*We Get Letters

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

Letter of the Week – “Great job on finding what for me is a new reference disk”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Elton John Available Now

UPDATE 2026

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is almost always noisy, which is why you will rarely find it for sale on our site.

Our last Hot Stamper shootout was in 2022, if that tells you anything.

Hi, Tom:

Got a chance to try your Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road hot stamper, and wow! EJ has never been one of my favorite artists, my liking his earlier output to some degree, but in my opinion GYBR is his magnum opus and his high water mark, down from which he slid rapidly into mediocrity.

I have tried a number of pressings of this record and always found it to be a good, but not great, recording, which is a shame considering it is one of the few double LP’s extant without anything approaching filler material. So I tried my Direct Disk Labs version, which was OK, but sounded veiled compared to the MFSL version, actually not bad for one of their efforts.

But the cinemascape evolved entirely with the hot stamper, bringing these great songs to life in my listening room like few others I have heard. If you want to hear a demo disk performance of this record you won’t find it outside a hot stamper in my experience. EJ’s voice is front and center, rich and full, allowing me to hear every vocal inflection. I swear I could tell what EJ had for breakfast–eggs and chutney, even! Pianos were arrayed in space with the correct surface loudness, guitars crunched on Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, the drums on Jamaica Jerkoff were massive and dynamic, and the bass drum whacks on I’ve Seen That Movie Too had that sock-in-the-gut punch.

This hot stamper shows off the difference between a recording and a performance. Great job on finding what for me is a new reference disk.

Roger

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Letter of the Week – “The most remarkable drums I’ve ever heard, especially on side two.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Santana Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

[The Abraxas White Hot Stamper] is a monster. Practically tore down the walls. The most remarkable drums I’ve ever heard, especially on side two. The sound is completely circumambient, completely enveloping, but always musical with lovely harmonics even when blasting in the tuttis.

The Mobile Fidelity, which I own, is an attenuated portraiture of the real thing. I will soon be dropping it off at the local Salvation Army store.

Phil

Phil,

Quick question: Did you buy your MoFi before or after I put it in my Mobile Fidelity hall of shame?

And wrote this review of it: MoFi Manages to Disgrace Itself Even Further

See what happens when you don’t read my blog?

You end up with crappy remastered records like the ones Mobile Fidelity has been spewing out for more than forty years.

Some forum posters take us to task for criticizing the old MoFi that everybody knows made lousy records, not the new MoFi, which they believe — for reasons that I cannot begin to understand — makes good sounding records.

If this is the pride of the new MoFi, and it seems to be, I will leave it to those who post on forums to defend it. I certainly am not up to the task.

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Letter of the Week – “I felt like I entered another world.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of British Folk Rock Albums Available Now

Hi Tom,

I just wanted to thank you at BR for The Pentangle Super Hot Stamper.

Upon listening to it, I felt like I entered another world.

The sound is through the roof and the music blows my mind,

I’m not sure I actually have the words to describe just how beautiful this sound experience really is, so I will leave it at that.

So Many Thanks,
Michel

Michel, I couldn’t agree more. The sound of the Pentangle’s first album is so pure you feel like the barrier between you and the music has disolved and no longer exists.

When a record is so good it lets you lose yourself completely in the music, that is the sign of a very special pressing indeed, in this case of a very special recording.

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Letter of the Week – “It murders my Pink Island original UK copies.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Hippie Folk Rock Albums Available Now

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

Hey Tom,  

I want to say a big THANK YOU for the Hot Stamper’s you sent to me. Two of them are now top ten titles in my collection: Cat Stevens Tea for the Tillerman.

I’m so amazed and lucky – I can’t describe it.

The sound is so natural and beat my expectations in many ways – it sounds out of this world. This copy has sweet, breathy vocals, well-defined bass (!!), stunning clarity, warmth and richness, immediacy, astonishing transparency (it burns direct in your DNA – I’ll never forget!) and loads of ambience and more.

It murders my pink Island original UK copies.

It was a privilege to be able to hear this copy – a HIGHLIGHT event. It’s a Demo Disc of the highest order. And it’s worth the price.

The other big winner is CSN’s first album. This is one of the few LP’s with sound that you won’t soon forget. I live since a week with this good feeling and I can’t hear or rate any other LP at this time (‘til Tillerman arrived).

Erik S. 

Erik,

Thanks for your letter. Both CSN’s first album and Tea for the Tillerman belong in any audiophile’s rock and pop collection worthy of the name.

I’ve made it my life’s work to find the best sounding pressings of both of these classics, and as you can now attest, that work has not been in vain. There can be no denying it: You have the Hot Stamper proof in your hands, on your turntable, or sitting on your record shelves as the case may be.

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Letter of the Week – “Absolutely slayed me, with your copy of Bad Company’s debut album…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bad Company Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

So yeah, you folks have DONE IT AGAIN. Absolutely slayed me, with your copy of Bad Company’s debut album – and in particular, “Seagull” – which is simply the finest rendering of it I’ve ever heard. Sat there like the blubbering old fool that I am.

Fantastic stuff. And DEAD silent vinyl.

You folks ROCK. Truly, THANK YOU.

Steve

Steve,

That’s great to know. An amazing recording when you can hear it right!

As Steve described it, this is indeed the kind of sound you can expect to hear on the better Hot Stamper pressings:

The drums on this album are so solid, punchy and present, they put to shame 99% of the rock records on the planet.

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Funny How You Rarely See Much Discussion of Records with Reversed Polarity

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Harry Belafonte Available Now

UPDATE 2026

We mention below that we rarely have records with polarity issues on the site. To read more about any that may be active, please click here.

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently (emphasis added):

Hey Tom, 

I bought the Harry Belafonte Carnegie Hall recently, a White Hot. I went to the On The Record site and came across the Offenbach Readers Digest discussion of reversed polarity. I had bought this record on your site a long time ago.

I listened to the record with the polarity reversed.

This is the first time I have heard this record sounding better.

Open, spacious and heard lots of macro and micro details, especially on side one, and the violin now is more natural as you described.

Btw, Do you have records with reversed polarity ready to hit the site? Please let me know.

Very interesting!

Hi,

Thanks for your letter. Glad I was able to help you get that Offenbach record to sound the way it should. It is a knockout performance with audio quality to match.

Funny how you rarely see much discussion of records with reversed polarity like Belafonte at Carnegie Hall.

Do most audiophiles have polarity switches on their preamps or phono stages?

Can they be bothered to go back and forth enough times to make sure they have the correct polarity setting for the records they play?

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Letter of the Week – “I have 4 other copies and this beats them all.”

More of the Music of Paul Simon

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

Hey Tom,   

Indeed this album sounds amazing! I have 4 other copies and this beats them all. The closest is a German pressing I have but still yours sounds better. Thank you. I never thought I would spend $200 for a record but I do hear the difference.

Cheers,
Ryan

Ryan,

So glad to hear it!

If that’s a favorite record of yours, you can now enjoy it for the rest of your life knowing you have a killer copy in your collection to play whenever you damn well please (assuming the kids and the wife are out of the house).

Based on what I am reading, the pressing we sent you is so good it’s practically priceless. But somebody had to put a price on it, and the price we landed on was two hundred bucks.

This is an outrageous amount of money for one record to some people. But not to someone who loves the album and will play it for the rest of his life. Once a month for 40 years comes to $4 a spin. To quote Pete Townshend, I call that a bargain.

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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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We Get Letters – “You kept me from slipping off the edge and living in the zone of not knowing what I missed.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Orchestral Spectaculars Available Now

UPDATE 2026

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased a great many years ago when we preferred the recording of The Planets conducted by Steinberg.

We no longer sell the Steinberg recording, for the simple reason that we prefer this version of The Planets.

We wrote about it in some detail here.

Tom

I must have at least 10 versions of this music in my CD, SACD, DVD-Audio and LP collection. I am always trying to get a good one because I really like this music.

All of the recorded performances that I have are disappointing – a few are barely acceptable but nothing I really like. I have heard this work performed live four times…

Well – guess what – this White Hot Stamper 2 Pack is the best sounding LP I have ever heard – bar F’ing None. Side One absolutely took my breath away – seriously. It is ALSO better than ANY single live performance I have heard. I know that is heresy but its true.

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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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