Make More Mistakes and You Will Find Better Records

mistakes_stevensx20

Skeptical Thinking Is Key to Finding Records with Audiophile Quality Sound

UPDATE 2026

We would no longer agree with the following statement:

“…most of the received wisdom handed down to record lovers of all kinds is more likely to be wrong than right.”

We recently wrote about the subject in a commentary about  conventional wisdom. There we simply point out that most of the time the conventional wisdom is right, but there is a lot more to it than that.

Audiophiles should be asking themselves the question: How would I even know whether it’s right or not?

Believing something about records because everybody else believes it is not a good approach to finding better sounding records. It’s really not a good approach to records, audio or practically anything else you care to name.

Experimental evidence trumps the advice of the reviewers, the forum posters, the youtube “cognoscenti” (scare quotes very much called for), and especially the kind of theoretical speculation audiophiles engage in as to the qualities of master tapes that few if any have ever heard.

We do things differently around here.

We put quite a number of our experimental findings on the blog for everyone to see. To date we have posted more than 60 shootout notes for vintage records and more than 40 for audiophile pressings from every major label. We’ve published the stamper information for more than 100 records as of 2026. We even go the trouble of steering audiophiles away from stampers that we know to have bad sound.

Is there anywhere else where this kind of information can be found? If you know of such a place, please contact me at tom@better-records.com.

Our Previous Commentary

Want to get better at audio and record collecting?

Try making more mistakes.

I was reading an article on the web recently when I came across an old joke Red Skelton used to tell:

All men make mistakes, but married men find out about them sooner.

Now if you’re like me and you play, think and write (hopefully in that order) about records all day, everything sooner or later relates back to records, even a modestly amusing old joke such as the one above.

Making mistakes is fundamental to learning about records, especially if you, like us, believe that most of the received wisdom handed down to record lovers of all kinds is more likely to be wrong than right.

If you don’t believe that to be true, then it’s high time you really started making mistakes.

And the faster you make them, the more you will learn the truths (uncountable in number) about records.

And those truths will set you free.

Yes, We Admit It. We Sell the “Wrong” Pressings

Think about it: perhaps as many as a third of the Hot Stamper pressings on our website are what would commonly be understood as being the “wrong” pressing — or, worse, records that should not have any hope of sounding good at all. 

  • Reissues of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin from the wrong country?
  • 60s and 70s Living Stereo reissue pressings?
  • Original Jazz Classics from the 80s?
  • Beatles records reissued in the 70s, in stereo no less!
  • Jazz “two-fers“?
  • Budget reissue classical LPs?

The list goes on and on. We’ve reviewed 200+ reissues to date worthy of the Hot Stamper designation. Some budget reissues are so good, they actually win shootouts.

Can we be serious?

Yes, we are indeed quite serious. We believe that by now we know most of the best pressings — the ones with potentially the best sound — for most of the records we regularly shootout. Over the course of decades we’ve tried copy after copy of practically every title we do.

We know which ones to avoid, which has the effect of bettering the odds of finding good sounding pressings.

It’s pretty much as simple as that.

We’ve played all the copies that are supposed to be the best, and we’ve also played the ones that aren’t supposed to be any good — late reissues, or records pressed in the “wrong” country; or cut by the “wrong” mastering engineer; or found on the second, third, or fourth labels, all wrong, don’t you even know that much?! — and against all odds we’ve kept our minds and our ears open.

Whatever pressing sounds the best, sounds the best. Whether it’s the “right” pressing according to orthodox record collecting wisdom carries no weight whatsoever with us, and never will — because that way of thinking doesn’t produce good results.

All the Answers?

mistakes_stevensx20Please don’t think we’re trying to say we have all the answers. We most certainly do not. We find pressings that beat our old favorites on a regular basis — not every day, but often enough to make trying long shots an important part of our business.

As you can see from the picture, yes, there was a time when we actually had dozens of Tea for the Tillerman’s in stock, imports and domestics, ready to be put into a shootout.

Those were the days!

Further Reading

Leave a Reply