Hot Stamper Pressings of Sgt. Peppers Available Now
UPDATE 2026
This letter came in many years ago, but the lessons to be learned from Chris’s failed approch to finding a good sounding copy of Sgt. Pepper are no doubt timeless.
Many audiophiles who start collecting records make exactly the same mistakes Chris made, and some percentage of those audiophiles, however small, actually learn from them. Sad to say, it seems that many do not.
In our own humble attempt to rectify the situation, we devote a great deal of time to discussing record collecting on this blog, seeing as how so many audiophiles suffer by going about it in all the wrong ways.
Chris, an erstwhile customer from long ago, sent us a letter describing his search for a good sounding Sgt. Pepper.
The first thing that comes to mind when reading his letter is that many record collecting rules were broken in going about the search the way he did.
But then I thought:
What rules?
Whose rules?
Where exactly does one find these rules?
If one wants to avoid breaking them they need to be written down someplace, don’t they? Wikipedia maybe?
Sadly, no, not at Wikipedia, or any place else for that matter — until now. As crazy as it sounds, we are going to try to lay down a few record collecting rules for record loving audiophiles, specifically to aid these individuals in their search for better sounding vinyl pressings. And by “these individuals” we mean you.
See if you can spot the rules that were broken by Chris in his fruitless search for a top quality Sgt. Pepper. Note that this letter came to us long before the new Beatles CDs and vinyl had been remastered.
Hi Tom
A few months ago, I purchased a new UK import of Sgt Pepper. Too bad it turned out to be digitally remastered. I had been checking your site for this album over the last few months, but only saw two: a sealed MFSL UHQR for $1000, and a hot stamper for $500, both out of my price range. So then I started looking at Ebay, and recently purchased two “sealed” versions of Sgt Pepper – a USA Apple, which cost me $170, and a USA Capitol (original rainbow label) for which I paid $80.