amazing-finds

Check out our notes for some of the most amazing sounding vintage pressings we’ve ever played.

Inner Secrets Is One of the Best Sounding Rock Records We’ve Ever Played

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Santana Available Now

In our most recent shootout (11/2023), the first we’ve done in quite a few years, my main listening guy was blown away by the sound of the Shootout Winning copy. This warmed my heart no end, as I have been raving about the sound of this album for fifteen years or more.

We created a section for phenomenally good sounding records like Inner Secrets, and this link will take you to it.

His notes from the session can be seen below.

And he’s not wrong about much of the album being “blah.” There are really only about four top quality songs out of the nine on the album, but three of those four are killer, and, even at our prices, make the album a Must Own for those of you with big speakers that can play good and loud.

Phase One and Phase Two of a Shootout

Like other Hot Stampers you may have read about, sometimes the instruments and voices just jump out of the speakers. When that happens I usually write “It’s Alive!” on the post-it, and I know exactly what to do with it. I put it right in the Contender pile, to be compared with the other top contender copies at some point.

It’s definitely a crazy-good Hot Stamper; just how hot we still need to find out.

Which is what happens in Phase Two of these affairs. We go back through all the best copies to see in what areas they really shine and in what areas they may fall a bit short of the best.

Of course there’s no way to know what accounts for any of the sound we hear. Not for sure anyway. It’s just interesting to ponder what makes one record sound one way and the next record, with stampers as little as one letter off in the alphabet — sometimes with exactly the same stampers! — sound so different from one another.

Doug Sax Is The Man

All the originals (the only ones with the potential for good sound in our experience) are cut by The Mastering Lab, one of the greatest cutting houses to ever master records.

Doug Sax may or may not have had anything to do with the making of this record, but one thing we can be sure of: he knew how to keep his lathes and amplifiers working at state-of-the-art levels. The sound quality is unsurpassed.

And he did it all with tubes.

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Shall We Dance Has Absolutely Amazing Sound (and We Love the Music Too)

More Hot Stamper Pressings of Big Band Recordings Available Now

One of the best sounding records we have ever played, the Gold Standard for Tubey Magical Big Band.

Both sides are huge, rich, weighty and dynamic like few records you have ever heard. Three elements create the magic here: Kingsway Hall, Kenneth Wilkinson and the Decca “Tree” microphone setup.

Years ago we wrote in another listing “We had a copy of Heath’s Shall We Dance not long ago that had some of the biggest, richest, most powerful sound I have ever heard. Watch for Hot Stampers coming to the site soon.” Well, now they’re here, and this copy fulfills the promise of the album like no copy we have ever played.

DEMO DISC SOUND barely begins to do this one justice. This is Audiophile Quality Big Band sound to beat them all. The American big bands rarely got the kind of sound that the Decca engineers were able to achieve on records like this. For one thing they didn’t have Kingsway Hall, Kenneth Wilkinson or the Decca “Tree” microphone setup.

Unlike some of the American big band leaders who were well past their prime by the advent of the two-channel era, Heath is able to play with all the energy and verve required for this style of music. He really does “swing in high stereo” on these big band dance tunes

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Eric Dolphy – Rarely have I heard a string bass sound better than it does here.

More of the Music of Eric Dolphy

Do the originals sound as good as these ’70s pressings?

Not a clue. Never ran into a clean one in my life.

Rarely have I heard a string bass sound better than it does here. The flute is equally gorgeous. Amazing that they could record a live jazz concert this well in 1961.

Although this is only our second Hot Stamper listing for the album, I’ve known about Dolphy’s legendary Copenhagen Concert for close to thirty years. When an audiophile hears a bass clarinet reproduced the way it is on this record he is very unlikely to forget it.

With the hundred-plus changes to the system and room I’ve made over that span of time the reproduction of the bass clarinet has only gotten more real.

It’s proof positive that everything in audio can get dramatically better with constant effort and attention to every aspect of sound. From the room to the electricity to the right cleaning techniques, everything can come together to make that instrument sound like it is in the room with you, a room that sounds like you imagine a jazz club might sound in 1961.

What a thrill. It’s what we audiophiles live for. It’s what keeps us going in this hobby.

If you know people who used to be into audio and aren’t anymore it’s because they just never got to the point where they were doing it right.

An Extraordinary Recording of the Beethoven Septet – This Is Why You Must Do Shootouts

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music ofBeethoven Available Now

My first note on side one is “HTF” — Hard To Fault, for the sound was both rich and sweet, with easily recognized, unerringly correct timbres for all seven of the instruments which are heard in the work. The legendary 1959 Decca Tree microphone setup had worked its magic once again.

And, as good as it was, we were surprised to discover that side two was actually even better! The sound was more spacious and more transparent; we asked ourselves, how is this even possible?

Hard to believe but side two had the sound that was TRULY Hard To Fault.

This is precisely what careful shootouts and critical listening are all about.

If you like Heavy Vinyl, what exactly is your frame of reference? How many good early pressings could you possibly own, and how were they cleaned?

Without the best pressings around to compare, Heavy Vinyl can sound fine. It’s only when you have something better that its faults come into focus. (We, of course, have something much, much better, and we like to call them Hot Stampers!)

Side One

A++, so good, yet in comparison to side two we realized that it was not as present, spacious and transparent as it SEEMED.

Side Two

A+++, White Hot!

Ah, here was the sound we didn’t know we were missing. So big and open, with space for every player, each clearly laid out across the stage. This is Hi-Fi at its best.

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Vivid and Accurate Timbre for Reeds and Percussion – A Demo Disc Like No Other

Hot Stamper Pressings of Percussion Recordings Available Now

This is one of the most phenomenal sounding records I have ever heard in my life.

Take the best sound you’ve ever heard from the best authentic Mercury classical record you own (not that Heavy Vinyl BS) and translate it into pop arrangements for clarinets, flutes, saxes, oboes, bassoons, percussion and who-knows-what-else and what do you have?

Sound that leaps out of the speakers with absolutely dead on tonality.

But what is most shocking of all is how vivid and accurate the timbre of every instrument is.

Yes, it’s multi-miked, and sometimes the engineers play with the channels a bit much (especially at the start of the first track).

That said, if you have the system for it, it’s very possible you have never heard most of these instruments sound this real on any other recording. It’s as if you were standing right in the studio with them. Yes, it’s that crazy good.

For our last shootout, it took two copies to provide you with top sound on both sides. Clean stereo pressings are very hard to find. Most copies are mono, and most copies are beat, and that combination makes for some slim pickings indeed. This side two is not especially quiet but it’s the best we can find, and we hope that when you hear the glorious sound the surfaces will be easy to ignore. If not, send it back.

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An Amazing 45 RPM Discovery from 2015

More of the music of Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

PLEASE NOTE:

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.

We award this copy our very special Four Plus A++++ grade, which is strictly limited to pressings (really, individual sides of pressings) that take a given recording to a level we’ve never experienced before and had no idea could even exist. We estimate that about one per cent of the Hot Stamper pressings we come across in our shootouts earn this grade. You can’t get much more rare than that.

This Japanese 45 RPM remastering of our favorite recording of Prokofiev’s wonderful Lt. Kije Suite has DEMONSTRATION QUALITY SOUND. For starters, there are very few records with dynamics comparable to these. Since this is my favorite performance of all time, I can’t recommend the record any more highly.   

Most of what’s “bad” about a DG recording from 1978 is ameliorated with this pressing. The bass drum (drums?) here must be heard to be believed. We know of no Golden Age recording with as believable a presentation of the instrument as this.

When a particular pressing we’re auditioning takes the recording to a level significantly higher than our expectations, it gets our attention, big time. This can only happen with a record we know well. We thought we knew how good Lt. Kije on Japanese 45 could sound but we were wrong — this pressing is clearly better than the copy we would be proud to call White Hot, which means this one deserves an impossible sonic rating of eleven on a scale of one to ten.

Forget the logic. It’s not about that, it’s about the sound and the music, and we make no apologies for calling this copy Beyond White Hot. It blew our minds.

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