Record Mysteries

Perhaps you can explain these record mysteries. We sure can’t.

What Lessons Can We Take from this Columbia Shootout?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Vintage Columbia Albums Available Now

Recently we conducted a shootout for one of our favorite Columbia recordings, one that we had auditioned many times before and for which we knew the music and the general quality of the sound well.

It’s not the record you see pictured.

For now we’re keeping the title a mystery, consistent with the idea that we give out plenty of stamper information on this blog, including some of the worst ones we’ve had the misfortune to run into, but rarely do we feel the need to give out the really good ones. After decades of doing this kind of work, the time and effort that has gone into finding them is beyond calculation.

When we do give out the best stampers, as is the case here (3BA baby!), we make a point of keeping the title under wraps.

We are not the least bit interested in putting ourselves out of business.

The discussion for today revolves around the idea held by a great many audiophiles that the original White Print 360 label pressings are going to be the best sounding for any title that was made starting with that label in the early-60s.

(The Black Print 360 mono is an example of the mono labels being a bit behind the times as far as I can tell.)

Note that we did not bother to put any of the 70s Red Label Columbia pressings in the shootout. We’ve been down that road with this title before, and we have yet to hear one worth the vinyl wasted on it.

Columbia, like most labels, seems to have made very little effort with the sound quality of their reissues. Perhaps it was the result of all the bad transistor equipment in the studios by the time the 70s rolled around, but that would be speculation on my part, as well as something that would be very hard to find evidence for one way or the other.

We did find one Monk record that sounded better on the Red Label reissue, and readers of this blog should easily be able to find out which one it is by reading our many reviews for Monk’s recorded output.

We have two new lists for those who would like to know which Columbia labels win shootouts — one for 6-Eye winners and one for 360 Label winners.

What interests me in these findings is the following:

  • Both of our shootout winning copies had the same stampers. Can that really be a coincidence?
  • The shootout winner for side one is 3BA.
  • Two copies with stampers very similar to that one, 3AB, did noticeably worse, 2+ and 1.5+.
  • And the worst of the White Print 360 Label pressings barely earned a Hot Stamper grade at all.
  • They are on the same original label as the other copies, but for some reason they don’t sound as good. Why is that?

If an audiophile collector were to go to Discogs, find a nice clean copy on the early label and buy it, he might find that he know owns a top quality sounding copy, a pretty good sounding copy, or a not-nearly-as-good sounding copy as he’d hoped for, depending on his luck.

And what would he know about the quality of the recording? About that thing that audiophiles and record collectors seem to reference so often, “the master tape,” as if they have any way of knowing about the sound of a tape they have never come into contact with.

Just Assume

If he had a killer 3BA, wouldn’t he just assume that for some reason the recording must be amazing and consider himself lucky to find such a wonderful record to play.

Why one set of stampers sounds so much better than another set, or the same or a similar set on a different pressing, is a mystery, and it’s one that we confidently predict will never be solved.

Does anyone have a practical way to get around the reality that allows one set of stampers to sound great and the same or a similar set of stampers to sound no better than very good, if that?

Well, we can’t say there is a practical way, but we do know of an impractical one. We’ve been practicing and refining that one for more than twenty years.

We just play lots and lots of copies of the albums to find out how they sound.

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THE Hot Ticket, or Just One of a Bunch of Potentially Hot Tickets?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Rock and Pop Albums Available Now

Below you will find the stamper sheet for a title from a recent shootout we did for a rock record whose name we are not revealing.

You may have noticed that when we give out the stampers for the top copies, we rarely identify the title of the record with those Shootout Winning stampers.

As you can well imagine, our sizable investments in research and development over the course of decades make up a big part of the costs we must pass on to our customers.

I can’t say this title is typical of most of the rock and pop we play, but it’s not all that unusual either.

Obviously, knowing the “right” stamper information in this case gets you in the ballpark, but it won’t help you hit the grand slam home run you want to. To do that you have to clean and play about five copies the way we did.

Hot Stamper shootouts may be expensive, they may be a lot of work, but our experience tells us there is simply no other way to find top quality pressings — the ones that earn the 3+ grades, not the 1.5+ grades.

They might all look the same, but they sure don’t sound the same.

In this particular case, the import pressings we played — the ones we expected to do the best as a matter of fact — had by far the worse sound.  There were a couple of them, there was a domestic reissue, and there were five originals: eight records in total.

Changes for 2024

Beginning in 2024 we decided to make available to our readers a great deal of the pressing information we’ve compiled over the last twenty years, under these headings:

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How Can the Best Stampers Also Be Some of the Worst?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Vintage Columbia Albums Available Now

Recently we conducted a shootout for a favorite Columbia recording, one that we had auditioned a couple of times before and one for which we knew the music and the general quality of the sound well.

It’s not the record you see pictured. For now we’re keeping the title a mystery, consistent with the idea that we give out lots of bad stampers on this blog, but almost never do we give out the good ones. (When we do give out the best stampers, we keep the title under wraps. We are not the least bit interested in putting ourselves out of business.)

The discussion for today revolves around the idea held by a great many audiophiles that the 6-Eye pressings are going to be the best sounding of almost any album they might happen to run across.

And, to be fair, in the case of this mysterious album, they’re right.

What interests me in these findings is that the stampers for a shootout winning copy, the top one, are almost identical to the one that came in close to last in the shootout outside of the Columbia Special Products reissue, with decent, respectable but far from shootout winning grades of 1.5+ and 2+.

One of the 1K side ones was the best we played, and one was very bright.

If an audiophile collector were to go to Discogs, find the IK pressings, he could either find himself with a top quality copy, or a not-nearly-as-good copy, depending on his luck.

Why one set of stampers sounds so much better than another set, or the same or similar set on a different pressing, is a mystery, and it’s one that we confidently predict will never be solved.

Does anyone have a practical way to get around the unfortunate reality that allows one set of stampers to sound great and the same or a similar set of stampers to sound no better than very good, if that?

Well, we can’t say there is a practical way, but we do know of an impractical one. We’ve been practicing and refining that one for more than twenty years.

We just play lots and lots of copies of the albums to find out how they sound.

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These PR Stampers Are NFG and Then Some

Hot Stamper Pressings of Country and Country Rock Available Now

Note to customers: We rarely have Hot Stamper pressings of the music of Buffalo Springfield available on the site, so albums with Stephen Stills or Neil Young performing are about the best we can do for the fans of this groundbreaking band at present.

We regret we must go many years between shootouts for this band’s albums, two of which are personal favorites and have been since they were released, 1968’s (Again) and 1969’s (Last Time Around).

We love the album but not when it sounds like this!

Want to find your own killer copy?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that tend to win our shootouts.

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This Mercury May Have the Same Stampers on Both Sides, But the Sound Is Very, Very Different

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Classical Recordings Available Now

For Mercury classical and orchestral recordings, the original FR pressings (when there are such pressings), in stereo, on the original plum label are the best way to go, right? 

In many cases, yes. We talk about how much better the FR pressings for The Firebird are compared to the much more common, and still quite good, M2 reissue pressings here. (Both beat the pants off the awful Classic Records pressing.

But sometimes the RFR pressings — which, as I am sure you know, can be the earliest stampers for some titles — are nothing special on one side or the other. That is exactly the case here.

Keep in mind that the stamper numbers you see above belong to a different album.

We’ve lately been giving out much more stamper information than we used to, but for now we are keeping the identify of this title close to the vest.

We are not able to predict what stampers will win a shootout before we actually sit down to play all our copies.

It turns out that the FR pressings did not sound as good as some of other pressings. The RFR stampers came in somewhere in the middle of the pack, an average of 2+, but a hard record to sell with such very different sounding sides.

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, painful and costly as those experiences may have been.

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The Mono Pressings of Come Dance With Me Are Just Awful

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Frank Sinatra Available Now

We had two mono pressings, one on the first label, one on the second, and both were unacceptable, especially the reissue.

Side one of the early label pressing was big and tubey but the vocals were gritty. Side two was hot, crude and midrangy.

Which raises the question: what is the general sound of the mono pressing on the early label?

Answer: it has no sound, or more accurately, it has two very different sounds, and if we had ten of them we could probably say it has a lot more sounds than the ones we described. Our advice:Beware of small sample sizes, especially sample sizes of two.

The stereo pressings we listed recently had superb sound. The monos, however, just sounded like old records, and not very good ones at that. The typical record collection is full of them.

Only an old school audio system can hide the faults of a pressing such as this one. The world is full of those too, even though they might comprise all the latest and most expensive components.

The mono pressings are hopeless on today’s modern stereos, and for that reason we say stick with stereo. For other albums that don’t sound good in mono, click here.

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Who Can Explain Why This Cheap Reissue Sounds So Good?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Claude Debussy Available Now

This Decca reissue is spacious, open, transparent, rich and sweet.

Roy Wallace was the engineer for these sessions from 1955 to 1962 in Geneva’s glorious sounding Victoria Hall. His work here is superb in all respects.

It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording, with the added benefit of mastering using more modern, but apparently still good, cutting equipment from the ’70s, 1972 to be exact.

We are of course here referring to the often amazing modern mastering of 40+ years ago, not the mediocre-at-best modern mastering of today.

The combination of old and new works wonders on this title as you will surely hear for yourself on both of these superb sides.

We were impressed with the fact that it excelled in so many areas of reproduction. The illusion of disappearing speakers is one of the more attractive aspects of the sound here, pulling the listener into the space of the concert hall in an especially engrossing way.

Thread It Up and Just Hit Play Already

What might be seen as odd — odd to some audiophiles but not to us — was how rich and Tubey Magical the reissue can be on the best copies.

This leads me to think that most of the natural, full-bodied, smooth, sweet sound of the album is on the tape, and that all one has to do to get that vintage sound on to a record is simply to thread up the master on a good machine and hit play.

The fact that nobody seems to be able to make an especially good sounding record these days makes clear that in fact I’m wrong to think that this approach would work. It seems to me that somebody should be able to figure out how to do it. In our experience that is simply not the case today, and has not been for many years.

Old Tapes, New Tapes

The master tapes were about fifteen years old when this record was mastered.

Compare that to a current cutting which would be made from approximately fifty year old tapes.

Perhaps that explains it.

Or maybe it doesn’t.

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Could This Be the Sound Audiophiles Complain About with RVG’s Mastering?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of John Coltrane Available Now

A rare and expensive early mono pressing that we put into our most recent shootout was dreadful sounding.

Our main listening guy owns the record and made the note you see below, saying that his personal copy is every bit as bad.

The sound of the original was painfully midrangy and crude. It was not the worst of all the pressings we played, but it was nevertheless pretty bad, sounding nothing like our shootout winners.

We had a pressing on an early Prestige label in stereo, also mastered by Rudy Van Gelder, that was reasonably good sounding, earning grades of 1.5+ to 2+. It was sweet and relaxed, but relatively small and lacked the weight of the best.

For this music, we’ve found the best sound on the better Two-Fer pressings and the right OJC.

That Two-Fer budget reissue pressing, remastered by David Turner in 1972, can do very well in a shootout, but it can also fall far short of the mark on some sides, as you can see from the grades for these three other copies.

If you have the Two-Fer, how does yours sound compared to the four we auditioned (a shootout we were doing for the third or fourth time I might add), and how could you possibly know such a thing without a great many more copies at hand to clean and play?

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Some Pressings of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 Can Sure Be a Letdown

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tchaikovsky Available Now

I don’t know of another recording of the work that gets the sound of the piano better. On the properly-mastered, properly-pressed copies, the percussive quality of the instrument really comes through.

But that quality (along with lots of others) is only heard on the better copies.

The reissues (one with the later Tulips label, one with the earlier Large Tulips label) described below are at best passable, and some of them were just awful.

The note to the left makes clear that even some of the early Large Tulips label pressings had very bad sound. Watch out especially for 18A/15B stampers. They’re NFG: No F***ing Good.

As you can see from the notes above for this particular recording in the Black and White cover, one side was passable, earning our 1.5+ grade. That makes it a decent sounding record, I suppose, but it’s a long, long, long way from the best.

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 a recording this DG can be on the best pressings.

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 two recently shocked the hell out of us by actually winning a shootout. Wouldn’t you like to know which two!)

One Plus (1+) is a sub-Hot Stamper grade. We do not sell records that do not earn a grade of at least 1.5+ on both sides.

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

Our Favorite Performance with Sound to Match

A recent listing for the album can be found here.

Without question this is a phenomenal piano recording in every way.

On the best copies the rich texture of the strings is out of this world — you will have a very hard time finding a DG with better string tone. This record does not have the shortcomings of the average DG: it’s not hard, shrill, or sour.

DG made plenty of good records in the 50s and 60s, then proceeded to fall apart, like most labels did. This is one of their finest. It proves conclusively that at one time — 1962 to be exact — they clearly knew exactly what they were doing.

It’s amazing how many piano recordings have poorly-miked pianos. The badly recorded pianos are either too distant, lack proper reproduction of the lower registers, or somehow smear the pounding of the keys into a blurry mess.

Are they badly recorded?

Or is it a mastering issue?

Perhaps a pressing issue?

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Are White Label Promos the Way to Go on this Mystery Columbia Jazz Album?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Vintage Columbia Albums Available Now

Recently we conducted a shootout for a Columbia recording, one that we had auditioned a couple of times before and one for which we knew the music and the general quality of the sound well.

It’s not the record you see pictured. For now we’re keeping the title a mystery, consistent with the idea that we give out lots of bad stampers on this blog, but almost never do we give out the good ones. (When we do give out the best stampers, we keep the title a mystery. We are not the least bit interested in putting ourselves out of business.)

The discussion for today revolves around the idea held by a great many audiophiles that the White Label Promo copies are going to be the best sounding pressings of almost any album they might happen to run across.

And, to be fair, in the case of this mysterious double album, they’re right.

Our two best sounding copies were White Label Promos.

What interests me in these findings is that the stampers for a White Label Promo copy, the second one, the one with mostly Super Hot grades, are almost identical to the one that came in last in the shootout, with barely passable grades.

If an audiophile collector were to go to Discogs, find the WLP pressings, write down their stampers, and then check them against the copies he owned or might want to buy, he could either find himself with a top quality copy, or a not-nearly-as-good copy, depending on his luck. (And side four of the worst pressing earned a sub-Hot Stamper grade of 1+.)

Why one set of stampers sounds so much better than another set, or the same or similar set on a different pressing, is a mystery.

Does anyone have a practical way to get around the unfortunate reality that allows one set of stampers to sound great and the same or a similar set of stampers to sound not much better than decent?

Well, we can’t say there is a practical way, but we do know of an impractical one. We’ve been practicing and refining that one for more than twenty years.

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