Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now
One of our customers had this to say about some Hot Stamper pressings he purchased recently:
Hi Tom,
I just got The Beatles first album in the mail and put it on and it blew me away. I was thinking I didn’t need the first couple albums but this book I read, John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie, published in 2025. made me rethink all that.
I did not foresee reading ANOTHER Beatles book. It is getting over the top reviews but I looked at it because my friend from my college days recommended it. It covers many of the same events and anecdotes any real Beatles fan would know but that are given new context by viewing their history – fundamentally – through the prism of the relationship of these two friends.
You realize by the time they released their first album in 1963, they’d been preparing for it since 1958, egging each other on as performers and songwriters.
Paul had written songs actually predating 1958, but they made their union as songwriters soon after they met. They had learned so many great pop songs such that every song on those early albums is either an amazing cover they make their own (e.g. “Twist and Shout” “Boys” etc.) or one of their original compositions that demonstrates the depth of their skills.
They break so many conventions, and it all works. What planet did John and Paul come from?
I have to get With the Beatles next, followed by those two comps you carry and Magical Mystery Tour. Those last three records I mentioned are known among Beatles fans as the place to hear the singles – way better than Past Masters.
The writer is not a music journalist but has actually written extensively on “human behaviour and psychology, drawing on the social sciences and the humanities in order to investigate and reframe some aspect of our nature.”
I’m so caught up in Revolver, and the White Album, and all the more ‘sexy’ stuff, I only just realized from their first single forward, nothing they did was mediocre.
As I’ve said before, I’m so very glad you started this business, as I can’t imagine how I would get even a decent copy of these albums, much less an amazing copy.
Best,
Andrew
Andrew,
I write about how important Please Please Me was to me all over the blog. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Mobile Fidelity for that one. In a recent commentary for Rubber Soul I wrote a bit about the Mobile Fidelity Beatles Collection, BC-1:
BC-1 single-handedly turned me on to the early Beatles records, the first five albums, records which I hadn’t played since I was in grade school. (Introducing The Beatles — aka Please Please Me — on Vee-Jay was one I had failed to warm to and probably had never owned. Now I love it, even more than any of the other first five.)
I plan on writing more about it down the road, but for now let there be no doubt, I had the set at the ripe young audiophile age of 29 and proceeded to fall in love with the music of The Beatles all over again.
I would add that the second album on UK vinyl is a weak album because the hits aren’t on there they way they are on the first two Capitol releases. They were singles and singles don’t get added to albums since the label assumes you already bought them as singles.
I Want to Hold Your Hand is missing from the album? She Loves You too? Ouch.
Anyway, spending time with The Beatles is something I’ve been doing since I was ten and I never tire of it.
Thanks for writing,
TP
Andrew had earlier written about the effect that hearing Hot Stamper pressings had on him in his early days as a customer, trying to get a feeling for what levels of quality at what prices made the most sense at his stage of audio development.
If I get a better stereo I’ll probably replace some of my Beatles records with White Hot Stampers. I don’t know that it’s worth it right now. I have such basic equipment, and yet your records blow everything away. I can hear the difference between all three grades, but I don’t think it’s anywhere as much as if I had a better stereo – and that’s something I want to do regardless.
It took a long time to adjust to your whole system. I’m glad you put all that language under every single record – about Tubey Magic and how this sound ain’t coming back.
You have to reorient yourself in so many ways. I got your copy of Pet Sounds – and I felt good I had sussed out that one of the better pressing was the one that came with Carl and the Passions and I thought “I’ll return this.”
And then, of course, I listened to them both and your copy blew mine away – not only because it was so much cleaner, revealing so much information – but you just had such better listening skills and a better stereo and all that; it was such a great balanced recording that had been committed to vinyl.
It takes a while to reorient yourself to this way of buying records and to completely understand what is going on.
My point is that I had to completely change my mindset for buying records. There are more than a few parts to that process and changes in your thought process. I think you know this and try to reorient people at every turn – but it takes a while to get it all through one’s skull.
And we’re very glad you did!
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