Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now
Seems like our friend ab_ba heard some truly amazing sound on his latest Hot Stamper acquisition, a White Hot Stamper German pressing (the German true stereo pressing being the only version of the album we offer) of Magical Mystery Tour.
Dear Tom,
My WHS of MMT just arrived. This record is a true treasure.
I’ve wanted to hear a copy ever since I read your commentary on how the cellos dig deeper on the best copies of “I Am the Walrus.”
I played the various copies I already had, listening to see if I could hear the string section really sweat on any of them. Nope.
But on this copy, the whole sound of that song is simply stunning. When John sings, “I’m crying”, I’m right there with him.
After I Am the Walrus ended, I turned up the volume and played it again. It only got better. The room was filled with sound, everything present, nothing harsh, nothing lacking.
It’s funny, the experience of listening to it actually reminded me of Welcome to the Machine, which similarly caps side 1 of another of my absolute favorite White Hot stampers. There are a lot of similarities in mood, soundscape, and theme to those two songs.
Anyway, I am glad you turned me on to this one. I would have put it on my want list if I had known just how stupendous it would turn out to be. I’m back in to my afternoon’s meetings now, but what a thrill it is to know that side 2 awaits me once the work day is over.
Aaron
Aaron,
As usual, thanks for writing.
It just occurred to me that the commentary about the cellists digging in on I Am the Walrus is very similar to the comments I made more than fifteen years ago about Norwegian Wood.
Those close-miked guitars can be a bit much unless you have a super-low-distortion copy.
John strums the hell out of his acoustic in the right channel, and on the best copies the sound of the guitar is very dynamic and energetic. No two copies will get that guitar to sound the same, and the more dynamic and lively it sounds, the better in my book.
Did The Beatles ever write a better song?
On the right pressings, those two songs, on two different Beatles albums, serve to make a very strong case for Hot Stampers.
Think about it: on both albums the tonality of the higher quality pressings will be the same. The bass the same, the vocals the same, the space the same, almost everything you can think of to listen for on a recording will be the same.
And yet the energy and drive you hear when playing those two songs on any two pressings is more often than not going to be different, and sometimes that difference is dramatic. When the energy and drive are especially pronounced on the side we’re playing, assuming all other things are equal, we call it a White Hot Stamper and grade that side Three Pluses.