Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Rudy Van Gelder Available Now
Our good customer Michel wrote to us about his experience playing one of our Hot Stamper pressings of Midnight Blue.
Hi Tom,
I used the first track to compare this Super Hot Stamper pressing I bought to a ’63 original to the Music Matters pressing. This was kind of interesting.
The Music Matters is total junk, as it is completely lifeless. It just has that lifeless audiophile feel. So I’ll just take the MM right out of the equation.
My brain is used to the original pressing’s sound, which is more raw sounding.
The SHS is, simply put,way more of everything!
So much so that I had to turn the gain down… my brain just wasn’t used to having so much more sound coming out of the speakers. The tubeyness factor is way way higher than the original. I eventually acclimated and turned it back up.
The original just has that sound that makes me think of long ago, and it is quite vibrant. Perhaps after some dozen listenings I will put it in the sell pile, but not quite yet.
Very happy to have this amazingly lush sounding LP.
Take Care, Michel
Michel,
It’s hard to imagine that you will be able to listen to the original “ear” pressing a dozen times. We never cared for it — compared to the later pressings we sell it’s just too crude. (That may be what you mean by “raw”.)
Rudy would go on to recut the record much better down the road, and those are, in our experience, unbeatable.
As for Music Matters, most of their records are pretty bad sounding, but no worse than most of what is being marketed to audiophiles these days. Here are some of our reviews and commentaries for their crappy remasters.
Lifeless? Of course it is.
The records being made by the companies operating today have sound that is more often than not dead as a doornail.
It’s positively shameful, especially considering the quality of the original recordings.
Thanks for writing,
Best, TP
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