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VTA – A Few Moments of Experimentation Can Really Pay Off

Basic Audio Advice — These Are the Fundamentals of Good Sound

Here we discuss what to listen for as you critically adjust your VTA.

While experimenting with the VTA for this record, we found a precise point where it all came together, far beyond whatever expectations we might have had for the sound at the time.

Practically out of nowhere we heard a solid, full-bodied, palpable violin that appeared to be floating between the speakers, an effect that, speaking for myself as a lifelong, obsessive audiophile — I fully appreciated for the magic trick that it is.

The sound of the wood of the instrument became so clear, the harmonic textures so natural, it was quite a shock to hear a good record somehow become an amazing one.

And all it took was a few moments of experimentation.

With the right VTA setting we immediately heard more harmonic detail, achieved, as is often not the case, with no sacrifice in richness.

That’s the clearest sign that your setup is right, or very close to it.

By the way, Robert Brook can get your front end tuned up and working right. We highly recommend his new service. It might just put you on the path to achieving the next level in audio. (You will definitely struggle to get there with a table, arm and cartridge that aren’t set up with a high degree of precision by a person who knows what they are doing, and Robert has been doing this work for years now.)
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Otis Redding – Good To Me / Live at the Whisky A Go Go Volume 2

Hot Stamper Pressings of Soul, Blues, R&B, etc. Available Now

This Stax British Import is a Better Records highly recommended recording. If I had to choose one Otis Redding record to keep, this would be the one! As good as his studio albums are, the guy was MAGICAL live.

If you’re an Otis Redding fan, this live album released in 1992 surely belongs in your collection.

The complete list of titles from 1992 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

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Bill Porter’s Tubey Magical Caribbean Guitar

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chet Atkins Available Now

This album is a little more lively than some of Chet’s other recordings, which can be criticized for being a little too laid back. For example, try side 2, cut 2, where Chet actually jams.

The last track on side 2 where Chet is joined by a trumpet player is my favorite on the album. That guitar-trumpet combination is pretty magical on that song. And you’ve got to love the kind of sound Bill Porter gets for a trumpet. That’s the kind of sound we audiophiles drool over. I do anyway.

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Stick with Porky on East Side Story

More Hot Stamper Pressings We Only Offer on Import Vinyl Available Now

Porky cut the original British pressings of this Squeeze album, one of countless personal favorites of yours truly. They are records (and cassettes and CDs) I have played hundreds of times and still listen to regularly to this very day, in this case more than forty years after I purchased my first copy. (Good albums age well.)

I would have picked the record out of the bin at my local Tower Records, probably based on the radio play Tempted was getting.

That copy undoubtedly would have been domestic and made from a sub-generation tape, although I’m quite sure I could not have recognized what constituted dubby sound back then. In 1981, what I understood about the importance of different record pressings would have fit comfortably in a thimble.

I had my MoFi’s, and although I hate to admit it, that’s about as far as I had gotten in my quest for superior sounding pressings. You could add Nautilus and a few other Half-Speeds to the list of what pressing I thought were impressive, leaving plenty of room in that thimble unfilled.

Thankfully those bad old days are gone, and the music can now, finally, live and breath on the best of these imports from the UK. Of course they are the only ones we buy these days for our shootouts. The others are what are known around these parts as “mistakes.”

Sometimes the imported pressings are mastered by Porky and sometimes they are not. The ones that are not tend to have a lot of problems, as you can see from our stamper sheet below.

When Porky is not on side one, that side will tend to be hard, lean and bright. Side two of that copy had decent sound, earning a minimal Hot Stamper grade of 1.5+.

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A Question for Classic Records – What Did You Do to My Beloved Hot Rats?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Frank Zappa Available Now

Second question: This pressing of Hot Rats is analog?

You could’ve fooled me.

And somebody’s been messing around with the drums on the new version — a certain Mr. Frank Zappa no doubt. He really did the album a disservice. If you know the album well, and I know it very well, having played it literally hundreds of times, the Classic is positively unlistenable. (The reworked CD of Ruben and the Jets is even worse.)

Bernie’s version for Classic beats a lot of copies out there — the later Reprise pressings are never any good — but it can’t hold a candle to a good one.

What’s wrong with the Classic?

Well, to my ears it just doesn’t sound natural or all that musical. Sure, it’s a nice trick to beef up those drums and give them some real punch, but does it sound right? Not to these ears.

The other quality that the best copies have going for them and the Classic has none of is Tubey Magic. The Classic is clean, and at first that’s a neat trick since the originals tend to be a bit murky and congested.

But it’s clean like a CD is clean, in all the wrong ways. 

The overall sound of the best originals is musical, natural and balanced. The Classic has that third quality — it’s tonally correct, no argument there — but musical and natural? Not really.

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Delibes / Sylvia and Coppelia / Rignold

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Pressings Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This review is from way back in 2008, from the olden days before we were doing regular shootouts for all the albums we sell, so take it for what it’s worth. (If you like the music of Delibes, our favorite recording of Coppelia can be found here.)

In 2008 we had been seriously into collecting the highest quality record pressings for more than thirty years, yet it was obvious that we still had a lot to learn.

In 2004 we started selling vintage vinyl with Hot Stampers, and practically every shootout we did taught us something new and interesting about records.

Much of that information ended up here, on a blog we’ve dedicated to teaching audiophiles how they can find better sounding pressings the way we did.

We wanted to share what we’ve discovered about the highest quality vinyl and, even more importantly, we wamted to prove that experimenting with records under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to learn anything of value about them.

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These Are the Stampers to Avoid on With The Beatles

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

In our experience, the stereo pressings with -2/-2 stampers are terrible sounding. We do not have any on hand, but we doubt that -1/-1 — the original, the first, the one approved by George Martin himself! — is any better.

With -2 stampers this is a hall of shame pressing, as well as another early LP reviewed and found wanting.

That Old Canard

The early pressings are consistently grittier, edgier and more crude than the later pressings we’ve played. So much for the idea that the “original is better.” When it comes to With The Beatles it just ain’t so, and it doesn’t take a state of the art system or a pair of golden ears to hear it.

The audiophile and record collecting community seems to have failed to reckon with the faults of the early Beatles pressings, but we here at Better Records are doing our best to correct their misperceptions, one Hot Stamper pressing at a time.

It may be a lot of work, but we don’t mind — we love The Beatles! We want to find the best sounding copies of ALL their records, and there is simply no other way to do it than to play them by the dozens, as you can see from the picture below.

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Where on The TAS Super Disc List Is This Amazing Recording?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Decca Available Now

This commentary is from about 2008 or thereabouts. At the time we wrote:

The fact that entries such as Reiner’s Pines of Rome make the cut, and an amazing recording such as this doesn’t, should tell you everything you need to know concerning the value of such an incomplete list.

UPDATE 2024

Woops, we sure got that wrong. We happen to love the Reiner Pines of Rome now.

Be that as it may, this pressing of Ansermets’ recording of Iberia has truly Demo Disc quality sound.

Records simply do not get any more spacious, open, transparent, rich and sweet.

No need to update any of that. It’s all still true. What a recording!

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Wild Things Run Fast – A Personal Favorite

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

One of our favorite Joni Mitchell albums.

A Desert Island disc for me and one of the few good reasons to listen to new music in the 80s. 

My personal Must Own Joni Mitchell list includes:

  1. 1968 Song to a Seagull
  2. 1971 Blue
  3. 1974 Court and Spark
  4. 1982 Wild Things Run Fast

WTRF is a TAS list Super Disc with many good qualities, but you’d never know it from the typically lean, bass-shy pressing you might find on your turntable.

Also, since this record can be a little cold sounding — it’s a modern recording after all, and 1982 is sadly nothing like 1972  — filling it out and warming it up is just what the doctor ordered.

John Golden (JG) mastered the originals. The best of them prove that he did a great job at least some of the time. (To find “the best of them,” aka Hot Stampers, read on.)

You can count on the fact that our Hot Stamper pressings will be unusually rich and full-bodied, with lovely warmth and presence.

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Great in Stereo, Bad in Mono. What Else Is New?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Jazz Piano Recordings Available Now

On this record, we say stick with stereo.

This album is much more common in mono than stereo, but we found the sound of the mono pressing we played deeply unsatisfying.

Where is the wall to wall space of the live club?

It has been shrunken down into the area between the speakers.

Much of the ambience disappeared with it, destroying the illusion the album was trying to create, that you are actually there with Ramsey and his rhythm section.

In mono, you really aren’t.

For albums that actually can sound sound good in mono, so good they can win shootouts, click here.

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