Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca and London Available Now
UPDATE 2026
Reviewed in 2010 so take what we say with a large grain of salt. Dutch pressings are rarely the way to go.
This Dutch Import is the best sounding copy I have ever heard. It is dead silent and rich!
Big spacious hall sound. Lovely mid-hall perspective. Very smooth and sweet.
You can listen to music like this for hours and never get tired — the opposite of your typical Classic Records pressing.
Hot Stamper Pressings on Decca and London Available Now
This London Whiteback LP (CS 6594) has Super Hot Stamper sound on side two, which is where the Dvorak Serenade for 10 wind instruments, cello and bass can be found. It has lovely space and depth, with dead on tonality and lots of Tubey Magic.
If you love the sound of wind instruments (and who doesn’t? British Band Classics springs immediately to mind as one of the most enjoyable classical recordings I own), then this just may be the classical chamber recording for you.
We reviewed this recording using a single pressing back in 2011. We don’t do things like that anymore, but we have to admit that we often did things that way back then. Everybody else did them that way too, and we see no evidence that they have adopted any of our methods
Until about twenty years ago we had no idea how incomplete and inadequate our understanding of any title could be with only a single copy on hand. When we began doing shootouts in 2004, immediately it became obvious that only a stack of cleaned pressings allowed us to recognize what a recording’s strengths and weaknesses might be.
More to the point, it offered us the opportunity to clearly identify the best record in the group — the pressing whose superior sound quality stands out above all the others. (We call such records White Hot Stampers and put them in this section if at least one side earns a 3+ grade.)
These “record experiments” taught us many important lessons. The process of playing copy after copy of the same record and detailing the specific differences we heard forced us to become better listeners.
Through this work, carried out over the course of many years, we learned that there is only one way to find better sounding records. Everything else is a guess, just like our review of this London was.
This is one of Rudy Van Gelder’s triumphs and one of the best Jimmy Smith albums we’ve ever heard. All of side one and the last cut of side two sound stunning! This is dynamic, big speaker sound.
Lots of old Verves weren’t mastered right, but this one was. It’s as good as it gets — it’s right up there with Bashin’.
RVG did not record this entire album. Some songs are recorded by other engineers and don’t have the dynamic slam that his do but the best tracks are amazing.
Hot Stamper Pressings of Music Conducted by Ansermet Available Now
UPDATE 2026
This is a very old commentary so take it for what it’s worth. We no longer buy mono pressings of orchestral recordings from the golden age. The best stereo pressings are just so much better.
The stereo set (CSA 2201) came out in 1958. We appreciate the sound quality that stereo makes possible after having heard the mono.
However, there is nothing wrong with the recording, which was made for both stereo and mono in 1957.
In fact, 1957 just happens to be a wonderful year for analog recordings, as evidenced by this amazing group of albums, all recorded or released in that year.
DEMO QUALITY SOUND for this early London Mono pressing.
Side one of this record sounds incredible! The sound is absolutely top notch. Check out the brass — it has the solid weight of the real thing.
This is the kind of record that the mono cartridge owners of the world worship. And for good reason. But you don’t need to have a mono cartridge to hear how good — in fact, how much BETTER — this copy sounds than the stereo pressing.
UPDATE 2026
Years ago we wrote:
Don’t expect to see another copy of this album on the site any time soon. Pressings of this album are extremely rare in any condition, and this one not only sounds great but plays surprisingly well for RCA in 1958.
For us audiophiles both the sound and the music here are enchanting. If you’re looking to demonstrate just how good 1958 All Tube Analog sound can be, this killer copy may be just the record for you!
Unfortunately, it seems as though at least 80% of the Eartha Kitt albums on Living Stereo that we pick up end up being too noisy to sell.
Unless we luck into an exceptionally quiet copy with good sound, for now we give up.
Yes, we’re throwing in the towel. Never again.
Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Pressings Available Now
UPDATE 2025
This is a very old review and one that may not be especially accurate as it was written before the advent of the modern record shootout. Pick this one up for cheap if you like though.
Our current favorite pressing of the Peer Gynt Suite is the one Fjeldstad recorded for Decca.
1959 was a phenomenal year for audiophile quality recordings – as of 2025 we’ve auditioned and reviewed more than one hundred and seventy titles, and there are undoubtedly a great many more that we’ve yet to discover.
We think there are close to 50 that belong in any audiophile record collection worthy of the name.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Sergei Prokofiev
UPDATE 2026
What you see below is a very old review. After hearing better performances with better sound, we are no longer big fans of this recording, but if you can pick one up for cheap — which is very doable as this record should be sitting in the bins for under ten bucks — you might want to give it a try.
We recommend you look for the earlier STS label, Silver and Black, and avoid the later Orange and Black label pressings, as those are almost always inferior sounding.
We prefer Previn’s recording for EMI but this one is very good and easily found in record stores.
Our Old Review
SUPERB SOUND! This Orange and Black label British pressing has sweet strings, powerful dynamics, plenty of depth and a wide soundstage.
It’s major faults are a lack of deep bass and some congestion during loud passages.
Hot Stamper Pressings of of the Music of Brahms Available Now
UPDATE 2026
We reviewed this recording using a single early pressing back in 2012. We don’t do things like that anymore, but we have to admit that we often did things that way back then.
We reviewed this recording using a single early pressing back in 2012. We don’t do things like that anymore, but we have to admit that we often did things that way back then.
Until about twenty years ago we had no idea how incomplete and inadequate our understanding of any title would turn out to be with only a single copy on hand. When we began doing shootouts in 2004, immediately it became obvious that only a stack of cleaned pressings allowed us to recognize what a recording’s strengths and weaknesses might be.
More to the point, it offered us the opportunity to clearly identify the best record in the group — the pressing whose superior sound quality stood above the others.
These “record experiments” taught us many important lessons. The process of playing copy after copy of the same record and noting the differences we heard made us better listeners.
Through this work, carried out over the course of many years, we learned that there was only one way to find better sounding records. Everything else is a guess, just like our review of the record above was a guess.
UPDATE 2026
The original, favorable review for this album you see further down is from at least ten years ago and probably more like fifteen.
When we revisited the copies we had of this title more recently, we felt the sound was badly lacking in many ways, with no real extension up top nor much weight to the bottom, the very definition of boxy sound.
Many of the vintage classical records we audition these days have sound that we liked well enough in the past but now no longer meet our standards.
Those pressings might sound fine on an old school stereo (or its modern equivalent), but we have something very different to play our records on, courtesy of the many revolutionary changes in audio that have dramatically altered the quality of analog playback over the last twenty five years.
We much prefer Boskovsky’s performances for Decca for waltzes and the like, by Strauss or anyone else.
TAS List Thoughts
We wanted to like the record, it’s on the TAS List for cryin’ out loud, shouldn’t it at least be pretty good?
It very well may be amazingly good, we can’t say it is or it isn’t. In order to be more sure of our opinion, we would need a great deal more data to back it up. We would need to have a large number of copies on hand, clean them all and play them in order to make it possible to find the killer stamper that may be hiding in the pile, assuming one might be.
Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now