Our Guide to Record Collecting for Audiophiles
UPDATE 2026
Just ran into an old commentary from 2004 that I had somehow managed to save all these years. The reason I can date it that specifically is because I mention both The Disc Doctor record cleaning fluid and Hot Stampers.
We discovered the Disc Doctor record cleaning fluid in the late-90s, so when we started doing shootouts in 2004, all we had to clean records was The Disc Doctor and a VPI 16.5. By 2007 we had the Odyssey machine and were using the Prelude Record Cleaning System. The combination of those two helped to raise our level of playback a level or two.
We were finally off to the races.
The backstory to the the commentary below would have had something to do with a review I read for the new Heavy Vinyl pressing of Deja Vu from Classic Records. (For those who love the music — and that should mean pretty much everybody reading this blog — here is what a top quality Deja Vu sounds like. In a word, amazing.)
What the commentary below makes clear is that we had a pretty good handle on record pressing variations a number of years before the Hot Stamper thing really took off. It wasn’t long before finding Hot Stamper pressings would take over the business, 2007 or so, and by 2011 we were selling nothing but. They were clearly the best sounding pressings we had ever heard, and we found them using the shootout methods we’d developed over the previous ten years or so.
DATELINE 2004
As those of you who have been reading my stuff for a while know, the last thing you can do is rely on the label to tell you if a record has good sound. This same reviewer mentions how his two original Atlantic pressings have the same label, but somehow sound different (!), as if this makes no sense.
Anybody who knows anything about record collecting knows that labels are a poor guide to better sound. The stamper numbers in the dead wax are the only good visual guide, and even they are a pretty poor substitute for playing the record.
You may have noticed that we are finally getting around to putting some Hot Stamper pressings on the site for sale. Do you know how many Hot Stamper copies of records I have bought, only to play them and find that they don’t sound good? Boatloads.
For a Hot Stamper record to sound good, everything, and I mean everything, has to go right at every stage of production. No, it’s actually worse than that. Everything has to go right, and then the original owner has to have cared for the record in such a way that the sound has not been degraded, whether by a bad needle, grinding fingerprints and dust into the vinyl, a bad turntable setup, bad cleaning fluids and anything else you can think of that can do damage to the grooves (one per side).
And you think you can tell all this by looking at a label? Get a grip.
There exists a Hot Stamper for Crosby Stills and Nash’s first album. I find one with the good stampers at most about once a year. The sound is gorgeous. The voices are sweet like you would not believe. (Hint: it’s not an original, but an early reissue.)
I got very excited when I came across a minty looking one for about five bucks recently. Got home, cleaned it up, played it and went “What?” Crosby Stills and Nash have a head cold? How did this happen I muttered to myself while staring at the ground. Veiled, dull, tonally unbalanced, the sound was crap. But these are the good stampers!
Sad to say, I’m here to tell you that record collecting is a whole lot tougher than it looks, if by “record collecting” you mean “finding the best sounding pressings.” That’s what I mean by it, because I don’t collect for any other reason than to hear the music reproduced properly. Which means 98% of the time it’s on a piece of used vinyl that someone has to take the time to clean up and play.
And then along comes the Disc Doctor record cleaning system, which means you now have to go back and reclean all the better sounding pressings you own to see which ones really sound the best now that the gunk is out of the grooves and the true sound can finally be heard.
And then you get a new tonearm (subtitute any other piece of equipment here as needed) and you find that the records you thought were a little tizzy on top are actually amazingly extended now that you can track the grooves better, and you have to play all the better sounding copies of the album in order to… Well, you get the picture.
If I make it sound like work, it is, but it has to be fun too, or you’ll never find the time and energy to do it. Playing a recording of music you know well and hearing that music sound better than you’ve ever heard it before is a thrill, and it’s a thrill you can only get one way: with a better record, or a Better Record.
We liked the name seventeen years ago when we got started in this business (me and the rat in my pocket), and we see no reason to change it. The only high resolution format that consistently delivers the goods (and by that I mean the emotional goods) is the LP. I don’t expect that to change any time soon, not even in the next twenty years. By then I’ll be 70 so who cares?
[I just turned 72. For some reason, I still care.]
CD, SACD, DVD, they all do some things right from time to time, but only one format gives you everything — vinyl. Accept no substitutes. Why would you?
Further Reading
What an amazing commentary this is, in so many ways.
Aw, shucks, we’re just doing our job, right?
Thanks for commenting.
TP