Our Guide to Record Collecting for Audiophiles

Our good customer ab_ba has some advice for those who are interested in improving the quality of their collections by acquiring more Hot Stamper pressings.

I have taken the liberty of reordering and editing the various parts of his letter, mostly to focus the reader’s attention on some of the practical advice Aaron wishes to share.

Hi Tom,

I’ve been your customer for over four years now, and I count more than 60 records of yours on my shelf. I know I’m not quite one of your heavy-hitter customers, but I’ve got enough familiarity to know how refreshingly different your ecosystem is from everything else out there. I’ve purchased white hot stampers from you for nearly all of my lifelong favorite albums.

I’ve purchased many super hots and even plain-old hot stampers, and many of them are among my most-played records. I’ve also used your site as a way to discover new music.

But, very few of your new customers are likely to go straight to the White Hot Stamper shelf. I sure didn’t. And, some of my Super Hots are albums I return to and enjoy again and again. Yes, when I’m playing a super hot, then by definition I know that there are other copies out there that sound even better, and in the few instances where I’ve been able to directly compare a Super Hot and a White Hot, I know that your ranking system is indeed reliable.

In my experience, any record you sell is highly likely to sound better than the same title purchased anywhere else. Not only that, even if I don’t have a copy to compare it to, I can count on your records to sound great. So much so, in fact, that I really don’t bother with discogs and record stores anymore. Your system – everything from procuring to cleaning to shooting out – yields a product that is so superior to what else is available, that I simply don’t bother hunting around anymore. Being able to cut through the deluge of options available brings a lot of peace of mind in a world that’s increasingly full of mediocre slop, and that’s why Better Records is increasingly necessary.

My suggestion to anybody who’s starting to discover what you offer is to adopt two strategies I’ve landed on.

First, make your want list requests. This way you can be assured that you can get the best-sounding copies of that handful of albums you love the most.

Second, the nearly white hot records, and the white hots with issues, are a real treasure trove. They are considerably more affordable than the white hots, and even if one leaves me feeling idly curious what a true white hot would sound like, I’ve been amazed and delighted by the nearly white hots I’ve purchased. Even if somebody out there has a better-sounding copy, I can console myself with the money I saved.

Anybody who’s even remotely serious about listening to records really owes it to themselves to try your records. I am sure that for many who try you out, it will become an ethos, as it did for me. It takes a lot to believe what people (Robert Brook, you, your customers) post on the internet, especially when it is so counterintuitive and so contra the prevailing groupthink.

I wish people could borrow your records, hear them, or come over to my house, or go to Robert’s, and listen with us. Some of the friends who have come over to listen to your records with me have followed suit, becoming your customer, and building their stereos around your suggestions. They only go deeper, and like me and Robert, they aren’t looking back.

So, as 2026 starts, Tom, I am feeling gratitude for the little oasis you and your crew have enabled me to build.

Aaron

Aaron,

Please excuse the heavy editing, that was a long letter you wrote!, and I hope to put more of it on the blog soon.

You hit ithe nail right on the head with your advice for Nearly White Hot Stamper pressings and those with Condition Issues. Record in those two sections sell at a substantial discount to their higher graded brethren, or records that are quieter. About a quarter of the records on the site at any given time have condition issues; it’s the nature of the medium and not a lot can be done to change that. We clean the hell out of our records, but some surface noise will always be part of analog playback. We lay out our grading scale and condtion standards here for those who haven’t seen them.

Robert Brook has gone down the same road I went down twenty-odd years ago, and discovered  lots of things about equipment and records that I discovered. This is not the least bit odd. When you do the work properly, you find out how things work, and one of the main things you find out about how things work is that they don’t work the way most audiophiles want them to, or think they do.

You know this as well as anyone. Using the right approach can only increase the joy you will find in the music you choose to play. The records we sell are full of life, the way music is full of life, and that is the primary source of the joy I speak of. If you can tune into that reality, the world of music will open up to you and you will find yourself going deeper and deeper into all of its manifestations.

We are indeed lucky that so much of the music we love was recorded well and good pressings of those recordings exist.

There is no need to settle for second- and third-rate modern reissues when good sounding pressings were made by the millions, from the 50s all the way into the 80s.

I look forward to posting more of your letter soon.

Best, TP