Hot Stamper Pressings of Revolver Available Now
On side one we played I’m Only Sleeping first, followed by Taxman.
On side two we started with And Your Bird Can Sing, followed by Good Day Sunshine.
You may notice that there seems to be a pattern in the way we pick which songs of each side to do first.
As you can see from the notes, side two of our most recent White Hot stamper Shootout Winner was doing everything right.
The second track was very tubey and present. Good Day Sunshine, the first track, was super rich and weighty, with lots of room around the vox. (I hope you can read our writing. If you can’t, just email me and I will try to find the time to transcribe the rest of the text.)
However, we had a side one that was slightly better than the side one you see here.
The Second Round
When we played the two best copies back to back, side two of this copy came out on top, earning a grade of 3+, but the side one of another pressing showed us there was even more space in the recording than we noticed the first time around.
As a consequence, we dropped side one’s grade a half plus, from 3 to 2.5+.
This is exactly why we do shootouts. If you really want to be able to recognize subtle (and sometimes not so subtle!) differences between pressings, you must learn to do them too.
And make sure to take notes about what you are hearing, good and bad.
One side falling short of the full Three Pluses happens more often than not. One out of five records that has one shootout winning side will have a matching shootout winning other side.
The math works like this. 3+/3+ records go in this section, which currently holds 22 titles as of 1/2025. Records with at least one 3+ side go in this section, and there are 120 of those as of the same date, more than five times as many.
Further Reading
- More letters, reviews and commentaries for Revolver
- Listening for the spirit and enthusiasm of The Beatles
- Letters from customers who really love their Hot Stamper Beatles LPs