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.

Born Under a Bad Sign in Mono – Maybe Passable, Maybe Not

Hot Stamper Pressings of Electric Blues Albums Available Now

The Shootout Winning early stereo pressing that we played recently was indeed a very special record. Everything we said about it in our review was true:

These are just a few of the the things we had to say in our notes: “big and tubey and 3D”…”jumping out of the speakers”…”very full vox”…”weighty and rich”…”great energy”…”so much room and detail.”

No other copy came close to this one, and we had a bunch, many of which earned minimal grades of 1.5+ because,  on this record, you really have to know what to look for in the dead wax.

But nothing of the sort can be said of the early Blue Label mono pressing we played. It was barely passable on side one, and we didn’t even bother to play side two since no pressing that earns a grade of 1+ on either side can be considered a Hot Stamper.

Here is what we heard on side one:

  • Hard and dark
  • Vocals get lost
  • Sounds a little faster (sped up)

And that was enough. Who wants to play a record with that kind of sound? Or one that’s been sped up?

If you’re one of those music lovers who’s still holding a torch for mono, Born Under a Bad Sign is not a hill you want to die on.

We personally don’t care one way or the other if any particular mono record has good sound or bad. We just play them and call them as we hear them. We called this one “meh” and recommend you steer clear of it if you are looking for good sound.

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These Stampers Can Be Good, But They Sure Don’t Win Shootouts

Hot Stamper Pressings of Classic Rock Albums Available Now

This is how we described a recent Hot Stamper pressing that we put up on the site:

Surprisingly rich and full-bodied, particularly on side one, the best copies really ROCK with big bass and punchy drums – just the right Alice Cooper sound.

The beloved title track remains the most-performed song in his concert history, and the presence on this copy will put the band right there in your listening room.

Yet another impossible-to-find record — impossible to find in clean condition, with good sound — has made it to the site, and those of you who are fans should scoop it up. It takes us about four years to find enough copies to do this shootout.

We had poor luck with the second and third label copies on this AC title. It seems that, unlike so many records we play, the originals are the only way to go on School’s Out.

The stampers you see above belong to a Green Label early pressing. It earned good, not great Hot Stamper grades.

1.5+ is four grades down from the top copy. That’s a steep dropoff as far as we’re concerned. 1.5+ only hints at how good the best copies can sound.

To see more records that earned the 1.5+ grade, please click here. (Incidentally, some of them are even on Heavy Vinyl. The better modern pressings have sometimes, if rarely, been known to earn Hot Stamper grades, and one shocked the hell out of us by actually winning a shootout. Wouldn’t you like to know which one!)

For those who might be interested, there’s more on our grading scale here.

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Another Unimpressive Reissue Pressing of Coltrane’s Music — What Is Going On?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

We had an early Blue Label Prestige mono pressing that was not as awful as the original Yellow Label mono we played, but it’s not very good either. Our grade for a record that earns one plus on both sides is passable.

Which means you could listen to it, maybe even enjoy it, but you would have no idea just how well Rudy Van Gelder recorded the sessions in 1958 that went into the making of the album, which as you know was not compiled for release until 1962.

As you can see from the notes above, it was crude, smeary and thick. We don’t sell records that sound like that.

I can’t say that most modern remastered records are crude, although some of them are, but a great many we’ve played are smeary, and almost all of them are thick — that is, lacking in transparency — to some degree. That last quality — a lack of transparency — may be the most irritating of all, a subject we discuss here.

(A great many records we’ve auditioned over the years are good for testing transparency. Those wanting to improve this aspect of their playback should consider making use of them.

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Bruch & Mozart Violin Concertos – Were We Wrong?

Living Stereo Orchestral Titles Available Now

Many years ago we wrote the following review for LSC 2472:

Superb sound. The violin is wonderful on both sides. The Mozart is absolutely gorgeous; the best I’ve ever heard it.

The orchestra on the Bruch side gets a little congested in the louder passages, which is typical for records of this era.

Laredo plays these pieces beautifully. The Bruch is an especially romantic work and his violin sings sweetly and with deep emotion throughout. The Mozart is more spritely and he plays it with the light touch it requires. You will have a hard time finding a better violin concerto record. This ranks with the best of them.

UPDATE 2024

More recently we got in a nice 1S/1S pressing that sounded thick and dark, even after a good cleaning.

Were we wrong years ago? Hard to say. That copy from many years ago is gone.

Three things to always keep in mind when a pressing doesn’t sound like we remember it did, or think it should:

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This Blueback Was Somewhat Opaque and Crude – Does that Surprise You?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Felix Mendelssohn Available Now

Presenting our latest findings from 2023:

For our most recent shootout, the original we played earned grades of 1.5+ on both sides, a grade that is the absolute minimum for a Hot Stamper pressing to be listed on the site now.

Our best reissues killed it.

The 3D/3E stampers of our early Blueback copy can probably be beaten by others — assuming there are others — but this is just not a good bet for us when it comes to Mendelssohn’s famous Third Symphony, not when there are so many other pressings with superior sound.

Our favorite performance with top quality sound is made from the same recording you see here, but on a certain budget reissue that has much better sound.

It’s very possible that the Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl pressing from 2003 pictured below would beat the original we describe. We make no claims that it doesn’t, or wouldn’t.

Our claim would be that a properly-mastered, properly-pressed version of the album is very unlikely to be bested by something from Speakers Corner, or any other label making records during the last thirty years.

What I would have played against the Speakers Corner pressing in 2003 would have been an original London Blueback, and maybe a Stereo Treasury or two. Both of them would have been obvious choices, and I was stuck making obvious choices because I simply did not understand enough about classical records at the time to do otherwise.

I confess I knew very little about the recording of the 3rd symphony back in those days, and I certainly didn’t know how good some of the right reissues could sound.

Obviously we needed to do a great deal more research and development, which we began to undertake over the course of the next twenty years in a much more serious way, making one discovery after another.

And that all happened out of the love for great sounding music on vinyl, and, every bit as importantly, because we get paid to do it.

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We Forgot How Mediocre the Originals of A Winter Romance Are

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Dean Martin Available Now

We gave a couple of early pressings another chance and they blew it!

The copies we sell as Hot Stampers are the reissues from the 60s. Here is what we had to say about a copy we posted for sale recently:

With a voice that is relaxed, smooth and warm, Dino is the perfect guy to sing these songs.

The sound of this reissue is far better than any of the originals we played, which mostly weren’t very good. Which just goes to prove (once again) that in the world of vinyl, the idea that the original will have the best sound is a pernicious falsehood.

Rich, sweet, full of ambience, dead on correct tonality, and wonderfully breathy vocals – everything that we listen for in a great record is here.

To back that up with actual stamper sheet evidence, here are the grades for the two early pressings we put in our shootout. We’d heard the originals before and never liked them, but sometimes if a particular presssing is cheap and easy to find, we give it another chance.

I think we’re done with the originals now though. They’ve let us down too many times.

Who wants to hear Dean Martin’s gorgeous baritone sounding lean, dry and recessed, or, alternately, murky, nasal, grainy and veiled?

If I didn’t know better I would suspect these originals were modern reissues. This kind of crap sound is all over the Heavy Vinyl records we play, although nobody but us ever seems to notice.

The Point Is

This serves to make a very important point that is near and dear to our hearts:

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The Domestic Stampers of 10cc’s Masterpiece Had Us Fooled for Years

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of 10cc Available Now

I haven’t run into many audiophiles who own a copy of The Original Soundtrack, or any other 10cc album for that matter.

It’s the rare person who has the the kind of system that can play a recording with such explosive dynamics.

As I have an uncontrollable habit of saying, this is the kind of record that is guaranteed to bring any audiophile stereo to its knees. 

Since that is the case, and audiophiles who build the kind of big systems in heavily-treated custom rooms to meet the challenge such recordings present are thin on the ground — very thin it seems, as I am the only one I have ever known — it stands to reason that practically no audiophiles have ever experienced the size and power of the recording as it was meant to be heard.

I thought I was doing a very good job reproducing the sound of the album, but recent research has proved that, once again, I was mistaken. Previously I had written:

The recording itself is a tour de force, the main reason I’ve been demonstrating my stereo with it for more than thirty years. The extended suite that opens side one, One Night in Paris, has ambience, three-dimensional sound effects, and incredibly dynamic multi-tracked vocals at the climax that will leave you with your jaw on the floor.

All true. But I had been playing both domestic pressings and British pressings over the course of those thirty years, and I don’t remember clearly preferring one to the other.

With our latest shootout the British pulled away from the pack in a big way, with no British pressing being beaten by any domestic competitor.

The domestic pressings ranged from very good — 2+ on both sides — to passable at best — 1+ on both sides.

I honestly used to think they were close, that they would be hard to tell apart. Those days are gone. We are operating at a whole ‘nother level, and I am glad that we are. We want to give out only the most accurate information and sell only the best sounding records.  What I had thought was true ten years ago turns out to have been off the mark.

When reality turns out to be dramatically different from what you thought it was, and you can prove it — you actually have the physical records to back up your newer, more correct understanding — that’s audio progress.

You might try proving yourself wrong more often.

Most audiophiles I have run into like having their biases confirmed, but look where that has gotten some of them — stuck in a rut. Break out of that way of thinking and you may very well find that you have broken through to another level.

Because if you don’t go out of your way to prove yourself wrong, who will?

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John Coltrane – Expression on the Green Label

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

The best pressings have huge space, size and clarity, with Tubey Magical richness befitting the 1967 recording dates of these sessions at Van Gelder Studio.

That Tubey Magic is surely long gone by now, so those of you looking for this kind of sound on a modern pressing should face facts — that ship has sailed.

The Green Label ABC/Impulse label pressings did not retain much of the magic that we heard on the  real Impulse pressings, so best to avoid them.

They’re clean but dry and small, not big and bold like the real thing. The CD is probably better.

4 stars: “Recorded at two sessions in early 1967, Expression represents John Coltrane’s final recording sessions just months before his death. It’s remarkable that [the album] is not some world-weary harbinger of death and sickness, but an endlessly jubilant affair. Even in what must have been a time of tremendous pain and darkness, Coltrane’s single-minded quest for understanding and transcendence took him to places of new exploration and light.”

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Out of Two Jazz Samba Originals, Only One Had Even One Good Side

Hot Stamper Pressings of Bossa Nova Albums Available Now

Recently we did a shootout for one of our favorite Bossa Nova albums and had this to say about it:

As you can see from the notes, both sides of our most recent White Hot shootout winning copy were doing everything right.

This is by far the best copy of the album we have ever played — we had no idea a copy could possibly sound this good and be pressed on vinyl this quiet.

Remarkably spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied – this pressing was a big step up over all of the other pressings we played in our recent shootout.

No other copy earned a better grade than 2+ on either side, and some of the originals were godawful (watch for the “wrong” stampers coming to the blog soon).

Here are the wrong stampers we aluded to above, the originals with these markings:

As you can see from the notes, these original stereo pressings can be lo-fidelity, crude and midrangey.

This serves to make a very important point that is near and dear to our hearts:

The idea (and operational premise of most record collectors) that the originals are always better is just a load of bunk.

They might be and then again they might not be. If you want better sounding records, you had better open your mind to the idea that some reissues have the potential to sound better than even the best original pressings.

These, for starters, and there are hundreds more on the blog you can read about here.

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On Barney Kessel’s Easy Like, Stick With the Earlier Contemporary Pressings

Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Albums Available Now

The Shootout Winning pressing we played in 2024 was yet another killer Barney Kessel recording from the Golden Age of Tube Recording:

Both sides of this vintage Contemporary pressing were giving us the rich, sweet and tubey MONO sound we were looking for, earning INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them

Roy DuNann (at the console on select tracks, with Val Valentin handling engineering duties on the others) always seems to get phenomenally good sound out of the sessions he recorded – amazingly realistic drums in a big room; Tubey Magical guitar tone; deep, note-like string bass, and on and on

For some reason, the guitar sound from this era of All Tube Chain Recording seems to have died out with the times – it can only be found on the best of these vintage pressings, and, as you may imagine, the better the guitar sounds, the more likely it is that the record will win our shootout

If you don’t have an electric guitar jazz record with this kind of off-the-charts Tubey Magical sound, maybe it’s time you got one

You would never know how good the recording was by playing this D14/D9 pressing on the original label.

The sound was hollow and dry with a boosted top end. The 1+ grade awarded to this side two means it’s simply not that good, early label or no early label.

This Is Why

This is why we do shootouts, and why you must do them too, if owning the highest quality pressings is important to you.

Fortunately for readers of this blog, our methods are explained in detail, free of charge.

We’ve also written quite a few commentaries to help audiophiles improve the way they think about records.

I implore everyone who wants to make progress in this hobby to learn from the mistakes we’ve made. There are 146 “we were wrong” listings on the site as of this writing, and we learned something from every damn one of them.

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