Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jimi Hendrix Available Now
One of the worst things those dummies at Classic ever did. The mono mix is just plain awful.
Their reissue of the mono mix is flat and dry with practically no Tubey Magic whatsoever.
It positively screams “CHEAP REISSUE.” That two word description reminds me of this record, although to be fair the sound is quite a bit worse on the Hendrix.
Is it the worst version of the album ever pressed? It almost has to be, doesn’t it?
This copy of the Shaft Soundtrack has wonderful sound throughout, and that ain’t no jive talkin’! We collected a bunch of these and after putting them through the shootout process we were delighted to find out that some of the material on here can sound amazingly good on the best pressings. What earned these four sides such good grades? They’re simply richer, fuller and livelier than most. They’re also more open and transparent, with notably improved clarity, much less smear, and tighter, more note-like bass.
Find your favorite song on here, drop the needle, and see if the dramatically improved sound doesn’t bring back some special memories, and maybe even inspire you to bust a move. (more…)
Jack Higgins was the engineer for these sessions. He recorded Chet Baker’s brilliant Chet album the same year, as well as many other albums for Riverside in New York in the 50s and 60s.
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.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim Available Now
Although I have been a big fan of this album at least since the 90s, it took us years to get around to doing a shootout. We were pleasantly surprised at just how well recorded this album is.
Credit engineer Phil Ramone for correctly capturing the sound of every instrument here: the guitars, piano, flutes, strings, drums, percussion instruments — everything has the natural timbre of the real thing. I used to think this recording erred on the bright side, but not the Hot Stamper copies. They are tonally Right On The Money. (When the balance lacks lower midrange the sound gets lean, which causes the strings to seem brighter than they really are, a not uncommon problem with some of the pressings we played.)
Claus Ogerman
The string arrangements by the phenomenally talented producer/arranger Claus Ogerman surely contribute a great deal to the beauty of this music, and much of its “feel.”. This is the man who made Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim such an original and powerful departure in Sinatra’s body of work. He continued to work with Jobim on a number of follow-up albums, including A Certain Mr. Jobim (1967) and Wave (1967). From 1963-67 he arranged some 60-70 albums for Creed Taylor’s Verve and then went on to work with him extensively at CTI.
And what would “Breezin’” be without Ogerman’s lush strings? Not to be too unkind, but probably just another George Benson album.
If you want a recording that is going to put your system to the test,this is that record!
The violin is real. The piano is also very well recorded, and the balance between those two instruments on this recording is perfection.
We’re big fans of Ry Cooder here at Better Records, and it’s always fun to hear the eccentric instruments and arrangements he and his cohorts cook up. Of course, it’s even more fun when you have a great sounding pressing like this one that lets you hear what the musicians were up to. (more…)
Hot Stamper Pressings of of the Music of Brahms Available Now
UPDATE 2026
We reviewed this recording using a single early pressing back in 2012. We don’t do things like that anymore, but we have to admit that we often did things that way back then.
We reviewed this recording using a single early pressing back in 2012. We don’t do things like that anymore, but we have to admit that we often did things that way back then.
Until about twenty years ago we had no idea how incomplete and inadequate our understanding of any title would turn out to be with only a single copy on hand. When we began doing shootouts in 2004, immediately it became obvious that only a stack of cleaned pressings allowed us to recognize what a recording’s strengths and weaknesses might be.
More to the point, it offered us the opportunity to clearly identify the best record in the group — the pressing whose superior sound quality stood above the others.
These “record experiments” taught us many important lessons. The process of playing copy after copy of the same record and noting the differences we heard made us better listeners.
Through this work, carried out over the course of many years, we learned that there was only one way to find better sounding records. Everything else is a guess, just like our review of the record above was a guess.
This is some of the best sound Dave Mason ever managed, so let’s give credit where credit is due, to the amazing Al Schmitt. He recorded and mixed this album and he sure knocked it out of the park.
We know his work well; he happens to have engineered many albums with superb sound: Aja, Hatari, Breezin’, Late for the Sky, Toto IV – the guy’s won 13 Grammies, which ought to tell you something.
Side one of the album is recorded in the studio, side two live from the Troubador. Many of the songs on side one would be recorded again by Mason, and not as well in most cases. Mastered at Artisan (where Kevin Gray got his start, what the hell happened to that guy?) by none other than the owner, Bob MacLeod, this record got the A Team treatment from start to finish. (more…)
