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Letter of the Week – “The same in what sense?”

beatlessgtHot Stamper Pressings of Sgt. Peppers Available Now

A potential customer asked about some Beatles pressings he saw on our site:

  Hey Tom, 

I have the Beatles collection UK box set from the time frame you mentioned. [Most of our Beatles albums are from the 70s and early 80s.] The albums have the black Parlophone EMI label. Do you think they are the same as the album that is for sale?

Edward

Edward,

The same in what sense? No two records have the same sound, so in that sense, no, they cannot ever be the same. They can have the same labels, even the same stamper numbers, but they will always sound different on very good equipment, and when properly cleaned they will sometimes sound VERY different.

And the better your system, the more different they will sound.

If you absolutely love your Pepper from the box set and have played five or ten other pressings and found that it is the best sounding of them all, then you probably don’t need ours. You’ve already done a shootout and you’ve already found a winner. If that is the case, congratulations are in order.

But if you did not do a shootout, did not clean and play five or ten other copies, then our pressing should be quite a bit better, maybe even night and day better. No one can know until you play our copy against yours.

Your judgment is the final say on the matter, but you need a bunch of cleaned copies in order to make that judgment, and it looks like you do not have more than the one Pepper from the box.

At this point you really don’t know how good your Sgt. Pepper sounds, because you need other copies to play against it in order to know that.

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Debussy / La Mer / Reiner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Claude Debussy Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This is a very old review, one which we ourselves may no longer agree with. If you see this record in the bins for cheap, give it a try, but don’t pay a high price for it on our say-so.

The record that contains our current favorite performance with top quality sound for La Mer was conducted by Ansermet for Decca in 1955. We rarely have it in stock

For Don Juan we like Haitink’s recording for Philips from 1975. Again, not one likely to be in stock.

Note that records made from 1955 to 1975 make up practically all of our offerings of classical and orchestral music.

In the 70s things went downhill, and quickly. Let me give you just one example:

A mediocre Decca recording from 1972 was remastered in 1981 by an audiophile label trying to “improve” it. Sure enough, with their ridiculously misguided mastering decisions and wacky cutting system, they made it even worse.

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Back to Back – A Classic Records Winner

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Duke Ellington Available Now

 Duke Ellington And Johnny Hodges Play The Blues

UPDATE 2026

When this record came out in the 90s, we were happy to recommend it to our customers:

This is one of the better sounding Classic titles from their Verve series, and the music is excellent.

Finding a clean original is no mean feat, as I’m sure you can imagine.

I can find no record of us ever having done a shootout for it, which probably means that we just could not find enough clean original copies to do it and just gave up.

They sell for an average of $27.20 on Discogs so for that price you are probably getting a very good record for your money.

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Punch The Clock – A Forgotten Classic

Hot Stamper Pressings of Elvis Costello’s Albums Available Now

UPDATE 2026

In 2008 we did our first shootout for Punch the Clock. This is what we had to say at the time about the album and the pressings that won our shootout.

Note that we used to like the German pressings better than the Brits back then but no longer do. The best German pressings in our last shootout earned grades of 1.5+ to 2+, even though they were mastered by the same engineer. All the British copies we played had better sound.

This is one of my favorite Elvis Costello albums. I remember loving the sound of my old import copy from twenty years back. Now I know better: that most of them leave something to be desired. Did I have good one? Who can say? Everything is different, and revisiting old sonic favorites can sometimes be a bit of a shock. (Of course this is especially true for all the old MOFIs I used to like. Now most of them make me gag.)

Elvis: Still The King

By the way, we played a domestic copy of this album, just for fun you might say, and sure enough it was a real mess. Boosted highs, poor bass definition and copious amounts of grit and grain — 70s Columbia at their best, what else is new? The first album and Spike are the only Elvis records I know of that sound good on domestic vinyl. Forget the rest.

[Spike not so much anymore.]

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Sometimes Tubey Magic Comes at a Fairly Steep Price

Living Stereo Hot Stamper Orchestral Titles Available Now

This famous Shaded Dog, containing two superb performances by Monteux and the LSO, has many of the Golden Age strengths and weaknesses we know well here at Better Records, having auditioned hundreds upon hundreds of these vintage pressings over the last twenty years or so. 

The wonderful sounding tube compressors that were used back in the day result in quieter passages that are positively swimming in ambience and low-level orchestral detail. Tube compression is often a large part of what we mean when we use the term Tubey Magic.

If you want to know what zero Tubey Magic sounds like, play some Telarcs or Reference Recordings from the 70s and 80s. Or a modern digital recording on CD.

But all that sweet and rich Tubey Magic comes at a price when it’s time for the orchestra to get loud.

It either can’t, or the louder passages simply distort from compressor overload.

Fortunately, on this copy the orchestra does not distort, it simply never gets as loud as it would in a real concert hall, clearly the lesser and more preferable of the two evils.

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Years Ago We Foolishly Thought a Domestic LP Could Beat the Brits on Low

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Bowie Available Now

This shootout listing for Low was written sometime around 2008. 

In 2008 we hadn’t discovered the right imports for this album yet — that would not happen for many more years, hence the error we made in thinking that some especially good sounding domestic copies could win a shootout.

Back then they could, but with the right pressings in the mix there is not a chance in the world that would happen now.

Just another case of live and learn.

By the way, Low has much in common with another Bowie record we struggled with for years.

To be fair, some domestic pressings do end up having low-level (1.5+) Hot Stampers, but they’re rare. Our best Brits just kill ’em. We haven’t bothered with the domestic pressings in more than a decade, and why would we? The reissue imports we sell now are just too good.

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Letter of the Week – “…you’re actually saving me some money and you’re definitely saving me time.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

I really like all the full disclosure you have of your methods and what you pay for the records and by the time I purchase five different copies of “Who’s Next“ and figure out which one I like best I think you’re actually saving me some money and you’re definitely saving me time.

Although I will admit that my 57-year-old years and perhaps my lack of the revealing system (McIntosh MC302, PS Audio Stellar Gain Cell DAC, and Sonus Faber Cremona’s with the soft dome silk tweeter) do permit me to enjoy some of the Mobile Fidelity sound labs releases.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

David

Dear David,

Some of those MoFi records can sound passable enough, especially if you don’t have something better to compare them to. Your ears are probably fine.

As you say, more revealing equipment would expose their flaws, but then you have to acquire, at no small expense, other pressings of albums you already own, one of the most fundamental problems in trying to collect better sounding pressings.

Best, TP

We protect money because it’s visible and throw away time because it’s not.

If you burn money, people call you crazy. If you burn time, they call you busy.

We treat money as valuable because it’s quantifiable and time as disposable because it’s not.

Shane Parrish

Let Us Help You Back Up Your Claims

How to Become a Better Listener

UPDATE 2026

We wrote this commentary a couple of years back and now, having played some of the Tone Poets pressings we thought would have bad sound, have updated it with all the latest information on that sorry label.

Credibility is at the heart of our many disagreements with the online audiophile community, so we felt we needed to offer a way for audiophiles to do a better job of giving some context to their opinions.

When we run experiments that include modern remastered Heavy Vinyl records, comparing them to the vintage vinyl pressings we have on hand for our shootouts, the one thing we can say about them is that they are almost certain to be inferior. (Well, almost, but not quite.)

Some are a great deal worse than others, to be sure, but they are all inferior to one degree or another.

On another blog we were taken to task — by those who felt their systems were more than adequate to judge the sound quality of the real Blue Notes compared to the new releases — for predicting that Joe Harley’s Tone Poets releases, once we finally got around to playing them, would be just as awful as all the other records he has had a hand in producing

For the thirty years since these Heavy Vinyl pressings have come along, it has seemed to us that all the evidence pointed in the same direction — namely that audiophile systems are rarely capable of showing their owners the strengths and weaknesses of the records they play.

We discussed that very issue here in some depth. Curiously, the audiophile systems of reviewers has seemed to fail them every bit as badly.

If you, speaking as an audiophile, want to make the case for the superior quality of the records put out on the Tone Poets label, we are happy to entertain the possibility. Having played Heavy Vinyl pressings by the hundreds over the past three decades, the chances of their records having sound we would find acceptable are vanishingly small, but we can’t say the chances are zero.

Repeating the tiresome truism (aren’t they all?) that because reviews are subjective, your review is as credible as any other, simply will not do.

When we wrote the above we had yet to play a Tone Poets reissue in one of our shootouts. (We’d dropped the needle on a couple, but to get deep into the sound we really needed to do a shootout with a good-sized pile of cleaned Blue Note pressings, with special emphasis on those mastered by RVG. They’re the ones that most often win shootouts.)

We actively started to search out real Blue Note pressings, on various labels from various eras, for a couple of titles. After about two years we were able to do the shootouts and report our findings.

UPDATE 2026

We have now played a couple of the Tone Poets releases, for two of the very best sounding Blue Note recordings we’ve had the pleasure to play: Dexter Gordon’s One Flight Up and Lee Morgan’s Cornbread.

To read our reviews, click on the respective links for either or both of them: One Flight Up and Cornbread.

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Mozart on Wonderful Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Mozart Available Now

Sonic Grade: B?

A fairly good Speakers Corner Decca reissue, probably.

Not sure if we would still agree with what we wrote back in the 90s when this record came out, but here it is anyway. 

One of the best of the Deccas. I raved about this one years ago when it came out. If I had to pick a record to demonstrate how wonderful Decca recordings are, musically and sonically, this would be an easy choice.

These wonderful concertos — some of the greatest ever composed — should be part of any serious classical collection.

Others that belong in that category can be found here.

Kenneth Wilkinson was probably the engineer for these sessions in glorious Kingsway Hall. It’s yet another remarkable disc from the Golden Age of Vacuum Tube Recording.

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Our Previous Two Shootouts for Straight Up

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Badfinger Available Now

UPDATE 2025

This title, like all the best Badfinger records, is almost always noisy, which is why you will rarely find it on our site. Most of what we buy is just not quiet enough to sell.

We were finally able to do a shootout for Straight Up again in 2025, our first in fifteen years! There is one Hot Stamper pressing active on the site at the time of this writing, but it will most likely be gone soon.

Our Thinking Circa 2010

This relatively quiet WHITE HOT STAMPER Straight Up is KILLER, with a A++ side one and an A+++ side two — you can’t do much better than that! Side two has Master Tape Sound, the kind that we like to call AGAIG — As Good As It Gets. Both sides have the kind of PRESENCE in the midrange that most copies can’t begin to compete with. The sound here just JUMPS out of the speakers, which is exactly what the best copies of the album are supposed to (but rarely) do. For fans of the band — and Power Pop in general — this is the Straight Up you have been waiting for!

Our last shootout was in 2007, not because we don’t like the record or have customers for it; rather it’s the fact that clean copies of the album just aren’t out there in the bins the way they used to be. Two or three a year is all we can find, and that’s with hitting the stores every week.

2007 vs 2010

In 2007 we wrote: “Having played more than half a dozen copies of this record during the shootout I can tell you that the most common problem with Straight Up is grainy, gritty sound. Most copies of this record are painfully aggressive and transistory.”

With improvements to cleaning and playback i would say that’s not actually true in 2010. There is some grit to the sound to be sure, but like most records from the era, veiling and smearing are what really hold most copies back

Good copies of this record, ones that are mastered properly and pressed on “good” vinyl, sound a lot like a stipped down version of Abbey Road, which is what they’re supposed to sound like. That’s clearly the sound Badfinger and their producers George Harrison and Todd Rundgren (with some help from the Beatles’ engineer Geoff Emerick* ) were aiming at.

You will also hear some influences from All Things Must Pass and McCartney’s first . The music owes a lot to both The Beatles as well as Harrison and McCartney as individuals. What’s not to like? Catchy pop songs with grungy guitars — it’s ear candy when the sound is good, and the sound is very good here!

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