1.5+

The Heavy Vinyl as well as the vintage pressings linked here earned a sonic grade of 1.5+ on at least one side. To put that in perspective, our minimum grade for an entry level Hot Stamper pressing on the site is 1.5+ on both sides.

These Stampers Can Be Good, But They Sure Don’t Win Shootouts

Hot Stamper Pressings of Classic Rock Albums Available Now

This is how we described a recent Hot Stamper pressing that we put up on the site:

Surprisingly rich and full-bodied, particularly on side one, the best copies really ROCK with big bass and punchy drums – just the right Alice Cooper sound.

The beloved title track remains the most-performed song in his concert history, and the presence on this copy will put the band right there in your listening room.

Yet another impossible-to-find record — impossible to find in clean condition, with good sound — has made it to the site, and those of you who are fans should scoop it up. It takes us about four years to find enough copies to do this shootout.

We had poor luck with the second and third label copies on this AC title. It seems that, unlike so many records we play, the originals are the only way to go on School’s Out.

The stampers you see above belong to a Green Label early pressing. It earned good, not great Hot Stamper grades.

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 the best copies can sound.

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

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

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This Blueback Was Somewhat Opaque and Crude – Does that Surprise You?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Felix Mendelssohn Available Now

Presenting our latest findings from 2023:

For our most recent shootout, the original we played earned grades of 1.5+ on both sides, a grade that is the absolute minimum for a Hot Stamper pressing to be listed on the site now.

Our best reissues killed it.

The 3D/3E stampers of our early Blueback copy can probably be beaten by others — assuming there are others — but this is just not a good bet for us when it comes to Mendelssohn’s famous Third Symphony, not when there are so many other pressings with superior sound.

Our favorite performance with top quality sound is made from the same recording you see here, but on a certain budget reissue that has much better sound.

It’s very possible that the Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl pressing from 2003 pictured below would beat the original we describe. We make no claims that it doesn’t, or wouldn’t.

Our claim would be that a properly-mastered, properly-pressed version of the album is very unlikely to be bested by something from Speakers Corner, or any other label making records during the last thirty years.

What I would have played against the Speakers Corner pressing in 2003 would have been an original London Blueback, and maybe a Stereo Treasury or two. Both of them would have been obvious choices, and I was stuck making obvious choices because I simply did not understand enough about classical records at the time to do otherwise.

I confess I knew very little about the recording of the 3rd symphony back in those days, and I certainly didn’t know how good some of the right reissues could sound.

Obviously we needed to do a great deal more research and development, which we began to undertake over the course of the next twenty years in a much more serious way, making one discovery after another.

And that all happened out of the love for great sounding music on vinyl, and, every bit as importantly, because we get paid to do it.

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RCA’s Daphnis et Chloé with Martinon from 1965 Is Another “Good, Not Great” Title

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now

LSC 2806 is not a bad sounding pressing — with grades of 1.5+ on both sides, it belongs in our section for good, not great sounding LPs — but there are other recordings which are substantially better in every way.

Our current favorite is the Decca recording with Monteux from 1959.

We’ve auditioned countless pressings in the 39 years we’ve been in business — buying, cleaning and playing them by the thousands.

This is how we find the best sounding vinyl pressings ever made, through trial and error. It may be expensive and time consuming, but there is simply no other method for finding better records that works. If you know of one, please write me!

We are not the least bit interested in pressings that are “known” to sound the best.

Known by whom? Which audiophiles — hobbyists or professionals, take your pick — can be trusted to know what they are talking about when it comes to the sound of records.

I have never met one, outside of those of us who work for Better Records. I remain skeptical of the existence of such a creature. We’re looking for the pressings of albums that do sound the best. You know, when you actually play them.

Woops

I take that back. I have met one, a certain Robert Brook. He has been conducting his own shootouts for a few years now and has made his findings available on his blog, The Broken Record. This is information you should consider trustworthy.

If you’re an audiophile with an ear for top quality sound on vintage vinyl, we’d be happy to send you the Hot Stamper pressing guaranteed to beat anything and everything you’ve ever heard, especially if you have any pressing marketed to you as an audiophile. Those, with few exceptions, are rarely better than mediocre, and a great many are just awful.

And if we can’t beat whatever LP you own or have heard, you get your money back.  It’s as simple as that.

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Is This Really Robert Ludwig’s Doing? I Thought He Was One of the Good Guys

Hot Stamper Pressings of Rock and Pop Albums Available Now

Below is the complete shootout stamper sheet for a rock record whose name we do not plan to reveal at this time.

We could reveal it, since knowing the “right” stamper numbers appears to be of no help at all — the best stampers and the worst stampers are exactly  the same stampers! (Nothing new there.)

RL stands for Robert Ludwig and MD stands for Masterdisk.  As you can see, Robert Ludwig cut all seven of the pressings that made it to the shootout.

One of them actually won. “Robert Ludwig’s stuff cannot be beat!” might be the post on whatever audiophile forum you frequent. (If it’s Hoffman’s forum, it would more likely read “Robert Ludwig’s stuff cannot be beat except by Steve Hoffman!”)

Another pressings with those same markings came in next to last, with such mediocre-at-best sound that it would not qualify as a Hot Stamper at all. (1.5+ on both sides or better is the minimum grade for any record we sell.)

Robert Ludwig really screwed up the mastering of this title, another forum member might post.

Can they both be wrong? Of course they can. When has any information posted on a forum been reliable or free from error?

If you were to tell me you have the Robert Ludwig-mastered original pressing for this record and it sounds amazing, I would be inclined to agree with you that that is very possible. If, on the other hand, you were to tell me you have the Robert Ludwig-mastered original pressing for this record and it sounds terrible, I would say I happen to know firsthand that that’s possible too.

The most likely sound for any copy you might have is “good, not great,” because only two copies earned grades of 2+ or better on both sides. Two out of seven. (Which is disappointing because it hurts our bottom line when so few copies in a shootout will end up selling for much more than we invested in them in money and labor.)

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We Forgot How Mediocre the Originals of A Winter Romance Are

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Dean Martin Available Now

We gave a couple of early pressings another chance and they blew it!

The copies we sell as Hot Stampers are the reissues from the 60s. Here is what we had to say about a copy we posted for sale recently:

With a voice that is relaxed, smooth and warm, Dino is the perfect guy to sing these songs.

The sound of this reissue is far better than any of the originals we played, which mostly weren’t very good. Which just goes to prove (once again) that in the world of vinyl, the idea that the original will have the best sound is a pernicious falsehood.

Rich, sweet, full of ambience, dead on correct tonality, and wonderfully breathy vocals – everything that we listen for in a great record is here.

To back that up with actual stamper sheet evidence, here are the grades for the two early pressings we put in our shootout. We’d heard the originals before and never liked them, but sometimes if a particular presssing is cheap and easy to find, we give it another chance.

I think we’re done with the originals now though. They’ve let us down too many times.

Who wants to hear Dean Martin’s gorgeous baritone sounding lean, dry and recessed, or, alternately, murky, nasal, grainy and veiled?

If I didn’t know better I would suspect these originals were modern reissues. This kind of crap sound is all over the Heavy Vinyl records we play, although nobody but us ever seems to notice.

The Point Is

This serves to make a very important point that is near and dear to our hearts:

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The Domestic Stampers of 10cc’s Masterpiece Had Us Fooled for Years

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of 10cc Available Now

I haven’t run into many audiophiles who own a copy of The Original Soundtrack, or any other 10cc album for that matter.

It’s the rare person who has the the kind of system that can play a recording with such explosive dynamics.

As I have an uncontrollable habit of saying, this is the kind of record that is guaranteed to bring any audiophile stereo to its knees. 

Since that is the case, and audiophiles who build the kind of big systems in heavily-treated custom rooms to meet the challenge such recordings present are thin on the ground — very thin it seems, as I am the only one I have ever known — it stands to reason that practically no audiophiles have ever experienced the size and power of the recording as it was meant to be heard.

I thought I was doing a very good job reproducing the sound of the album, but recent research has proved that, once again, I was mistaken. Previously I had written:

The recording itself is a tour de force, the main reason I’ve been demonstrating my stereo with it for more than thirty years. The extended suite that opens side one, One Night in Paris, has ambience, three-dimensional sound effects, and incredibly dynamic multi-tracked vocals at the climax that will leave you with your jaw on the floor.

All true. But I had been playing both domestic pressings and British pressings over the course of those thirty years, and I don’t remember clearly preferring one to the other.

With our latest shootout the British pulled away from the pack in a big way, with no British pressing being beaten by any domestic competitor.

The domestic pressings ranged from very good — 2+ on both sides — to passable at best — 1+ on both sides.

I honestly used to think they were close, that they would be hard to tell apart. Those days are gone. We are operating at a whole ‘nother level, and I am glad that we are. We want to give out only the most accurate information and sell only the best sounding records.  What I had thought was true ten years ago turns out to have been off the mark.

When reality turns out to be dramatically different from what you thought it was, and you can prove it — you actually have the physical records to back up your newer, more correct understanding — that’s audio progress.

You might try proving yourself wrong more often.

Most audiophiles I have run into like having their biases confirmed, but look where that has gotten some of them — stuck in a rut. Break out of that way of thinking and you may very well find that you have broken through to another level.

Because if you don’t go out of your way to prove yourself wrong, who will?

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In the Land of Hi-Fi – A Very Good Speakers Corner Reissue

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cannonball Adderley Available Now

Soon after the album was released in 2000, we wrote the following short review (three words!) in our catalog:

“Outstanding! Top recommendation!”

Ten years or so later, we added this caveat:

A fairly good Speakers Corner jazz album. Hard to know what we would think of this pressing today, but for the thirty bucks you might pay for it, it’s probably worth a listen. 

Well, we recently got one in and gave it that listen. Shockingly, it has held up fairly well for a Heavy Vinyl pressing.

With the mono switch out (inactive) on the EAR 324P, we noted:

Big, loose bass.

Horns are rich and nice but veiled.

With the mono switch in (active), the sound is a bit less veiled but not too different.

It’s not a bad sounding pressing — with a grade of 1.5+, it might qualify for our good, not great sounding LPs section, depending on how side two sounds. We didn’t play side two because 1.5+ is not a grade that makes us want to put any more time into it. It’s our lowest Hot Stamper grade, and it barely qualified for it, meaning there is a good chance that the next one could be 1+ and not worth anybody’s trouble.

The right vintage pressings are a big step up in class sonically, but boy are they hard to find in clean condition. We’ve tried for years and don’t have much to show for our efforts yet.

At a cheap price it’s not a bad record, depending on how you feel about the midrange being veiled.

I can’t stand that sound myself, but since a very large percentage of Heavy Vinyl pressings that we’ve auditioned over the years have suffered from that problem to one degree or another, I guess other music lovers and audiophiles feel differently. (This link will take you to some of the other records we’ve reviewed with veiled sound.)

The average copy on Discogs sells for $29.10. That seems like a decent price for a decent-sounding record.

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Are All the Original Asylum Pressings of Desperado Demo Discs?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Eagles Available Now

No, and this should come as not much of a surprise to anyone that’s bought records from us or spent much time reading this blog.

As you can see from the notes below for this particular pressing of Desperado, both sides are passable, earning a minimal Hot Stamper grade of 1.5+.

It’s a decent sounding copy I suppose, but 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 Desperado can be on the best vintage 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 one shocked the hell out of us by actually winning a shootout. Wouldn’t you like to know which one!

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

Desperado Is a True Super Disc 

Of course, the best sound on an Eagles record is found on the first album. For whatever reason, that record was left off the TAS super disc list, even though we feel that both musically and sonically it beats this one by a bit.

On the TAS Super Disc list. Harry Pearson recommends the British SYL pressings for this album. SYL pressings can sound very good; in fact, one of the top copies from a recent (2024) shootout was SYL. A bit of a surprise since our champion for both sides during the previous shootout was domestic.

Does that mean the best domestics will always beat the best SYL pressings? Not at all. Only critical listening can separate the superb pressings from the typical ones. After playing more than a dozen copies of this album this week, we can definitively tell you that there are far more mediocre copies of this record — both domestic and import — than truly exceptional ones. The typical pressing of this album, whether the domestic or SYL, falls far short of belonging on a Super disc list.

There are killer domestic copies and killer SYL imports out there, and the only way to know which ones sound good is to collect ’em, clean ’em, and play ’em.

Remember: TAS list doesn’t guarantee great sound, but Better Records does — if you don’t think a record sounds as good as we’ve stated, we’ll always happily take that record back and refund your money. Good luck getting ol’ Harry to send you a check when the TAS-approved pressings you pick up don’t deliver.

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On Reggatta de Blanc, Steer Clear of Bilbo

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Sting and The Police Available Now

A White Hot Stamper shootout winning copy went up on the site recently (4/2025) and this is how we described it:

With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish, this copy is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Regatta de Blanc you’ve heard.

Most of the stuff we manage to acquire from overseas is in far worse playing condition – these were popular records in their day, and they got played plenty, so this one came as a pleasant surprise.

Sting’s pulsing bass lines and the massive assault of Copeland’s kick really come to life here – you won’t believe how big and powerful the bass is on this record.

Along with Ghost in the Machine, we think this album captures The Police at their songwriting and performing peak.

However, many of the copies we played left much to be desired, as you can see from the notes we made for two of the copies we played (out of a total of nine):

Bilbo has cut many of our favorite records over the years, but for this album his side two is way too bright and therefore NFG.

Sheffield Labs Mastering (SLM) also cut many great sounding records, but for this album the sound was “very thin.” The grade of 1.5+ means the record is playable and enjoyable, but the top copies we offer will be dramatically better sounding.

Tone (not pictured) is a British mastering house that has mastered many excellent pressings. In the case of Reggatta they can be very good, but they never win shootouts.

British, Dutch or Domestic?

The first two can be good.

The domestic copies are consistently sub-par, as is the Half-Speed, and whatever Heavy Vinyl pressings are available are sure to be mediocre at best, as that has been our experience with the hundreds and hundreds of such pressings we have played to date.

Some of the most recent ones we’ve played were especially bad sounding. When it comes to Heavy Vinyl, devolution seems to be the operating principle.

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On this Mystery London, The Reissues Have Lately Been Letting Us Down

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Decca Available Now

The record you see pictured is not the record we will be discussing in this post.

The stamper numbers and grades you see below belong to a different album.

We’ve lately been giving out much more stamper information than we used to, in some cases including the actual stamper sheets compiled from the shootout — winners, losers, and everything in between — but for now we are keeping this title close to the vest.

This pressing was not as bad as many of the golden age classical titles we play. (See links below.)

Although it has the potential to sound amazingly good on the early labels, the second label London pressings never seem to do much better than 1.5+, a barely passing Hot Stamper grade.

It’s small, stuck in the speakers, and had no real top end. We judge the best pressings on the second label with these stampers to have good, not great sound quality.

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 London can be on the best early 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 one shocked the hell out of us by actually winning a shootout. Wouldn’t you like to know which one!)

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

Here are reviews for some of the titles we’ve auditioned, broken down into the three major labels that account for most of the best classical and orchestral titles we’ve had the pleasure to play.

  • London/Decca records with weak sound or performances
  • Mercury records with weak sound or performances
  • RCA records with weak sound or performances

We’ve auditioned countless pressings in the 37 years we’ve been in business — buying, cleaning and playing them by the thousands.

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