Pursuing Perfect Sound with ab_ba

One of our best customers has lots to say about his Hot Stampers, both the ones he likes and the ones he doesn’t. Which is fine by us. To each his own.

“We could appreciate every tiny decision Heiftez was making. When the orchestra came in, it was thunder.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

A good customer wrote us the following letter. It’s mostly about the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and The Wall.  (Emphasis added.)

Dear Tom,

The next best thing to a big pile of Better Records is a friend with a big pile of Better Records.

Last night my good buddy Bill came over with a selection from his recent spate of hot stamper purchases.

You remember Bill, right? He’s the friend who knew I was into stereos, so he came over for some advice about how to assemble a top of the line modern digital playback system.

I played him my White Hot Stamper of Rumours, he buried his face in his hands, and took a deep plunge into building himself a Port-recommended vinyl playback rig, and he’s now a Better Records aficionado.

First up, we played his White Hot Stamper of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. It was magnificent. We could appreciate every tiny decision Heiftez was making. When the orchestra came in, it was thunder.

Then, we played my Super Hot Stamper. Same stamper, and mine had quieter vinyl, but man, the sound just wasn’t the same. Mine was more shrill (but slightly), and the orchestra was less meaty (but slightly.) I’ve always loved my copy, still do, but the White Hot Stamper clearly improved on it. We were simply hearing more music.

I know a lot of people say they have great sounding records. For anybody who thinks they may have stumbled across a hot stamper out in the wild, I have one simple test: turn it up. If it’s a true White Hot Stamper, you just want to keep turning up the volume. If you get to the point where you say, “actually, that’s a little too loud. Let me just dial it back a little. Ah, that’s better.” Well then, you don’t have a hot stamper on your hands. White Hot Stampers just invite you to play them loud. There’s no limit, they just cohere without getting shrill or strident. It’s a truly strange effect, and until you hear it for yourself, you won’t believe me.

Next up, we put on Bill’s White Hot Stamper of The Wall. Very loud, of course.

It was probably the best my stereo has ever sounded.

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Letter of the Week – “…the WHS is huge and clear. It had ALL the positive attributes I heard in the others.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing of Dark Side of the Moon he purchased a while back:

Dear Tom and Fred,

This is one of those records where I already had a handful of well-regarded pressings. How intriguing that it was such an obscure pressing that won your shootout! [1]

I compared the WHS to my early US pressing (Ken Perry mastered [2]), my MoFi [3], a Japanese “blue triangle” pressing, and of course, the 2016 remaster [4].

Sure, there are tons of sought-after pressings that go for prices even more exorbitant than what I paid you, none of which I’ve heard, so I guess it’s not a proper shootout. But, at least among the ones I have, the WHS bested them all handily. In each of the others I was able to find something that I could appreciate, that on its own compared well to the WHS. This is such a great, and well-recorded, album that any pressing of it is going to have something worthwhile to offer.

The Japanese pressing came closest to the WHS. [Doubtful we would agree with you on the merits of this Japanese pressing. We rarely like them, and we like them less with each passing year.]

At the other end of the spectrum the 2016 remaster, noted for its great bass, just sounded clogged and thudding [5].

Compared to each of them, the WHS is huge and clear. It had ALL the positive attributes I heard in the others. Is it 15x better than my next-best copy? Objectively, probably not. But, subjectively, it must be, since I’m keeping it.

Since the hot stamper arrived the day after my Legacy Signature III’s got here, it was one of the first records I played on them. What a great pairing they are! 

This was of course the first mini-shootout I’ve done using the Legacys. What a great window into a record these speakers provide. I switched back to my Bowers and Wilkins 805s and re-ran the shootout, just to see if my impressions would still align. They did, with the hot stamper providing more vividness and a bigger sound than the other pressings did, even on the B&Ws.

But on the bigger speakers the hot stamper stands apart from the others by a wider margin.

Thank you both for all the great records you find, and thank you Tom for the stereo advice. You keep doing what you’re doing, and I’ll keep doing what I’m doing.

Aaron

Aaron,

Glad to hear you are a Legacy man now. We love our Legacy Speakers and can’t imagine doing shootouts without them. (The old ones, not the newer models.) The Big Speaker sound, at loud levels, is what allows a record like Dark Side of the Moon to be every bit the immersive experience we know it can be if you have a top quality pressing to play. Now you know it too.

And thanks for doing the shootout so that you know exactly what our best copies of Dark Side are capable of. If you make any improvement to your system, be sure to go back to this Dark Side and hear the change for yourself.

Then play any of these other pressings and note how the gap has widened. That is our experience and we expect you will find the same differences in your listening room as well.

The following notes may be of general interest:

[1} Obscure pressings that sound better than everything else are our bread and butter here at Better Records.

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Doing Shootouts for Other Genres of Music

Record Collecting for Audiophiles from A to Z

Jack contacted us recently about doing shootouts for the kinds of records that we rarely do shootouts for:

Hello Tom,

I am thinking about opening an online record store based on the same hot stamper methodology as Better Records, only I focus on genres that you do not cover, such as rap, metal, punk, hardcore, post-punk, noise and other niche genres.

Thus I am trying to get a sense of what it would take to make this project work. Did you have a reputation in the audiophile community prior to starting Better Records that drove people to your store?

The other question I am wondering is about equipment. Do you think that one has to have extremely high-end equipment (e.g., $5000 tone arms and the like) to properly tell whether a record is a hot stamper?

Finally, do you think that your methodology could work on LPs released post-1990, when there are far fewer variants of an album available? Any insight you could offer would be much appreciated.

Regards, Jack

Jack,

You need to follow our approach to the letter. The basics of it can be found here.

For a deeper dive, here is where you will find more helpful advice on doing your own shootouts

This would be a good budget to start with:

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Hot Stampers May or May Not Cause Cognitive Dissonance

Acquiring Better Sounding Records – Hot Stampers Versus Collectible Vinyl

Hot Stampers don’t always cause cognitive dissonance because some people never developed much in the way of critical listening skills. There are also other reasons, some of which we discuss below.

Without knowing what to listen for on a record, what are you left with? What aural information can you rely on?  None it seems.

If that is the case, all you can really go by are what your heroes — the mastering engineers who make audiophile recors — tell you. And these days you have so many great ones to choose from!

In the letter below I discuss with my good customer Aaron how to help his friend Jack come to a better understanding of the differences between various pressings of records, vintage LPs like the ones we sell, and the ones that have been remastered on Heavy Vinyl, like the one he already owns.

Head to head comparisons are the best way — practically the only way — to determine what a particular LP sounds like relative to another pressing. Basically, we want to know what the various strengths and weaknesses are for each of the pressings we are playing against each other.

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Advice for Testing So-Called “Hot Stampers”

What Are Hot Stamper Pressings and How Can I Find My Own?

UPDATE 2026

You might find the comments at the end of this one interesting.

Contemplating trying a money-back-guaranteed Hot Stamper pressing? Our good customer ab_ba has some advice on one of the best ways to go about it. He writes:

Pick out a Hot Stamper on the better-records site. (Choose something you know well, that you already have a few copies of. Pick a Super Hot Stamper, so it’s not absurdly expensive.)

First, see how it compares to your other copies. If it’s not as good, send it back, full refund, no questions asked.

Next, look at the matrix number on the Hot Stamper, and buy three copies on discogs in NM or VG+ condition with the same matrix. Or, go hunt around your local shop for same.

Then, once you get them, clean them to the best of your ability and then do another shootout. Just do it quick – you’ve got 29 days.

If you prefer one to your Hot Stamper, send back the Hot Stamper. No questions asked, and thank Tom for the matrix number.

I’ve done this a couple of times, and every time, I’ve kept the Hot Stamper. Wasted my time and money is all I did. That, and convinced myself Tom’s records are worth what he charges, in that I can’t get records that sound that good for less money.

Dear ab_ba,

Good advice, let’s hope some audiophiles take it. They might just find the world of better sound that’s waiting for them the way you did.

And if not, then they get their money back, no harm, no foul.

Thanks for writing,

TP

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Letter of the Week – “I called off a meeting, poured a whiskey, and let it rip.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bruce Springsteen Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a White Hot Stamper pressing he purchased recently:

Dear Tom,

My White Hot Stamper of Born in the USA arrived today.

I called off a meeting, poured a whiskey, and let it rip.

How nice to be able to finally hear one of the albums I’ve listened to the most in my life.

Hearing where the backing vocalists are standing on Darlington County was a revelation.

Aaron

Dear Aaron,

Thanks for your letter.

Yeah, Born in the U.S.A. is a tough one — so much distortion and processing make for a tough shootout!

We would be foolish to make claims for “audiophile quality” sound on Springsteen’s albums — they are what they are. The simple claim we make for our Hot Stampers is that the best of them sound as good as the album can sound, and we back that up with a 100% Money Back guarantee.

Born in the U.S.A. is yet another example of an album that must be graded on a curve.

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Letter of the Week – “Thank you for getting me off the ‘original pressings are the best’ gerbil wheel”

Hot Stamper Pressings that Sound Their Best on the Right Reissue

One of our good customers had this to say about some records he purchased locally, not even from us! (Bolding has been added.)

By the way, have I thanked you yet for getting me off the “original pressings are the best” gerbil wheel? I’ve now got a stack of two-fers that I paid $15 apiece for that sound fantastic.

Yup, the very same records that Fremer ridiculed you for selling. [1]

I can buy a copy of an original pressing of Saxophone Colossus [2] for $300 on discogs with absolutely no notes on how the music sounds and no return policy. Or, I can get it for $15 in a twofer at my neighborhood shop, and I can’t imagine it sounding better. Folks just aren’t buying records for the way they sound. It’s nuts.

Tom, you’re like a consultant. It’s almost like I pay you for your knowledge and guidance by buying records from you, but you’re giving information away for free to anybody willing to listen.

In another letter ab_ba added this thought after posting on the Hoffman forum and watching the LP 45 guy video with Geoff Edgers as his guest:

What a learning experience the last couple of days have been for me. I am just really surprised how little interest in evidence and objectivity my co-hobbyists have proven to have. I know we are in a very anti-objective time right now, but it’s actually almost scary how pervasive it seems to be.

For my own journey into vinyl, a tremendous amount of exploration, experimentation, and tinkering have been essential. I can’t imagine going about it any other way. I’ve begun to wonder what on earth all these other chaps are doing. I mean, does vinyl even sound better than digital on their rigs?? If you don’t try stuff out, you’ll never make progress.

Anyway, looking for open-mindedness, curiosity, and balance in this discussion is futile.

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Letter of the Week – “To think I spent all those years playing a record that was bright and edgy, none the wiser to matrix numbers and pressing variations.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Michael Jackson Available Now

Our good customer who goes by the handle ab_ba on the web wrote to us about his experience with the White Hot Stamper pressing of Michael Jackson’s Thriller he recently acquired.

Part one of his letter can be found here.

Here he tells us about the shootout he conducted, which included a “pricey Japanese pressing” and a pressing that the forums recommended as the “holy grail.”

A few weeks later, on the eve of the closing of the return window, I shot it out against the best of my other copies. They range from the copy I grew up with, one of the few records from childhood that I held onto, to a pricey Japanese pressing in great shape (purchased long ago, when I thought Japanese pressing were where it’s at), to some copies I’ve picked up over the years because they looked to be in good shape and they were just five bucks, and a pressing that the forums told me was the “holy grail.”

None stacked up to the white hot stamper. In fact, they really weren’t even close. Here’s what I found:

The copy I grew up with is bright and edgy. To think, I spent all those years playing and re-playing a record that was bright and edgy, none the wiser to matrix numbers and pressing variations.

Some other lucky kid back then was surely listening to the copy I now own. I wonder if he ever said to himself, “wow, there’s something about this record. It sounds really special.”

The pressing with a sought-after matrix code had phenomenal bass, but the vocals were recessed. I’d so easy to be impressed with those huge drums on Billie Jean, but that alone is not enough to tell you it’s a great pressing. A lot of pressings seem to get that right.

My Japanese pressing was clear and full. But too smooth. The guitars don’t bite. Also, it fatigued me by about halfway through the side. This is energetic music. It might exhaust you, but it doesn’t have to fatigue you. This is an example of where if you don’t have a white hot stamper to compare it to, you’ll just assume your version sounds as good as it can get.

Dear ab_ba,

Most Japanese pressings cater to the sound a mid-fi system would need to sound good and a hi-fi system would find disastrous. They are almost always made from dubbed tapes, which are then brightened up in the mastering phase since that is the sound that appeals to the Japanese market for some reason unknown to me. (Old school audio equipment — horn speakers and vintage tube electronics — would be my guess.)

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Letter of the Week – “Today, sitting at home, I felt like I was at a concert.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Beethoven Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently. (Emphasis added by us.)

Hi Tom,

I finally had a chance to listen to the Super Hot of Beethoven’s 5th I bought from you last month.

Tom, I am feeling really grateful to you. With your guidance, and your records, I have something I simply assumed I could never have – a stereo that can do full justice to orchestral music.

I picked this record, along with Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, as my first foray into full orchestral music on my reworked stereo assembled following your recommendations – Dynavector cartridge, EAR phono stage, Legacy speakers.

Today, sitting at home, I felt like I was at a concert.

This is saying something. I had come to believe this was just not possible. I still remember the sound and the feeling of hearing Beethoven’s 5th performed by the SF Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, about 20 years ago. Seeing it performed for the first time, I was struck by what a small number of musicians the piece calls for. Nobody needed a score, MTT didn’t hold a baton – the whole performance just had a sense of mastery, control, and passion for the music. The sound from that relatively small orchestra was overwhelming. It is this sound I’ve been longing to hear at home. Today, I heard it.

About four years ago I had the opportunity to hear the Berlin Philharmonic play Tchaikovsky’s 5th from a really good seat. Hearing orchestral music performed unamplified in a venue with good acoustics has always led me to believe that it’s not possible to create that on a stereo.

I had come to believe that all stereos distort. When live orchestral music gets loud, it coheres. The sound of a symphony at full volume is just something no stereo or recording can provide. Or so I thought. I figured it was just one of the realities of musical reproduction.

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Letter of the Week – “The second-best place to have a stack of Better Records is on your friend’s shelf.”

Phenomenally Good Sounding White Hot Stamper Pressings Available Now

Dear Tom,

Yesterday I got to have an experience I’ll bet very few people – apart from you and your staff, of course – have ever had: a White Hot Stamper shootout!

My buddies David and Bill have amassed themselves quite a collection of Better Records, and among us, we now have multiple WHSs of the same titles. What an incredible bounty. Also, we’ve all copied your stereo, with Robert’s guidance and fine-tuning, to the best of our abilities. This allows us to do some dead-serious listening and comparing.

What did I learn? First, you are rock-solid reliable. A White Hot Stamper is a White Hot Stamper. They are all simply incredible sounding records.

Which leads me to rule #2: No two records sound the same. Yes, that even goes for white hot stampers. One copy will have better placement of the musicians; the other copy will have a richer tone. All white hot stampers sound fantastic, and also, they all sound subtly different. It’s just an amazing thing to hear for yourself.

Third, the stamper is only a part of the puzzle. The pressing is only a part of the puzzle. A few of the WHSs we own among us have the same stamper, but most of them did not. Sometimes, there was a family resemblance, like a country of origin. Also, we noticed that the majority of the WHSs we played were NOT original pressings.

It confirmed something we all learned at great expense: Chasing pressings and stampers recommended on the forums, or going based on rarity/price, is simply not a reliable guide to good sound. It lets you tell yourself you have a sought-after record, but it doesn’t allow you to conclude you have a great-sounding copy of that title. The guy on the forum might be right that his copy of that stamper sounds amazing, but that’s little guarantee the one you buy also will.

So, what’s my advice? If you’ve got a collection of hot stampers, do what I did, and invite over some buddies to listen. I’ll bet you’re going to find some people realize they just can’t go back to what they were listening to.

The second-best place to have a stack of Better Records is on your friend’s shelf.

Aaron

Aaron,

Naturally this all comes as music (ahem) to my ears.

Many years ago we noted that there are two ideas that we have found to be at the heart of building a high quality record collection.

One is to appreciate at the deepest level that no two records sound the same, which is something that every audiophile must come to learn through their own experience. You yourself have proven it once again by playing multiple White Hot Stamper pressings and noting the differences among them. It’s clear to you now, if it were ever in doubt, that even the best of the best copies of a given album do not sound exactly the same.

Instead, as you discovered, they all have strengths and weaknesses.

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