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Letter of the Week – “I’m so blown away with this Hot Stamper that I think it’s a bargain at $500.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Doors Available Now

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

Hi Tom,

I must confess, that like most audiophiles, I was not a believer in Hot Stampers. I thought my DCC Compact Classic and my 180 gram Box Set was the best. Boy was I dead wrong!

I have been buying Hot Stampers from you on a regular basis for the past two months. They truly allow me to hear what was intended in the recording studio and, man, is it breathtaking.

I received the Doors – LA Woman a couple of days ago and never in my wildest dreams did I ever think a record could be this realistic.

I couldn’t believe the amount of information I was hearing coming out of the groove of this LP — the biggest, most realistic staging and largest acoustic space I have ever heard in my life.

The highs were sweet and extended, the midrange was as natural as a midrange could ever be, and the bass was tight and rich with incredible weight down to the lowest region. Transparency and resolution on this LP are simply out of this world. I’m so blown away with this Hot Stamper that I think it’s a bargain at $500.00.

I truly believe you really have to experience a Hot Stamper, especially one like this, to see why I’m losing my mind. I’m slowly but surely replacing all of my favorite records with your Hot Stamper versions.

Thank you for this masterpiece! (more…)

Led Zeppelin / II – A Top Ten Title

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

Hot Stamper Pressings of Top Ten Titles Available Now

You may have seen our Top 100 list of the best sounding rock and pop records on the site.

We recently picked out a Top Ten from that list and you will not be surprised to learn that Led Zeppelin II made the cut. (It may in fact deserve to be at the top of the list. That’s how good the best copies are.)

The blog you are on, as well as our website, are dedicated to very special records such as these.

It is the very definition of a Demo Disc for big speakers that play at loud levels. The better pressings have the kind of ENERGY in their grooves that are sure to leave most audiophile systems begging for mercy.

This is the audio challenge that awaits you. If you don’t have a stereo designed to play records with this kind of sonic firepower, don’t expect to hear them the way the band, the engineers and everybody else involved in the production wanted you to.

This album wants to rock your world, and that’s exactly what our Hot Stamper pressings do best.

The Evolution of an Audiophile 

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The Nutcracker – Side to Side Notes Included

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Our favorite combination of performance and sound can be found on the Decca recording of the work from 1959 performed by Ansermet and the Suisse Romande.

This review was written for our last (and probably final) shootout for the Dorati from about ten years ago. We no longer buy these Mercury pressings because the vinyl tends to be too noisy for most audiophiles. I have a high tolerance for noise, but most of our customers do not.

Hot Stamper pressings of Mercury classical and orchestral recordings can be found here.

Click on the link to see more records for which we’ve detailed the strengths and weaknesses of a specific shootout copy.

Our Review from from the 2010s

This London Symphony recording is without a doubt THE BEST SOUNDING Nutcracker we have ever played here at Better Records, and that includes not only the full ballet but the suites and excerpts as well. The sound in a word is GLORIOUS. This copy, with 8 1/2 pluses total for the four sides, has DEMO DISC quality sound on three out of four sides. We shot out nine original maroon label copies (and one oval label Philips pressing) so we had our work cut out for us when it came to this masterwork of Tchaikovsky’s. It was an absolute JOY to hear his sublime orchestration recorded so faithfully and naturally by the Mercury team, using 35MM film no less. 

A top performance with top quality sound. Let’s get right to each of the four sides.

Side One

A TRIPLE PLUS sound, the best in show. The stage is huge and 3-D, there’s tons of energy, the string texture — always a worry with Mercury — is excellent as well, and the sound of the orchestra is full-bodied and solid.

The sound of the strings is what put this side over the top. When have you ever heard Mercury strings sound so rich and tubey-magical as they do here? We were gobsmacked at the lushness of the string tone, something you hear often wiht Golden Age recordings on Decca and RCA but almost never on Mercury.

Side Two

A+ to A++, the weakest side here. Some smear to the strings and a bit too much of that old school tubey-magical overly smooth sound.

Side Three

At A++ this was another wonderful side, with especially full-bodied, solid horns. The strings got a little ragged when playing in the loudest passages, so we took off a plus. Otherwise this side is killer and getting it right from top to bottom.

Side Four

A little smear but so rich and tubey magical, this one had to earn at least two pluses for sound, A++. The sound is wall to wall and so sweet. With a little more pluck to the harp and bite to the strings this one would have been White Hot.

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