Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now
When it comes to Contemporary recordings, sometimes the originals are the best sounding pressings. Other times, regardless of how good the originals may seem, the best reissues, the right reissues, somehow manage to beat them.
This reality is inherent in the nature of records. The winners cannot be predicted. They can only be discovered.
That’s why we do shootouts: to find out which pressings have the best sound, not which ones should have the best sound, or used to have the best sound, or might have the best sound, or were told will have the best sound.
We not only don’t care what anybody thinks is the best, we don’t even care what we used to think was the best. The evidence is the evidence and that’s all there is to it.
Examples of reissues winning and originals winning can both be found here.
Not long ago we came across a Shootout Winning pressing of Way Out West with absolutely amazing sound. You can see the notes we took below. We described it this way:
This copy has superb 1957 Contemporary stereo sound – big, open and natural throughout. It’s one of our favorite Rollins records – one listen to this copy and you will know exactly why we love the recordings engineered by Roy DuNann.
Side One
Track One
- Weighty and rich
- Very 3-D and warm sax
- Deep note-like bass
Track Two
- Silky and transparent
- Rich, plucky bass
- Weighty
We played a bunch of copies and nothing could beat this side one. It took top honors for having exactly the qualities we described above.
It’s the right sound for this album!
All the best copies always sound this way.
Side two is another matter. We came across a side two that was slightly better than the side two you see here.
Side Two
Track One
- Very big and rich and 3-D
- No hardness
- Maybe slightly veiled
- Still, very detailed
When we played the two best copies back to back, side one of this copy came out on top, earning a grade of 3+. However, the side two of another pressing showed us there was even more midrange presence in the recording than we’d noticed the first time around.
With another copy earning a better grade for having even more midrange presence, the full 3 pluses, we felt the right grade for this side two was 2.5+.
Helpful Advice
This is exactly why we do shootouts. If you really want to be able to recognize subtle (and 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.
Triple Plus Grades
One side falling short of the full A+++ 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 23 titles as of 5/2025. Records with at least on 3+ side go in this section, and there are 127 of those as of the same date, five times as many.
You know what’s unusual about these notes?
They’re the kind of notes we’ve never written for any Heavy Vinyl reissue, even for the one that won our shootout not long ago.
They are the kind of notes that make it clear to us what a sham the modern Heavy Vinyl pressing tends to be, even those that are done right.
Robert Brook discovered a killer Way Out West not long ago which caused the heavens to open up and angels to sing. I know exactly what he talking about. It’s happened to me more times than I can remember. Lately our main listening guy, who goes by the initials RS, has had close encounters with equally amazing sounding recordings.
Robert Brook’s story:
We added some thoughts of our own in this commentary:
We think both are worth reading.