Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now
One of our good customers had this to say about a White Hot Stamper pressing of Dark Side of the Moon he purchased a recently: Bill writes:
No, not my White Hot Stamper purchase.
But, rather, my purchase of an original UK edition, the so-called Holy Grail of pressings.
When I purchased the White Hot Stamper of Dark Side of the Moon a couple of weeks ago (for what seemed like an outrageous amount of money), I thought I’d compare it to the version I had, the 50th Anniversary, and send it back for a refund if it didn’t blow me away. It was the same strategy I had used several years ago when I bought a White Hot Stamper of Led Zeppelin II.
And the same thing happened to me this time that happened last time—the White Hot Stamper blew me away! It was so transparent. I heard things in the mix I had never heard before. The bass was tight, and the soundstage and “air” were HUGE. It was as big of a night/day comparison as the Led Zeppelin II comparison was.
Now, the bad news, for me.
Every source I checked said the original UK pressing is far and away the best pressing of Dark Side of the Moon.
So I bit the bullet and bought a pressing on eBay. It was, as advertised, in mint condition, with almost no surface noise.
And it was AWFUL compared to the White Hot Stamper. The soundstage was tiny in comparison, the bass was bloated, and overall it sounded muffled and lifeless. And, unfortunately, that UK pressing didn’t come with a money back guarantee. So I have a nice collectible on my hands that I will never listen to.
As Tom has pointed out many times, there are variations within pressings, so it might be that I just got a dud of a first pressing. One thing I have learned, though, is that even your outrageously priced White Hot Stampers, and maybe even especially your outrageously priced White Hot Stampers, are, in fact, a good bargain. Audio nirvana.
Bill
Bill,
Thanks for your letter, and sorry to hear you threw all that money away on a white elephant you will never find any use for. Unlike our records, at least it has some collector value. Discogs and ebay are your two best options for helping it find a new home.
The one good use I can think of for it would be to use it as a comparison pressing next time somebody comes over to your house and wants to hear the album. You could do a little shootout for them, just to see how far their jaw drops when the needle hits the groove on your Hot Stamper pressing.
I’m not going to say “I told you so,” but what I will do is refer you to the scores of commentaries on this blog telling you not to believe a word you read written by any of the self-described experts in the world of record collecting. Their advice just cost you a big chunk of dough. Now will you believe me?
Putting your faith in their record knowledge often turns out to be a one-way ticket to an expensive, non-refundable lesson. It has been for me anyway. I got hold of an early UK Dark Side and was disappointed too, though probably not as disappointed as you were, as mine was merely mediocre, maybe somewhere in the 1.5+ range.
And if we hadn’t been there, we probably wouldn’t have learned much of anything about records, because experience is by far the best teacher. When it comes to audio and records, it’s practically the only teacher, something we have tried to change, with limited success, through this blog.
Our Dark Side of the Moon Breakthrough
In 2015, after having played various incarnations of the album for more than fifty years, we stumbled upon a copy that blew our minds, showing us a path that we had no idea existed. Since that time we have practically travelled no other.
A substantial amount of the time, breakthroughs come about due to the conventional wisdom being wrong — something we would have no way of knowing until we ran enough experiments to prove it wrong.
When it comes to records, the needle is the only thing that can serve as reliable guide. (We’ve found the 17dx to be especially fit for our purposes.)
We certainly have no reason to put any faith in the pundits and the self-described experts.
What makes them experts? We have no idea and they never say. They just seem to “know” things, but they never tell us how they know them.
We do. We can’t shut up about all the stuff we know!
No concept is more fundamental to collecting the best sounding pressings than to be able to test records to find out if the received wisdom you are using as a guide is right, wrong or somewhere in-between.
Yours turned out to be wrong. Ours turned out to be right. It cost you a lot of money to find that out, but if I may be so bold, in the grand scheme of things, the knowledge you gained is priceless.
Best, TP
P.S.
“Anything worth doing is worth doing badly at first.”
GK Chesterton
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