Letter of the Week – “The energy, the bass, the clarity was all there. I still can’t get over it.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Heart Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased a while ago (emphasis added):

Hey Tom,   

Hope you don’t mind me E-mailing you with comments on my recent purchase of Dreamboat Annie but I’m busting to tell somebody. 

I am stunned. I had one “run of the mill” copy and one of the Nautilus albums which I thought was pretty good.

It’s good if you never hear a Hot Stamper. The Hot Stamper just blew them both away.

I read the description of the HS on your site and every word was spot on. The energy, the bass, the clarity was all there. I still can’t get over it.

Near the end of Magic Man the synthesizer goes down to a very low octave and just drags you with it and keeps you there. It’s amazing.

It’s hard to understand why these people on the audio forums mock and degrade you guys. I guess they are afraid to spend a little money and see what a Hot Stamper sounds like. I have a feeling even if they knew how good the HS was they still would not buy one simply because it’s more money than they are willing to part with. So to justify not buying one they put the Hot Stamper down.

It’s just my opinion. They sure don’t know what they’re missing.

Only bad thing about you guys is once you hear how good a record can sound, the rest of your collection kind of takes a back seat to the HS. Oh well, I can’t stop now.

Steve E.

Steve,

Thanks for writing. We used to like the Nautilus pressing of Dreamboat Annie about as much as you did. Here’s our review.

Once you hear just how good the best pressings can sound, it becomes clear that the Nautilus is not worth the vinyl it’s pressed on, but until then, it’s certainly a good sounding record, just not as good as the real thing.

Our explanation for the mistaken judgments we audiophiles make is not complicated. As you may have read elsewhere on this blog, it all boils down to three little words.

More evidence, if any were needed, that the three most important words in the world of audio are compared to what?

No matter how good a particular copy of a record may sound to you, when you clean and play enough of them you will almost always find one that’s better, and often surprisingly better. Shootouts are the only way to find these kinds of very special records. That’s why you must do them.

Nothing else works. If you’re not doing shootouts (or buying the winners of shootouts from us), you simply don’t have top quality copies in your collection, except in the rare instances where you just got lucky. In the world of records luck can only take you so far. The rest of the journey requires effort.

Further Reading

If you are still buying these remastered pressings, making the same mistakes that I was making before I knew better, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered LPs.

At the very least let us send you a Hot Stamper pressing — of any album you choose — that can show you what is lacking on your copy of the album.

And if for some reason you disagree with us that our record sounds better than yours, we will happily give you all your money back and wish you the very best.

Leave a Reply