*We Get Letters

Do we ever! More than 430 as of last count. Please to enjoy.

“…the Hot Stamper is a step above the rest”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Talking Heads Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stamper pressings he purchased a while ago for two of our All Time Favorite Albums: Little Creatures and Armed Forces.

Hey Tom,  

Just wanted to let you know I finally played the Little Creatures Hot Stamper last night for the first time. Very, very nice record.

Admittedly, I have more copies of Little Creatures than any sane person should. Many of these copies sound very good, the Hot Stamper is a step above the rest. Great slam. More space between instruments. Love it. 

I have spent the last month or so collecting various versions of Elvis Costello – Armed Forces for a shootout. It’s a Top Five record for me and with my daughter heading for college soon, a White Hot copy is out of reach at this point.

First press UK’s, later UK “Porky’s” and first run German “Porky’s” have all been gathered.

Honestly, the whole process is a pain in the ass and very time consuming. The results have been interesting and I have acquired what I believe to be a very good record but it probably would have been cheaper to give you a call.

Keep up the good work.

Sean M.

Sean, I would have been happy to save you the work, we do this kind of thing for a living as you well know.

But you can learn a lot by doing your own shootouts and tracking down your own favorite pressings.

Come to our site to get a ready-to-play, guaranteed killer copy mailed right to your door. (Assuming we have one in stock.)

Best, TP

Further Reading

“One begins to notice what is wrong with them — they sound tinkered with”

 

Hot Stamper Pressings of Rock and Pop Albums Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased in 2017.

Hey Tom, 

Bless You Tom! Much appreciated! Funny thing is, I never had this album or properly heard it before now. Back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, I too was buying audiophile pressings and Half Speed Masters and at first, I thought they were great! But before too long, one begins to notice what is wrong with them– they sound tinkered with! I think that is exactly what MoFi did.

I tried these again when I came back to vinyl in 2009. That first year I began buying audiophile pressings but when I played them back I found they were not the holy grail nor the sound I was looking for at all! Certainly not even the claimed ‘Sourced from the Original Master Tape’ was true! More like, from the digital master/remasters or a third generation master. I spent a whole lot before I put the brakes on and went for original recordings/early pressings such as ED1 or ED2.

Now, when I want a record for serious listening of something special, I know the only place to get what I want first time and every time for the best sounding records– Better Records, of course!

Michael

Michael,

Thanks for your letter. “Tinkering” with the sound is what these audiophile labels do. They think they know how to “fix” the recordings that the original producers and engineers got wrong.

Like you, I was fooled.

It took me a while but eventually I started to see where I had gone wrong.

And don’t write off all reissues. You can stick to first and second editions, but by doing that you will miss out on the superior sound of these 150+ reissues. (If I had time to really go deeper into it, I could probably list three times that many.)

Even better, these superior sounding reissues can actually be bought.

Best, TP

This link will take you to our reviews and commentaries for the more than 140 Half-Speed Mastered pressings we’ve played over the years.

Some audiophile records — Half-Speed Mastered and otherwise — are so dreadful sounding that I got pissed off enough to create this special list for them.

Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is clearly a mark of progress.

Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, especially the ones comparing our records to their Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed Mastered counterparts, we know that our customers see things the same way.

Further Reading

One Customer’s Story of Listening in Depth and Seeing the Light

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing of Fleetwood Mac’s Self-titled album (1975) he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

Sorry to say I will be returning this White Hot Stamper. Did a lot of research before ordering, understand and fully appreciate what you’re doing, seriously sad to not be keeping it. Pretty obviously you are crazy dedicated to this so wanted to fully explain why. Especially since there’s still good odds I would like to try again.

First let me say it was quite the experience unpacking and seeing a cover still in its original shrink wrap. Probably quite a few would consider that alone worth the price. I never even slipped it out of the excellent plastic sleeve you shipped it in, that’s how much instant respect I have for the unbelievably unlikely existence of this thing. It truly is amazing. I bought it for the music not the cover, but still….

The reason I will be returning this is Side 1. Monday Morning was a disappointment, but I really think we are kind of at the mercy of the master here. Warm Ways is a whole lot better, and yes quite a bit better than my copy, with a fair bit more inner detail and palpable presence but overall not much more than I have got from some good 45 or heavy vinyl pressings.

Just so you know, yes I do follow all your suggestions. Warm up, demagnetize, anti-static, all of that and more. Have a demagnetizer much more effective than the Talisman. Been doing all this stuff over 20 years now. Because I hear and appreciate. Cables elevated off the floor. Every wire from the breaker to the speaker been cryo’d. Yes I pulled the wire out of the house, drove it down to Cryo One, had them do it all.

Part of the problem. I hear how much better Side 1 is, it goes into that frame of reference. For over $300 it needs to be at least as great an improvement over my copy as I can get from warm-up, demagnetize, etc. Its not. Well your rating did say Side 2 was a bit better. Frankly, I think you could stand to correct that. Side 2 is a whole lot better. Right from the first track its just way more lively, present, dynamic, punchy, you name it. Not sure why you say Say You Love Me is “rich and sweet and tubey” probably that is one of the stock phrases you use throughout the site because this track offers, relative to the others on this side, less of this.

Which brings me to Landslide, and World Turning. These two tracks totally deserve all the most glowing Better Records accolades! Simply superb sonics. Better even in some ways than my MoFi 45 of Brothers in Arms. Now this is what I was hoping for! The spellbinding sound of these two tracks is almost enough to make me forget Side 1.

Almost. And its not like the rest of Side 2 is bad. Honestly, when it gets to this level (of pressing quality) you can hear so deeply what’s going on it becomes inescapable we are at a level where we are at the mercy of the mastering engineer. Or if not him then someone even further along up the recording chain. You know what I mean. I know you know what I mean. Because, in reading one of your glowing reviews was the comment, basically, “but get real, its Springsteen.” Because for whatever reason he could never be bothered to turn out a good recording.

(more…)

Letter of the Week – “It sounds like you’re listening to some kind of cultural artifact in a black box…”

Welcome to Better Records, the Home of  the Ultimate Pressing: the Hot Stamper

UPDATE 2026

This letter came to us in 2022.

An erstwhile customer (Conrad, where did you go?) had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased a while back. (I’ve edited it a bit.)

Hey Tom, 

Curious your thoughts on Analog Productions reissues? From the few I’ve heard, they seem to be among the better ‘new records’ out there, at least when they’re not involving digital in the process. 

Conrad,

How is it that you missed all my posts about their records? This link will take you to them: Analogue Productions.

I feel like I attack them too much, but apparently not!

Simply put, they may be the worst record label of all time.

Certainly no label is worse, some may be as bad, the Electric Recording guy in England is probably tied for most awful, Mobile Fidelity is up there too, but there are so many contenders for Worst Audiophile Record Label of All Time, how could you possibly know where to begin?

Not one record of AP I have ever heard was not awful, and if there are others that are not awful that I have yet to audition, those are very likely to be worse than a plain old copy easily found in a record store or on the web.

Curious to know what record of theirs you like. I find the very idea almost unimaginable.

TP

Ha ha, enjoyed reading some of that.

I’m in the odd position that I can both entirely see what your criticisms are, and to a good extent share them, and yet, at least with the jazz records I’ve heard from them, I’m also hearing things I like.

(more…)

What Willie and Nat Can Teach Us about Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Willie Nelson Available Now

UPDATE 2024

This letter came to us many years ago. Updates have been added since then.

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he had purchased:

Hello team,

I’ve been a little distracted here, I got married over the weekend! So, haven’t done as much listening over the past couple of weeks. However, I did have a chance to listen to Stardust and Love Is The Thing. They were both different than their Classic Records and Analogue Productions counterparts. Willie sounded a little smoother, more organic, and more integrated.

The strings on Love Is The Thing were very different, more pronounced and emotional, but Nat’s voice, and the sound overall, sounded a little strident, maybe “too” hot.

I’d like to send them both back to you, and if you have a chance to send back the discs I sent to you I’d very much appreciate it. All told, the two big sets of Better Records are really incredible, and only serve to make my want list grow. Here’s to you and the next set!

Doug,

We now have the update for those two titles.

I, along with the two other guys in our listening panels, sat down to play the Heavy Vinyl you sent us, and the long and short of it is that we were astonished that records that sound as bad as those two actually were approved for release.

Nat is wrong six ways from Sunday, and Willie is not so much wrong as just not very good.

Nat: “F,” one of the worst heavy vinyl disasters of all time, and Willie: “D” sound, more like a CD than a record. There are many pressings of this album that are not good, but this version is probably worse than most of them, hence the D grade.

The old Classic pressing is probably better, and it would earn about a C grade. [I honestly do not remember exactly what pressing Douglas sent us. All I remember is that it was on Heavy Vinyl.]

I suspect the CDs of both these pressings are much better sounding than this vinyl.

The DCC gold is definitely better by a long shot, and the plain old Willie CD is probably a step up as well. 

A Further Update

(more…)

Letter of the Week – “I will spare you the time to comment on my 1992 Analogue Productions Reissue…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Sonny Rollins’s Albums Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stamper pressings he purchased recently:

Dear Tom and Fred

After having had the opportunity to listen to the next batch of 7 more records, here are my observations on the 40 records I have now bought from you.

First to my listening experience. After receiving the CSNY 4 Way Street and looking for my own record, I thought was a German press easy to beat I realized it was a white label promo first press and thought, oh, did I make a mistake to buy this for this kind of money from you guys, this may be a tough one to crack?

Not so, your SH Stamper clearly beat the WL promo, check!

Next up was the Miles Davis Sketches of Spain White Hot Stamper, one of my very top Miles favorites.

I did not recall that I had the six eye first press, and on side 2, with identical stampers (when your 3/3 WH show up, you do not have the time to check this but hurry :-since your WH 3/3s sell like hot cakes!).

So even more difficult to beat?? Promising start: your WH was clearly better on side 1, now to the identical stampers side 2: not as clearly but still just more transparent, better drums, less shrill on track 2, check!

But it certainly cannot get better than this 3/3 WH stamper, can it?

Next up is Sonny Rollins 3/3 WH Stamper [of Way Out West]. Hard to believe, but yes, even better than the great Miles 3/3 WHS, and I will spare you the time to comment on my 1992 Analogue Productions reissue which I always thought was quite decent.

And so it goes on…

Christian

Christian,

In less than a year you have acquired a large number of simply amazing sounding records. Congratulations.

As you point out about the stampers, you may have a pressing with the right stampers, but our copy will still beat it. How it was pressed and how it was cleaned are critical to the sound, and that is not something the stamper numbers can tell you. It’s a subject we discuss often. Here is a good place to start.

Here on the blog there are a great many examples of records with the same stampers that do not have the same sound.

As for your 1992 Analogue Productions Heavy Vinyl remaster, I honestly don’t know how anyone can listen to a record with sound like that and consider it acceptable, or, in your words, “quite decent.” I went into the long story of the album in this commentary.

(more…)

“…this BR copy just lifted the veil.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

One of our good customers had a few things to say about a Hot Stamper pressing of Meddle he purchased recently, which turned out to have the same stampers as the copy he already owned.

He had no way of knowing what the stampers of our copy were when he ordered it of course. It no doubt came as a surprise, but thankfully Michel did not judge the record we sent him by the stamper numbers. No, he judged it the way it should have been judged, by the sound.

In this case the sound was clearly superior to the copy he had even though the stampers of the two records were identical. (If you would like to see more examples of this phenomenon, we have plenty here. It actually happens all the time. It’s so common that we rarely bother to make blog posts about it. Years ago we wrote a piece about it expressing our views on the subject.)

Hi Tom,

Just a quick note about Meddle WHS. I also had an A!/B! XXX which does sound pretty good and is quiet, but this BR copy just lifted the veil.

Once I dialed in the sweet spot it was a delightful experience. This copy is the bomb!!

Many Thanks,
Michel

Michel,

Not all A!/B!’s are created equal!

Most copies of the album with the right stampers will earn a grade of Super Hot, A++.

Some will be White Hot, A+++.

Almost all the pressings we play will have the same stamper numbers, although you may have read that we did just find another stamper for side two that can win shootouts.

Some of the difference in sound is the result of our using The Prelude Record Cleaning System, in conjunction with the Odyssey record cleaning machine we purchased in 2007 (more on that here).

Clean records sound better than they uncleaned records, and properly cleaned records often sound much better than they otherwise would, oftentimes a full grade better.

(more…)

“It’s great to hear a copy of this record that does the music justice.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Richard Thompson Available Now

One of our good customers years ago had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing of Shoot Out the Lights he’d purchased:

Hey Tom,   

Recently purchased The Hot Stamper of R&L Thompson’s Shoot Out The Lights. What a wonderful copy! Easily put to shame the copies I have on hand by a long shot. It’s great to hear a copy of this record that does the music justice. An exceptional find on your part. Great doing business with you.

Jim S.

Jim,

Glad to hear you liked the copy we sent you as much as we did. We love the album and wish more audiophiles would give it a try. It is a truly extraordinary recording.

With very special recordings like this one, if you turn up your volume good and loud, you will surely be amazed at how dynamic the guitar solos are. I wrote about just such an experience I had many years ago.

I’ve seen Richard Thompson on a number of occasions over the years, and as loud as my stereo will play, which is pretty darn loud, I’ve never been able to make his guitar solos 20 dB louder than everything else, because they’re simply not on the record that way. That’s why live music can’t be reproduced faithfully in the home: the dynamic contrasts are much too great for the typical listener, or his stereo. 

Having said that, when you actually do turn this record up, way up, you get the feeling of hearing live music, and that’s not easy to do.

(more…)

“Un******believable that any record could sound that good.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of America Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stamper pressings he purchased not long ago, one of which was the album you see pictured: America’s debut.

Hey Tom, 

I want to tell you I bought America’s 1st LP from you some couple of years back. White Hot designation at that time. I don’t know if you have found one better since then.

Paid big dollars and I still cannot believe the sound. Worth every penny. 

When I play that LP, I cannot avoid getting goose bumps or getting totally enveloped with the music. The guitars and vocals are flat out surreal.

It is just as amazing as the Eagles 1st LP Hot Stamper. Un******believable that any record could sound that good.

Bill 

Bill,

Thanks for your letter. I know exactly what you mean. In 1971 or 1972, while still in high school, I got my first copy of America and it quickly became a record I could not get enough of. Only later would I learn from my friend Robert Pincus that it was a landmark pressing in the world of Hippie Folk Rock, a genre that makes up much of the music I listen to these days.

We’ve been promoting the idea that music does the driving for more years than I can remember. Much of what drove me was acoustic folk rock, the kind of music I fell in love with when Crosby, Stills and Nash released their first album in 1969. I credit many of those albums with helping me (later us) improve the quality of our playback.

(more…)

We Would Never Choose a Different Sound for Tom Petty than the One He Chose for Himself

Advice on Developing Your Critical Listening Skills

One of our good customers wrote to us about the trouble he has been having getting Bella Donna to sound less “cold, steely, sharp, harsh and edgy.”

I believe this comment was originally left on Robert Brook’s blog. I thought it merited a serious response, mostly a defense of why it’s important that some records must sound the way they do whether we like that sound or not.

Peter’s post:

I am sure I do not judge records like you do. I regard listening as relaxation – while your opinion leaders Tom Port and also Robert Brooks never stop to emphasize that the “real men” never lean back and always keep searching for the next 1 percent in sound quality. That’s too fatiguing for me, I am just too lazy.

Peter, a few thoughts:

I should right off the bat that we have never looked for, nor found, a 1% improvement. We’ve found 10%, 20%, 30%, and we’ve found it many, many times over. The difference between the way our system sounds now and the way it did even five or ten years ago is huge.

Look at Robert Brook and how far he has come in five years. He would say his system now is two or three times better. 200% or 300% better. That’s what it feels like when you make the big breakthroughs. Sometimes you can go years without a breakthrough, but then you make one and find out just how much farther you could go.

I do have a special allergy for sharp, edgy, metallic, electronically distorted, or grainy sound. This means that – when e.g., the vocals sound natural and breathy and the music sounds fresh, energetic and lively I am already very happy – and prepared to sacrifice other ” goodies” like ultimate detail, space and air or the very low notes. All ’n all, I am very happy with most of my BR purchases.

There are a few BR purchases that I cannot get to sound “right.”  The most striking example is Stevie Nicks “Bella Donna.”

I have tried many things. I have changed the turntable, tonearm, cartridge, phono pre-amp, cabling and VTA. Whatever I try, her voice and the lead guitar continue to sound cold, steely/sharp, harsh and edgy. Stevie’s voice on this record is SO different from her voice on “Rumours” that she seems to be another person (my copy of “Rumours” is not a BR pressing but a very nice sounding first “Los Angeles” pressing).

Bella Donna is the key to the problem in my view. What you have in Bella Donna is the kind of recorded sound that, when played back on your system, you find not to your taste. You want the sound of Rumours, but Bella Donna will never have that sound.

Shelly Yakus and Jimmy Iovine make edgy, lively records. Stevie Nicks wanted that sound for her first solo album and that is what she got. The album went to Number One on the Billboard chart and has been certified 4x Platinum by the RIAA. Audiophiles were not the intended audience. People liked the sound of the hits they heard on the radio, so they went out and bought her record. They were no doubt very pleased with their purchase.

The lively, edgy sound is also the one Tom Petty wanted for his records, which was an equally wise move on his part because the records he made with their help sold in the millions too. Here is an excellent example of what I am talking about. I have no problem admitting that I couldn’t play his records right until about 2014 or so, this after being in audio for forty years.

Tom Petty likes clear and lively, not rich and smooth. Our best copies get that sound right. We would never choose a different sound for Tom Petty than the one he chose for himself.

(more…)