Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Ambrosia Available Now

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

Calvin Coolidge

If you substitute “finding Hot Stamper pressings” for the words “the human race” you will better appreciate the point we are trying to make with this commentary.

Our story today revolves around the first Hot Stamper listing we had ever done for Ambrosia’s second — and second best — album. It took us a long time to find the right pressing.

Do you, or any of the other audiophiles you know, keep buying the same album over and over again year after year in hopes of finding a better sounding copy?

We do — and have been for more than twenty years as a matter of fact. Here’s why.

Around 2007 I stumbled upon the Hot Stampers for this record — purely by accident of course, there’s almost no other way to do it — and was shocked — shocked — to actually hear INTO the soundfield of the recording for the first time in my life, this after having played copy after frustratingly opaque copy for roughly thirty years.

Yes, the stereo got better and that helped a lot. Everything else we talk about helped too. But ultimately it came down to this: I had to find the right copy of the record.

Without the right record it doesn’t matter how good your stereo is, you still won’t have good sound. Either the playback source has it or it doesn’t.

It’s not what’s on the master tape that matters; it’s what’s on the record

The Worst Mistake

This may seem pretty obvious, but how many audiophiles do you know who actually own multiple copies of the same album? How many of them are still hunting around for more? I’ve been buying duplicate copies of my favorite albums for decades, but I’m obsessive. Fortunately for me, with the advent of Better Records in 1987, I’ve had an outlet for the pressings I choose not to keep.

A few audiophile friends have multiple copies, but most audiophiles I know usually stop after one, at most two or three, and they often make the worst mistake one could ever make: they buy an audiophile pressing and figure that that’s the one to keep, tossing out their original, or never bothering to buy an original in the first place.

Hearing Is Believing

Those of you who take the time to read our Hot Stamper commentary, whether you buy any of our special pressings or not, no doubt know better. At least I hope you do. The only way to understand this Hot Stamper thing is to hear it for yourself, and that means having multiple copies of your favorite albums, cleaning them all up and shooting them all out on a good stereo. Nobody, but nobody, who takes the time to perform that little exercise can fail to hear exactly what we are on about.

Or you can join the other 99% of the audiophiles in the world, the ones who don’t know just how dramatic pressing variations for records and CDs can be. An unknown but probably quite large percentage of that group also doesn’t want to know about any such pressing variations and will happily supply you with all sorts of specious reasoning as to why such variations can’t really amount to much — this without ever doing a single shootout!.

Such is the world of audiophiles. Some audiophiles believe in anything — you know the kind — and some audiophiles believe in nothing, not even their own two ears.