4-2019

Letter of the Week – “The whole album is a “Holy S%$*@ experience.”

More of the Music of Eric Clapton

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

Hey Guys, just listened to “Slowhand” and did you know that on “Wonderful Tonight” you can hear that the snare drum is wood, not steel?… Unbelievable!

The whole album is a “Holy S%$*@ experience.

Kevin B.

Kevin,

Thanks for your letter, fantastic news that the pressing we sent you is resolving enough for you to hear that.

The modern Heavy Vinyl pressing is notorious (around these parts anyway) for seriously lacking resolution, but no one seems to notice but us. (Here are more than fifty titles that make our case, all of them dramatically lower-rez than the best pressings we are have played in our shootouts.)

Here’s a question we have been asking for more than 30 years: Are reviewers’ systems good enough to judge the records we offer?

Best, TP

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The Chopin I Love – A Sleeper from Columbia

This is an undiscovered Columbia gem from 1971. Both musically and sonically this record is superb. Who knew Columbia could record a piano this well? You could play fifty vintage piano recordings and not find one as good as this! We know, we’ve played plenty, including a number of Entremont’s Columbia records that don’t sound too good to us. Maybe we need to find a Hot Stamper of some of the weaker titles, but it hasn’t happened yet. A word of advice: avoid the piano concertos. We have yet to hear a good one. Those steely Columbia strings are far from our idea of good sound.

These solo piano pieces are performed with consummate skill and deep feeling by the legendary Phillipe Entremont. His liner notes are beautifully written and insightful as well — well worth reading.

Fortunately this record has no strings, just a solid, clear piano in a big hall. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “Such crystalline clarity. Such range.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Billie Holiday Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

Wow. Such crystalline clarity. Such range. It filled my room with champagne. Heretofore, only on 78s did [Billie Holiday’s] voice sound so authentic and dramatically expressive. Brilliant copy. Thank you.

Phil

Armed Forces – Our Four Plus Shootout Winner

Hot Stamper Pressings of Elvis’s Albums Available Now

This White Hot Stamper side one of Armed Forces was HEAD AND SHOULDERS better than ANY side of ANY other copy we played. We are awarding it our very special Four Plus grade; the sound goes beyond anything we’ve heard before. It’s also one of less than two dozen such records to ever hit the site.

At this point we’ve easily done more than a thousand Hot Stamper listings, so we are talking in the range of the top one or two percent for sound. Most audiophiles will go their whole lives without hearing a rock record sound this good, considering the tens of thousands of records we’ve had to buy, clean and play to find the handful of OFF THE CHARTS copies we’ve reviewed. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “So I put on my Better Records A+++ copy of the same title. Voila! The sound became magical.”

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

Hey Tom, 

I went to a ‘listening party” at a local high end audio retailer. People were invited to bring a record, have it professionally cleaned, and played back on as many as three different systems ranging from about $3,000 to over six figures for the complete system.

I brought my Hot Stamper of Clear Spot by Captain Beefheart that I got from you.

I know. That’s like cheating, right?

As usual, the record blew all listeners away.

I had one person tell me that, while the style of music wasn’t his cup of tea, it sounded so compelling he wanted more.

So I put on my Nautilus SuperDiscs (Listen To The Difference) pressing of The Cars Candy-O.

Sounds okay. But this is supposed to be a “SuperDisc”. Okay does not cut it.

So I put on my Better Records A+++ copy of the same title. Voila! The sound became magical. (more…)

Dexter Gordon Knocked Us Out All the Way Back in 2007

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Note Albums Available Now

[Some text has been altered, mostly the overuse of capitalization.]

This Blue Note LP is without a doubt one of the best sounding jazz records we’ve ever heard. We were auditioning a bunch of jazz records today (4/25/07), and when the needle hit the grooves on this one we were absolutely blown away.

I can’t think of one jazz record we’ve ever played here at Better Records with this kind of whomp. Everything here is so rich and full — nothing like a typical Blue Note album.

Both the sax and the trumpet sound unbelievably good — airy and breathy with lots of body and clearly audible leading edge transients. It’s hard to find a Blue Note where the horns aren’t either too smooth or too edgy, but here they have just the right amount of bite. The overall sound is open, spacious, tonally correct from top to bottom and totally free from distortion. We’ve heard good copies of this album before, but this one is magical.

The presence and immediacy on this copy are stunning. Just listen to the snare drum at the beginning of Coppin’ The Haven — it sounds like someone is bangin’ that thing right in your living room.

We’ve never heard a Blue Note with this kind of clarity, this kind of transparency, and this much life. We rate it an A+++ on both sides — Master Tape Sound, As Good As It Gets.

This copy has the power of live music. When we turned it up loud, it was as if we were right up front at one of the best jazz concerts imaginable. The music is every bit as good — soulful hard bop played superbly and passionately.

Just listen to Donald Byrd blowing his lungs out on his own Tanya, or Gordon’s lyrical solo on Darn That Dream — these guys are pros at the top of their game.

Further Reading

The Brass Are Key on Chicago V

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chicago Available Now

The brass on any Chicago album has to have just the right amount of transient bite yet still be full-bodied and never blary. In addition, on the best of the best pressings you can really hear the air moving through the horns.

Most copies suffer from dull highs and smeary, compressed brass. This is a sound we cannot abide. The lively copies with real bite to the brass and plenty of ENERGY in the music are the only ones for us. Finding them is not easy but we came across a few that made the grade and are proud to offer them here.

More often than not the brass lacks bite and presence, but these sides had the Chicago horns leaping out of the speakers. What is a Chicago record without great horns? Without that big bold sound you may have something, but it sure ain’t Chicago.

Most pressings don’t reproduce the percussion harmonics, the leading edge transients of the horns, or the big, open space around Peter Cetera’s vocals that we know is there, but a high-res, super-transparent copy like this one brings out all those qualities and more.

One More Sonic Note

We always notice during our Chicago shootouts that the songs on their albums tend to be hit and miss sonically (especially when it comes to the more multi-layered and dynamic tracks).

But on the hotter copies the production missteps don’t seem to be nearly as problematical.

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Our First Shootout Winner for Dolphy’s Brilliant Out To Lunch Album

More Hot Stamper Pressings on Blue Note Available Now

This review was written in 2019, the year we did our first shootout for Out to Lunch.

A SUPERB JAZZ DEMO DISC on unusually QUIET vinyl! Blue Note fans, take notice — this is a VERY special pressing!

Folks, Out To Lunch is one of the ultimate Blue Note titles for both music and stereo sound, and I don’t think you could find another pressing of the album that sounds this good and plays this quietly no matter how many you played, realistically speaking of course. If you’ve been watching our better Blue Note offerings, you probably know that this is the first Hot copy to ever make it to the site. And what a way to start off — both sides earned A+++ grades.

Dolphy’s debut for Blue Note is an absolute KNOCKOUT musically, and the quality of the sound on this pressing was everything we could have ever hoped for — more, really — (which is not a bad definition of a White Hot Stamper LP when you come to think about it). It’s 100% guaranteed to blow your mind.

This is an amazing album — All Music Guide calls it “Dolphy’s magnum opus, an absolute pinnacle of avant-garde jazz in any form or era” and we think that hits it right on the head.

Thankfully, for us audiophiles the sound on the better pressings can be stunning. The trick of course is finding those copies, and it’s a tough enough job that we’ve never been able to get any Hot Stamper copy up on the site until now. For the fellow who snaps this bad boy up, I am positive this White Hot Stamper will prove well worth the wait.

White Hot All Over

Both sides are KILLER, with mindblowing transparency, stunning immediacy and exceptional clarity. There is tremendous separation between the various players and plenty of natural ambience. This is exactly the kind of record that will make your speakers disappear. Turn this one up good and loud and revel in the glory that is Out To Lunch. Get ready to get lost.

I wish I could tell you to look forward to more great copies like this in the future, but I’m not sure we’d be able to back that up. Clean copies of Out To Lunch are extremely scarce nowadays, and it’s going to take us ages to build up a big enough stack of ’em to get this shootout going again.

One last note — Bobby Hutcherson MURDERS on the vibes on this album. Hearing his stellar, groundbreaking work played back on a White Hot Stamper copy through a high-end stereo is nothing less than a THRILL. We look forward to hearing about it from the lucky person who takes this one home.

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The Three / Self-Titled – Our Direct Disc Copy from Way Back

Hot Stamper Pressings of The Three Available Now

DEMO QUALITY, MASTER TAPE SOUND (!) on BOTH SIDES!

Hey, wait a minute, this is the direct to disc version, there is no Master Tape. How can it have Master Tape Sound?

Simple. It’s the RARE copy that actually sounds like this one. Most Eastwind pressings — like pressings on any label — do not convey all the information of the master tape that you know must exist because you HEAR it on some copies. Some Direct Discs have much more of the sound that was cut live directly onto the acetate than others. This is one of those, one of the ones with MUCH MORE SOUND! 

This is my favorite piano trio record of all time. Joe Sample, Shelly Manne and Ray Brown only made one album together, this one, recorded direct to disc right here in Los Angeles for Eastwind in the Seventies. Joe Sample for once in his life found himself in a real Class A trio, and happily for jazz fans around the world he rose to the occasion. Actually it was more like an epiphany, as this is the one piano trio album I put in a class by itself. All three of The Three are giving us the best they’ve got on this one. When it comes to piano trio jazz, there is none better.

So Many Takes

There are two takes for the Direct Disc, the second of which is terrible and the first of which we are offering here. The wrong take is so bad I simply cannot stand to listen to it anymore, no matter how good the sound is. And most of the direct disc copies do not sound all that good anyway, truth be told.

The only combination of music and sound that makes any sense to us here at Better Records is take 1 of the direct disc, the 45 RPM from tape version and the 33 on Inner City.

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We’d Never Heard The Pretender Sound Like This

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jackson Browne Available Now

UPDATE 2024

Our lengthy commentary entitled outliers and out-of-this-world sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how to go about finding them.

We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.

Nowadays we often place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that, out of the blue, reveal to us sound that fundamentally changes what we thought we knew about these often familiar recordings.

When this pressing (or pressings) landed on our turntable, we found ourselves asking “Who knew?“

Perhaps an even better question would have been “how high is up?”

Our Four Plus Listing

Amazing FOUR plus A++++ sound, so good we rated it beyond our usual top grade of Triple Plus. Without a doubt it’s the best sounding Jackson Browne record ever made, and this copy backs up everything we say and more.

Side one was super transparent, with breathy, present vocals. What really blew us away on this one is the sheer size and openness of the soundfield. We were so impressed that we went beyond our usual top grade of A+++, something we rarely do. But when a copy like this comes along and sets a new standard for an album’s sonic potential, there’s nothing else we CAN do!

Side two was every bit as good! Absolutely As Good As It Gets! Big and open, solid and rich, this one is doing absolutely everything we could ask it to. The soundstage is HUGE, and the transparency and separation between parts are stunning. If you’re looking for Demo Disc Jackson Browne sound, this is it.

Demo Disc Sound

This is one of the all time great rock / pop Demo Discs — the sound of the best copies is so rich and full-bodied it makes most other rock records sound positvely anemic. As I’m sure you know by now, especially if you own a copy or two, pressings of The Pretender don’t usually sound like Demo Discs. In fact, most copies of this record are mediocre at best — thin, grainy, and flat sounding.

This copy is none of those things. And it positively MURDERS the famous MoFi pressing. Click on the Aural Excitement tab above to read more on that subject. (more…)