Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now
We described our most recent shootout winning pressing of Giant Steps this way:
As is so often the case, the right stampers make all the difference on this album, and these are some of the better ones, even though the label may not be the right colors.
It’s big, lively, tubey, present and very transparent – almost nothing we played could compete with it (particularly on side two). Credit superb engineering from Phil Iehle and Tom Dowd, who would work on some of Coltrane’s most iconic albums at the label.
Side two was killer in every way, and the way we know that is we played a bunch of copies and nothing could beat it. This side one took top honors for having exactly the sound we described above.
Side one is another matter. We came across a side one that was slightly better than the one you see here. When we played the two best copies back to back, side two of this copy came out on top, earning a grade of 3+. However, the side one of another pressing showed us there was even more transparency in the recording than we’d noticed the first time around.
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 be 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.
The math works like this. 3+/3+ records go in this section, which currently holds 9 titles as of 11/2026. Records with at least on 3+ side go in this section, and there are 110 of those as of that date, more than ten times as many.
Further Reading
- Favorite jazz test discs
- Jazz pressings we’ve discovered with audiophile sound
- Well recorded jazz albums from the core collection available now