Top Producers

Robert Brook Compares Different Hot Stamper Pressings of Crosby’s Must Own Debut

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Crosby Available Now

Robert Brook has a blog which he calls

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Below is a link to the review he has written for one of our favorite records, If Only I Could Remember My Name.

In this review he compares two Hot Stamper pressings, one a Super Hot, and one the next grade up from a Super, a Nearly White Hot stamper pressing.

When an amazing recording meets a system that can play it right, inevitably sparks fly, and these two copies were apparently giving off a lot of sparks.

IF ONLY I COULD REMEMBER MY NAME & The NW HOT STAMPER

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Mahler / Symphony No. 4 – Another Disappointing Shaded Dog

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Pressings Available Now

UPDATE 2026

The Decca recording with Solti from 1961 on London (CS 6217) is still the king on this title, as far as we know.

The review below is for a White Dog pressing of the Reiner performance that we’d played way back in 2007.

We’ve played others over the years, but nothing has impressed us all that much, so we are still going through the process of acquiring more copies of the London and have yet to do a shootout for them.

Our 2025 notes for LSC 2364 on Shaded Dog is that it is rich, but the strings are somewhat shrill and it has an unfortunate tendency to become more congested than we would like in the louder passages.

The sound is passable I suppose, but it’s hardly the pressing you want to play when it comes time to hear the music properly performed, and with top quality sound. This is of course the service we offer — the actual pressing that has audiophile sound with a performance to match — so we hope to see Hot Stamper pressings of the London coming to the site in 2026.

Fun Fact

Note that this recording from 1961 was rereleased on London in 1971 with a different catalog number (CS 6781) and a different cover, as well as notably inferior sound. Audiophiles would do well to avoid it.

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Thoughts on Hearing an Amazing Copy of Thriller in the 80s

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Michael Jackson Available Now

The killer copy of Thriller that we discovered in our 2006 shootout gave us a whole new appreciation for just how good the album could sound. It was a real breakthrough, and proof that significant progress in audio is just a matter of time and effort, the more the better.

Our review from 2006

I remember twenty years ago (that would be 1986) playing Thriller and thinking the sound was transistory, spitty, and aggressive.

Well, I didn’t have a Triplanar tonearm, a beautiful VPI table and everything that goes along with them back then. (More here.)

Now I can play the record.

I couldn’t back then.

All that spit was simply my table, arm, cartridge and setup not being good enough, along with all the garbage downstream from them feeding the speakers.

The record is no different, it just sounds different now. Which is what makes the record a great test. If you can play this record, you can probably play practically any pop and rock record. (Orchestral music is quite another matter.)

This Pressing Changes Everything

This pressing has a side two that’s so amazing sounding that it completely changed my understanding and appreciation of this album. The average copy is a nice pop record. This copy is a Masterpiece of production and engineering.

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In 2008 We Discovered the Best Sound for this Album

Hot Stamper Pressings of Top Quality Jazz Albums Available Now

In the early 2000’s we auditioned an amazing sounding cheap reissue pressing of this album. By 2008 we finally had enough copies to do a shootout.

The fact that we were not able to find a copy with two killer sides tells me a few different things about what may or may not have been true at the time. (2008 was early days in the world of Hot Stamper shootouts.)

One, that we may not have had a big enough pile of copies to play. This is before Discogs made it easy to find a record like this, so chancing upon copies locally was very much a hit or miss deal, or

Two, we couldn’t clean them as well as we can now, or

Three, we couldn’t play them as well as we can now, or

Four, some or all of the above, to one degree or another. (This is of course how audio works, which, for those of us who have been in it for a long time, is best described as mysteriously.)

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Steely Dan – Pretzel Logic

More of the Music of Steely Dan

  • Here is an early ABC Stereo pressing with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on both sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum of the guitars, along with the kind of richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern remasterings (particularly on side two)
  • Becker and Fagen spared no effort in the recording of this album – the mix is perfection
  • A Top 100 Album and our pick for The Best Sounding Steely Dan Recording of Them All
  • 5 stars: “Steely Dan made more accomplished albums than Pretzel Logic, but they never made a better one.”

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Rickie Lee Jones – Self-Titled

More of the Music of Rickie Lee Jones

  • You’ll find STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this vintage copy of Rickie Lee Jones’s debut LP
  • Exceptionally present, real and resolving, this pressing is guaranteed to murder any remastering undertaken by anyone, past, present and future
  • The superbly talented musicians and engineers deserve much of the credit for making this album a Grammy Winning Must Own audiophile favorite
  • Both of our two best sounding pressings had condition issues, as did many of the other copies we played, which we chalk up to the Warner Bros. quality control department of 1979
  • Not their finest hour, but at least they still knew how to record in rich, smooth, very real sounding analog as that decade came to a close
  • 4 stars: “One of the most impressive debuts for a singer/songwriter ever, this infectious mixture of styles not only features a strong collection of original songs but also a singer with a savvy, distinctive voice that can be streetwise, childlike, and sophisticated, sometimes all in the same song.”

This vintage Warner Brothers LP has the kind of Tubey Magical midrange that modern pressings barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back.

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Holst – The Planets / Previn

More of the Music of Gustav Holst

  • An early British EMI pressing of Holst’s magnum opus, here with very good Hot Stamper sonic grades on both sides
  • Previn’s and the LSO’s performances are without peer in our estimation
  • We guarantee there is more space, richness, presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard or you get your money back – it’s as simple as that
  • A TAS list Super Disc, with a performance that’s as spectacular as the recording (thanks to the work of the two Christophers)
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, but once you hear the sound of this copy, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • This link will take you to more of our favorite orchestral performances with top quality sound

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On Our Best Copy of A Day at the Races, Which Side Lacked a Bit of Space?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Queen Available Now

We described our 2025 White Hot Shootout Winner this way:

Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this incredible copy in our notes: “tubey and silky vox”…”very transparent and present”…”3D and sweet and tubey”…”big bass!” (side two)…”very full bodied and 3D.”

We shot out a number of other imports and the midrange presence, bass, and dynamics on this outstanding copy placed it well above almost all the other pressings we played.

As you can see from the notes, side one was killer in every respect, and the way we know that with a high degree of certainty is that we played a bunch of copies and nothing could touch it.

Side two was every bit as good in virtually every area, but in the final analysis we determined it fell a bit short in one. We discovered that fact when we came across a side two that was slightly better in one aspect of its sound than the side two you see described in the notes below.

When we played the two best copies back to back, something we do for each side as a final test in every shootout, side one of this copy came out on top, earning a grade of 3+. However, the side two of another pressing showed us there was even more space to be heard surrounding the music than we’d noticed the first time around.

With another copy earning a better grade for having even more space and ambience, we felt the right grade for this side two was 2.5+, Nearly White Hot.

Will the owner of this copy be able to tell?

That seems unlikely. It would be the rare listener indeed who would be able to detect anything missing on this amazingly good side two.

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Chabrier / Orchestral Music – Ansermet

More of the Music of Emmanual Chabrier

  • This vintage London pressing of the Suisse Romande‘s performance of Chabrier’s most famous compositions boasts incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades from start to finish – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • It’s also impossibly quiet at Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus (or close to it), a grade that practically none of our vintage classical titles – even the most well-cared-for ones – ever play at
  • Contains our favorite “Espana Rhapsody” on side one, and we guarantee you’ve never heard it sound remotely as good as it does on this very copy
  • This spectacular Demo Disc recording is big, clear, rich, dynamic, transparent and energetic – here is the sound we love
  • All the energy and power of Chabrier’s remarkable orchestration, thanks to the brilliant engineering of Roy Wallace
  • Ansermet’s Chabrier disc has long been a favorite of ours here at Better Records – this copy will show you why
  • We have a section of classical recordings that we think offer the best performances with top quality sound, and this record is one of its founding members. (Some might say that this one might even be ever so slightly better for the Espana Rhapsody.)

If you want a classical record to TEST your system, if you want a classical record to DEMO your system, you will have a hard time finding a better pressing than this very copy.

Who can resist these sublime orchestral works? To quote an infamous (around here) label, they are an audiophile’s dream come true.

So clear and clean, and spread out on such a huge stage, either one or both of these sides will serve you well as your go-to reference disc for Orchestral Reproduction.

Listen for the waves of sound in Espana — only the best copies bring out the energy and power of Chabrier’s remarkable orchestration.

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Thriller Is Proof that Bernie Grundman Was Cutting Great Records in 1982

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Michael Jackson Available Now

This commentary was written many years ago, probably in 2007, right around the time that our system really started to get Thriller to sound good, owing to advances we had made in cleaning and playback. We went into a great deal more detail about those changes in this commentary, which compares the sound of Thriller from the 80s and the sound of Thriller today.

Our old friend Bernie Grundman handled the mastering for Thriller and managed to do a really nice job. Unfortunately, most copies of this mass-produced classic don’t give you as much of the magic as other copies, including the ones BG mastered.

The sound on this copy is huge — big, wide, deep, and open, with the kind of three-dimensional soundstaging that lets the music unfold in front of you and around you as well. You get the bottom-end punch that’s so crucial to this music and tons of energy. The bass is meaty and well-defined, showing you the rhythmic foundation that the music needs. The sound is transparent with amazing texture to practically every element.

Michael’s voice is marvelous on this copy — breathy, textured, and positively dripping with emotion (just listen to him break down on The Lady in My Life).

Thanks to constant improvements in our stereo, we’re now getting this album to sound better than it ever has. Extended highs appeared where none had been before. We were hearing synthesizers buried deep in the mix we’d never heard. All of a sudden, these ’80s pop records had amazing analog magic.

If your system is up to the task, you won’t believe how big and lively this album sounds. Who woulda thunk it?

In a more recent commentary we went into some detail about Bernie Grundman’s shortcomings as a mastering engineer.

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