*Arcana – Stamper Info

Some audiophiles complain that our reluctance to give out stamper information is selfish. We think that’s not fair.

We admit that we rarely give out the stamper numbers for the pressings that win shootouts — we paid a high price in time and effort to discover them — but we do give out a great deal of information for records that did not sound especially good to us, a free – and valuable! — service from your friends at Better Records.

Out of Polarity Stampers for Bang-Baaroom Revealed

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Dick Schory

Presenting another one of the many pressings we’ve discovered with reversed polarity on some copies.

An amazing discovery from Better Records. Many copies of this album are have their polarity reversed on side two (the side with Buck Dance, one of the better tracks on that side and a great track for testing).

We had two 4s copies of the album and both of them had side two out of polarity.  

UPDATE

7s on side two is out of polarity too.

Just played one today. There’s practically no real top end extension until you reverse the polarity.

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For the Mendelssohn and Prokofiev Violin Concertos‎, These Are the Stampers to Avoid

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin

None of the White Dog pressings we played in our most recent shootout were better than mediocre, and the 70s Red Seal pressings were uniformly awful as well.

We had two different side ones with 8s stampers, and two different sides twos with 5s and 7s, respectively. (One of our Shaded Dogs had a 5s side two but it sounded quite a bit better than the White Dog side two with 5s.)

There are quite a number of other records that we’ve run into over the years with obvious shortcomings.

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Shootout Winning Stampers for Schubert’s Ninth Revealed!

More of the Music of Franz Schubert

Looking to pick up a Hot Stamper on your own?

Easy — all the best Decca copies in our shootout were mastered by Ted Burkett and were incribed with the stampers 5G/7G.

I suppose it’s only fair to point out that all the worst copies had those same stampers.

There were a few others as well — it was quite a big shootout — but most of those ended up in the middle of the pack.

And here you thought I was actually being helpful.

But we are being helpful. We’re sharing with you an important truth.

Stamper numbers only tell part of the story, and they can be very misleading, in the same sense that a little knowledge is sometimes a dangerous thing.

To know what a record sounds like you have to play it.

This is a subject near and dear to us here at Better Records, and that has been the case for many decades.

We discuss it at length in a commentary you may have seen on the site called the book of Hot Stampers.

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Our Shootout Winning Stampers for Gaite Parisienne

More of the Music of Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)

UPDATE 2026

Our favorite performance of Gaite Parisienne is the one from Readers Digest. (Don’t bother to look for it on our site. We never have any stock as it is too hard to find and usually too noisy for most audiophiles.)

In 2004 we wrote:

11S/10S are the best stampers we have found for this amazing DEMONSTRATION QUALITY record!

I think that information still holds up.

I can also tell you that 5S/5S has never impressed us much. We’re not sure if it’s bad enough to belong in the bad shaded dog category, but audiophiles would be wise to give it a miss at anything over a nominal price.

Side 1 plays nearly NM without a pop! Side 2 opens with a half inch scratch. But think about it — isn’t one side about the right amount for this kind of music? Do you really need to play side 2 after hearing side 1? This copy gives you a good portion of the music with AMAZINGLY GOOD SOUND.

This 1954 2-track recording is RCA’s first stereo recording of the work.

1954. Can you believe it? Four mics and two channels and it blows away 90% of all the classical recordings ever made.

Some old record collectors and tube equipment lovers [not so much anymore] say classical recording quality ain’t what it used to be. This record proves it.

(And this record proves that sometimes old records just sound like old records.)

Brahms / Sonatas Nos. 2 & 3 / Rubinstein and Szeryng – Reviewed in 2010

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now

3S/4S RCA Shaded Dog. Third in a series of masterpieces for violin and piano.

This is one of the pressings we’ve discovered with Reversed Polarity.

The sound is actually quite decent when you INVERT the ABSOLUTE PHASE. If you cannot or will not do that, this record will not sound good — it’s somewhat hard and bright.

This is an Older Classical/Orchestral Review

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The D4/D5 Stereo Pressings Are Just Awful on My Fair Lady

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring Shelly Manne Available Now

In our experience, the Black Label stereo originals with D4/D5 stampers are terrible sounding.

With those stampers, My Fair Lady is undoubtedly a hall of shame pressing, as well as another early pressing we’ve reviewed and found wanting.

Both sides graded “No,” our not-especially-technical term for a record that sounds really bad.

Notes for Side One:

Track one is bright and unnatural up top. Track two is not very musical.

Notes for Side Two:

Track one is very weird sounding, thin and small.

(Obviously there was no need to play a second track.)

As you may have read elsewhere on the site, some Contemporary label originals are very poorly mastered, which should put paid to the idea that Hot Stampers are only, or even usually, original pressings.

In our most recent shootout, the second-best sounding pressing was on the early Black Label. We would love to give out the stampers for that one, but we don’t do that.

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Which One’s Pink? And What Do All Those Numbers Mean?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

This commentary was written at the dawn of the Hot Stamper revolution, circa 2006 I believe. We felt it necessary to explain why we did not give out the stamper information for the pressings we were offering.

UPDATE 2024

We’re so fascinated by the unpredictable nature of the stamper information we often discover in our daily Hot Stamper shootouts that we thought it would be a good idea to create a section on the blog just to draw attention to it. You can find it under the heading of Record Mysteries. Please to enjoy.

Our Letter from 2006

An erstwhile customer wrote to us a while back asking a question about Dark Side of the Moon: “What is the FULL stamper matrix for this record… all the way around the dead wax?”

I replied that we never give out stamper numbers for the records we sell. The only way to find out the stampers for our records is to buy them.

He then countered with this bit of information:

Well, ok. I don’t understand the logic, but it’s your show.

Floyd stampers are probably the most uniquely well documented stampers on [a site that no longer exists] that they’re pretty much common knowledge. If I understand your logic, a first pressing may not be a “Hot Stamper” while a 3rd, 4th or 5th might be. Just a function of the stars aligning when that record is pressed. So what’s the diff?

I would think this would be pretty obvious. If we say pressing X is the best, this is information that you cannot get anywhere else, certainly not on the site you linked to. The day that such a site tells you which stampers sound the best is the day that such a site can have any value to those who are not collecting for the sake of collecting, but actually want to find pressings with the best sound to play. 

The information on that site has absolutely no value to me, or to any of my Hot Stamper customers, of that I can assure you. [It no longer exists by the way. Why should it?]

If you told me what the stampers were and it was a first pressing and /or issue, it would enhance the marketability of that particular record and I would be more inclined to buy it…not that I would sell it, but just knowing it was a first press would have more value to me.

Why would you want a first pressing if it didn’t sound as good? Or, if a later pressing sounded better, why would that make any difference in your desire to buy it? Isn’t the idea to get good sound?

If you buy records principally to collect original pressings, you will end up with some awful sounding records, that I can tell you without fear of contradiction.

On the other hand, if you want the best sounding pressings, we are the only record sellers on the planet who can consistently find them for you. This is precisely the service we are able to offer, unique in the world as far as we know. 

Anyone can sell originals. Only we can sell the best sound.

Others could of course, but none of them have ever bothered to try, so the result is the same. Finding the best sound is far more difficult and far more rewarding to both the seller and the buyer, as any of our customers will tell you.

I guess the only problem for the “collector” who cares about sound as well as rarity is that your “Hot Stampers” aren’t “certified” in any way. That is, if I went to re-sell a Hot Stamper I bought from you, no one else would know it to be different from any other pressing of the same record. Ever thought about coding your records so that individual record had some kind of verifiable marking that it was a certain level of “hot stamper”???

We do have a customer who makes us fill out hot stamper certificates, but they are really of little value for resell in the real world.

Records aren’t to sell, they are to play and enjoy.

Btw, I collect for sound first, but “collectability / rarity” is up there too. My stone mint MFSL Muddy Waters Folk Singer #0005 / 5000 might fetch a couple more bucks on ebay than number 4999 say, right? I know, 4999 might sound better, but hey, a lot of people don’t have the equipment to tell the difference.

[This is where I got a little fed up and a little testy, or maybe I should say testier than usual.]

Since that is an AWFUL sounding pressing, I hope your equipment is able to tell you what is wrong with its sound. Mobile Fidelity is one of the worst labels in the history of the world; surely you don’t buy their lousy sounding records to play them? Collect them all you want, it’s your money, but who in his right mind thinks they sound any good? There are tons of commentaries on the site detailing their deficiencies. Please take the time to read them.

The fastest way to improve your record collection is to get rid of all your audiophile pressings, since only one out of every ten or twenty is even passable. If your stereo isn’t showing you how wrong the sound of those records is, it’s time to make some serious changes.

Best, 
TP

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The Music of Leonard Bernstein – White Hot Stampers Revealed!

More Stamper and Pressing Information

Looking to pick up a Hot Stamper locally on your own? Easy — all the best Decca and London copies (British only of course) are 1L on both sides.

I suppose it’s only fair to point out that all the worst copies have 1L on both sides, the reason being that all the copies are 1L on both sides, regardless of how they sound.

And here you thought I was actually being helpful. But we are being helpful. We’re sharing with you an important truth.

Stamper numbers only tell a part of the story. They can be very misleading, in the sense that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. To know what a record sounds like you have to play it.

This is a subject near and dear to us here at Better Records, and has been for many decades. We discuss it at length in a commentary you may have seen on the site called The Book of Hot Stampers.

This London Phase 4 British import has some of the most SPECTACULAR sound I have ever heard reproduced from disc. The sound is so BIG and BOLD that it handily puts to shame 95% or more of all the Golden Age Shaded Dogs, London Bluebacks, Mercury Living Presence’s, EMI’s and Decca’s we’ve ever played. If we had a Classical Top 100 list, this record would belong in a Top Ten taken from it, right near the top judging by what I heard when I played it.

If you have a system with the speed, power, and size to play this record properly (yes, you will need all three and a whole lot more), it’s hard to imagine it would not qualify as the best-sounding orchestral recording you’ve ever heard.

Demo Disc barely begins to do it justice. What sound. What music. What a record!

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Teaser and the Firecat – Our First Hot Stamper Listings (2005-6)

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

This Hot Stamper listing from 2006 is a Time Capsule of Commentaries of sorts; it contains write-ups from 2006, 2005 and 2002 all rolled into one. Out of sheer laziness we used to leave the old commentary in the listings, sort of like building the new city on the ruins of the old. For those who don’t mind excavating through the Hot Stamper thoughts of the past, please read on. 

We give out some stamper information down below for those of you who might have some Island reissues.

Notes from August 2006

DEMO DISC QUALITY SOUND of the HIGHEST ORDER!

(For pop music anyway.) Before I get into the sound of this record, let me preface my remarks by saying this is a work of GENIUS. Cat Stevens made two records which belong in the Pantheon of greatest popular recordings of all time. In the world of folky pop, Teaser and the Firecat and Tea for the Tillerman have few peers. There may be other recordings that are as good but there are no other recordings that are better.

For years I have been telling people that one day I would put up on the Web site some Hot Stamper copies of Cat Stevens’ greatest albums. Today is that day.

Last night I listened to at least fifteen of the best pressings of this album that I had available to me — we’re talking some heavy hitters here, all top quality British and American original pressings — and even though this pressing didn’t take top honors (that distinction belongs to the $500 copy we put up) — it was clearly at the top of the pack.

This is an Original Island Sunray pressing. As good as the best domestic originals are, none of them could compete with the amazing British copies that I played. I can’t explain it, but that’s the way it worked out. (more…)

12s Is Killer on Fiedler’s Gaite Parisienne from 1959

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This listing for a 12s/12s pressing is from 2008. In 2004, we liked 11s/10s quite a bit.

Our favorite performance of Gaite Parisienne is the one from Readers Digest. (Don’t bother to look for it on our site. We never have any stock as it is too hard to find and usually too noisy for most audiophiles.)

12s Hot stampers. The best sounding copy I’ve ever heard.

Jim Mitchell is famous for pointing out that many of the RCA’s that were re-recorded a few years later are inferior to their earlier counterparts.

This record is no exception.

LSC 1817 is an amazing record.

This record is merely good, with depth, soundstaging, nice string tone, etc., but not the kind of sonic fireworks to be found on the 1954 2-track recording that RCA first did of the work.

A very good Sabre Dance as a bonus, check it out. It’s the lead off track on Destination Stereo (LSC 2307) for good reason: it sounds great.

Click on this link to read more reviews and commentaries for Gaite Parisienne.

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