Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now
One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing of Sgt. Peppers he purchased from us a while ago:
Hey Tom,
Wish I found your blog earlier. I do not have a huge collection but any new audiophile pressing I have sounds flat when comparing it to a pressing you’ve sold – i.e., Sgt Pepper.
Even my wife, who enjoys music but is not into it for the best sound, picked the 80s Pepper pressing I played her over the recent stereo remix and the mono from the box set everyone seems to love. Not close.
Dear Ryan,
It is indeed disheartening when collectors and audiophiles rave about mediocre records such as the two you mention. More proof, as if any were needed, that the audiophile record collecting world has lost its mind.
As for the copy you got from us having been pressed in the 80s, yes, we do sell some of those later pressings as Hot Stampers. The best of them can sometimes earn Super Hot (2+) stamper grades on one or both sides.
We always put a number of them in our shootouts to keep our grading honest by making sure that our best copies are a big step up over anything pressed in that decade. For The Beatles, a good rule of thumb is that the 60s can be rough and the 80s can be rough, but the 70s are where you will find the sweet spot for many of their titles.
For a big shootout we did in 2024, we actually had an early label pressing (stampers: -1/-2) that earned grades of 1.5+/2+ — not bad by any means, but a long ways from the best.
This early pressing would be the one that would set the standard for most audiophiles.
However, without a proper cleaning — good typically for a half-plus improvement or more — practically any of the Hot Stamper pressings we would sell would be better in almost every way, and a whole lot quieter to boot, at a fraction of the price a collector would be likely to pay for a clean first label pressing in stereo.
Glad to hear your wife had no trouble hearing the difference, they usually do.
Thanks for writing,
Best, TP
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