Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca & London Available Now

We recently posted a lengthy commentary about conventional wisdom, attempting to make the case that, although the most common record collecting approaches are more often right than wrong, there is simply no way to know what approach will produce the best results for any given title.

Rather than post one exception after another — easily done, since we know literally hundreds of them — we are happy to admit that the generally accepted record collecting rules of thumb* work well for most records, with the definition of “most” being “more than half the time.”

In the case of this Mystery London, the received wisdom turns out to be right on the money. (As per our policy, please note that the Mahler album you see pictured is not the record we are discussing in this post.)

What conclusions can we draw from this information?

We would be very surprised if the earlierst pressings cut by Harry Fisher (1W/1W) can be beaten for sound. It’s possible, of course, and we will naturally continue to buy pressings with other stampers, if for no other reason than the fact that they are far more plentiful than the first pressings.

But if a 1W/1W gets offered to us at a high price, you can be sure we will jump at the opportunity to buy it and put it into a shootout.

The second one that comes to mind is that some vintage originals are not particularly well-mastered or pressed. (The 1W side twos should have sounded better than the 2+ grades they earned, but my guess is that the metal work by then was older and morn worn and just could not compete with the fresher, earlier copies, the ones with 1W side ones.)

All three of the early Deep Groove pressings with stampers other than 1W/1W did not earn Super Hot stamper grades (2+) on both sides. The only way to get top quality sound for this title is with the first pressing. And both of our 1W/1W pressings had Shootout Winning sides. (Here are some of the other albums we’ve discovered in which one set of stampers consistently win our shootouts.)

Now imagine that some company has come along and remastered the album on Heavy Vinyl for the benefit of audiophiles and music lovers alike.

If the vintage pressing you own just happens to have anything but 1W/1W stampers — you picked it up years ago because it’s an original on the Deep Groove early label and appears to be as vintage as vintage can be — you would be jumping for joy that finally the sound of the master tape has been transferred to vinyl properly after all these years.

Thank god for Kevin Gray / Bernie Grundman / Krieg Wunderlich / Chris Bellman or somebody else — pick any name you like — for the wonderful mastering work they do, bringing old records back to life.

What a service they do for the audiophile community!

Their critics must be idiots.

Sample Sizes and One Man Bands

Those of us who play a variety of pressings of the same album know where judgments of this kind come from.

They are mostly the result of sample sizes that are too small.

If you’re an audiophile reviewer operating as a one man band, which, as far as we know, is the only way any of them currently operate, your chances of getting it wrong are fairly high indeed. Here is one obvious example from a long time ago, but there are plenty more to be found under the heading of shootout malpractice here on the blog.

Just as an aside, please note that many of our customers do their own shootouts and seem to come to much more accurate assessments of the various pressings they play than any reviewers we’ve encountered. Perhaps we can take some small credit for showing them the way? I would like to think so.

How Did We Figure All of This Out?

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