Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now
I wrote this bit of commentary about twenty years ago:
When comparing pressings of this record, the copies that get their voices to sound both present and warm, smooth, and sweet, especially during the harmonies, are always the best. All the other instruments seem to fall in line when the vocals are correct. This is an old truism — it’s all about the midrange — but in the case of A Hard Day’s Night, it really is true.
Now that we are putting our unredacted (!) shootout notes on the blog for everyone to see, here are the actual notes for the shootout winning pressing we just played (6/2025), notes that back up what we said so many years ago 100%.
What’s does this amazing side one sound like?
- Very full guitars and vocals for this
- Less glare
- More midrange energy
- Breathy and full vocals
- Pretty rich and focussed
- The fullest, most present and breathy vocals
And this amazing side two?
- Much fuller vocals and drums
- Great energy
- Most “tubey” yet
- Gets very big
- Fullest and warmest yet
- Not edgy
Both sides had qualities that did much to set them apart, coupled with fewer of the shortcomings we found in practically all the other pressings we played.
Less glary and less edgy are critical to the better pressings, simply because few copies are not glary and edgy in the midrange to some degree.
But the real keys to the shootout winners are vocals that are full, present, warm and breathy.
For The Beatles in 1964, nothing else about the sound of their recordings could possibly compete with those four qualities.
We could add two more. Energy would probably be the next most important one, followed by Tubey Magic.
That brings the total of most important qualities to a grand total six.