
Tom,
Meeting Robert [Robert Brook] has energized me to upgrade my vinyl rig to a MC with a nicer table. (Currently I use a VPI Traveler with Clearaudio Artist v2). Robert also showed me how my supposedly fancy new 180g “audiophile” pressings can often be used to wipe the floor by vintage pressings.
The extra deep bass and dynamics to the drums on his copy of Who’s Next vs my new one was particularly eye opening!
Robert Brook does indeed have some good records to play on his much better sounding rig. His blog is definitely worth reading on that score. Here is a link.
I’ve purchased a VPI Classic 3se with the 3d arm, and I’m led to believe that the Dynavector is a great match for it. A friend of a friend has this exact set up and is very happy with it. Robert says you also use a Dynavector for your record shootouts.
Yes, the 17dx is at the heart of our system’s accuracy. Most cartridges would have put us out of business long ago with their wacky EQ, the opposite of what we need to do out job. We talked about it here.
Thanks for your letter,
Best, TP
Further Reading
Here are some of our reviews and commentaries concerning the many Heavy Vinyl pressings we’ve played over the years, well over 300 at this stage of the game in 2025.
Even as recently as the early 2000s we were still impressed somewhat with the better Heavy Vinyl pressings. If we had never made the progress we’ve worked so hard to make over the course of the last twenty or more years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues so many audiophiles are enamored with these days.
We’ll never know of course; that’s a bell that can be unrung. We did the work, we can’t undo it, and the system that resulted from it is merciless in revealing the truth — that these newer pressings are second-rate at best and much more often than not third-rate and even worse.
Some audiophile records have such bad sound that I was pissed off to the point of creating a special sh*t list for them. As of 2025, it contains close to 300 titles. That is a lot of bad sounding audiophile records! I should know, I played an awful lot of them.
Having now retired, I’m pleased to be able to leave that job in the more than capable hands of the listening crew at Better Records. They have been playing many of the newer releases and finding the sound is every bit as bad or worse these days.
Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, especially the ones comparing our records to their Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered counterparts, we know that our customers see things the same way.