con-wis

Many audiophiles are inclined to believe the conventional wisdom they receive from other enthusiasts.

Some of it is right, some of it is wrong, but if you don’t know how to critically listen to records for yourself, you will never be able to tell which is which.

You’ll be stuck with the approaches most audiophiles use — guessing and assuming. Neither are a reliable method for getting at the truth.

Before and After Science – Rules Are Made to Be Broken

Hot Stamper Pressings of Art Rock Recordings Available Now

The domestic pressings of Before And After Science are typically grainy, low-rez and hard sounding. But that doesn’t mean our best Hot Stamper pressings are imports.

No. The best pressings are made right here in the good old U.S. of A.

Say what? Yes, it’s true. We were SHOCKED to find such Hot Stamper sound lurking in the grooves of a domestic Eno LP. It’s the only one of its kind. In thirty plus years of record playing I can’t think of any domestic Eno LP that ever sounded this good.

Now hold on just a minute. The British pressings of Eno’s albums are always the best, aren’t they?

For the first three albums, absolutely. But rules were made to be broken. This pressing has the knockout sound we associate with the best British originals of Eno’s albums, not the flat, cardboardy qualities of the typical domestic reissue.

The UK pressings we have played have always been awful. We put one in a shootout in 2025 and it was as awful as we remember it. Our notes read:

  • Very lean and dry.
  • Zero bass!
  • Lousy!

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And Here I Thought The Mastering Lab Made Nothing But Good Sounding Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Ambrosia Available Now

We just did a shootout for Ambrosia’s One Eighty album, describing our Shootout Winning copy this way:

Analog at its Tubey Magical finest. You’ll never play a CD (or other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record no matter how long you live.  This is smooth, rich analog at its best, easy on the ears as we like to say.

But none of what we said about our best Hot Stamper pressings would apply to the copies with the stampers you see below.

One of the copies we played with JW1 stampers was good, not great, earning a barely-hot 1.5+ grade. 1.5+ is four grades down from the best. That’s a steep dropoff as far as we’re concerned. 1.5+ only hints at how good a recording One Eighty can be on the best pressings.

The other pressing with those stampers did not qualify as a Hot Stamper at all. We would say it had passable sound, better than average but not really good enough for the serious audiophiles we cater to.

Had it not been cleaned to make it quieter and improve its sound quality, it most likely would not have earned that single plus at all. In that respect it would have much in common with the kinds of LPs filling up the shelves of record collectors everywhere. Who needs another mediocre sounding record sitting on the shelf? And yet there they are.*

Our two best sounding copies were cut at The Mastering Lab and had exactly the same stampers. Like a lot of Warner Bros. records, JW (Jacksonville) pressings rarely sound as good as those pressed elsewhere. (You record experts out there will know what the other plants are.)

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Everybody Knows that 1s Should Beat 2s Should Beat 3s, Right?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Recordings Available Now

In the case of this mystery Living Stereo title, the conventional wisdom holding that the original first pressings (1s) will most likely have sound superior to the higher-numbered pressings (2s) turns out to be right.

Below you will see the complete stamper sheet for a shootout we did recently. Note that the album you see pictured is not the record we did the shootout for.

We are not revealing what record had these stampers and earned these grades for the simple reason that we rarely if ever give out the specific information that identifies the best sounding pressing of any album.

Sometimes we do though. To see the titles whose Shootout Winning stampers have been revealed, please click here. The list we’ve compiled to date is short but more are coming.

The sound of 3s with the Red Label was lean and dry on both the copies we played. This was surprising as the stampers are quite low: 3s/3s.

Many RCA chamber recordings can be dry, and if one owned a nice early stamper pressing of the album with lean, dry sound, one might conclude that this RCA is just another chamber recording with those shortcomings.

But one would be wrong, because the 1s stamper Shootout Winner sounded amazing, not dry or lean in the least.

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In 2008 We Had a Lot More R&D Ahead of Us

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

A classic example of live and learn. In 2008 we had simply not done our homework properly.

Keep in mind that I had been an audiophile for at least 33 years by that date, and a professional audiophile record dealer for 21. Had a pretty nice rig back then too. However, in all those years, I and my staff had never been able to crack the code for Zep III.

Sure, by 2008 we had auditioned plenty of the pressings that we thought were the most likely to sound good: the original and later domestic pressings, the early and later British LPs, some early and later German pressings, maybe a Japanese import or two. In other words, the usual suspects.

We already knew how bad sounding the Classic Records Heavy Vinyl was; no need to put that in a shootout. It earned an “F” right out of the gate for its bright and harsh sound.

The result? We were roughly in the same position as most serious record collecting audiophiles, if not actually in a better one: who do you know that has played at least ten different pressings of Led Zeppelin III, or any other album for that matter?

We had auditioned a number pressings of the album and thought we knew enough about the sound to pick a winner. We thought the best original British Plum and Orange label pressings had the goods that no other copies could or would have. (Years later we would get hold of another one, clean it up and put it in a shootout.)

But of course, like most audiophiles who judge records with an insufficiently large sample size, we turned out to be  mistaken.

Logic simply hadn’t worked.

None of the originals would end up winning another shootout once we’d discovered the right reissues.

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Old Tapes, New Tapes, You Know We’ve Heard Our Share

Skeptical Thinking Is Key to Finding Better Sounding Records

I ran into a comment I had made more than twenty years ago about a Hot Stamper jazz reissue from the 70s that, at the time, we thought sounded better than any other version. The original pressing of the record would have come out in the fifties. We wrote:

“The master tapes were about fifteen years old when this record was mastered.  Compare that to a current cutting which would be made from approximately fifty year old tapes.”

Perhaps that explains it.

Or maybe it doesn’t. Whether it explains it or not, when you get right down to it, it’s nothing but guesswork.

It has no predictive value.

If, like most people, you enjoy having your biases confirmed, then by all means, whatever reasons work for you are fine by us.

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Dark Side of the Moon – “A Wasted Purchase”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a White Hot Stamper pressing of Dark Side of the Moon he purchased recently. Bill writes:

No, not my White Hot Stamper purchase.

But, rather, my purchase of an original UK edition, the so-called Holy Grail of pressings.

When I purchased the White Hot Stamper of Dark Side of the Moon a couple of weeks ago (for what seemed like an outrageous amount of money), I thought I’d compare it to the version I had, the 50th Anniversary, and send it back for a refund if it didn’t blow me away. It was the same strategy I had used several years ago when I bought a White Hot Stamper of Led Zeppelin II.

And the same thing happened to me this time that happened last time—the White Hot Stamper blew me away! It was so transparent. I heard things in the mix I had never heard before. The bass was tight, and the soundstage and “air” were HUGE. It was as big of a night/day comparison as the Led Zeppelin II comparison was.

Now, the bad news, for me.

Every source I checked said the original UK pressing is far and away the best pressing of Dark Side of the Moon.

So I bit the bullet and bought a pressing on eBay. It was, as advertised, in mint condition, with almost no surface noise.

And it was AWFUL compared to the White Hot Stamper. The soundstage was tiny in comparison, the bass was bloated, and overall it sounded muffled and lifeless. And, unfortunately, that UK pressing didn’t come with a money back guarantee. So I have a nice collectible on my hands that I will never listen to.

As Tom has pointed out many times, there are variations within pressings, so it might be that I just got a dud of a first pressing. One thing I have learned, though, is that even your outrageously priced White Hot Stampers, and maybe even especially your outrageously priced White Hot Stampers, are, in fact, a good bargain. Audio nirvana.

Bill

Bill,

Thanks for your letter, and sorry to hear you threw all that money away on a white elephant you will never find any use for. Unlike our records, at least it has some collector value. Discogs and ebay are your two best options for helping it find a new home.

The one good use I can think of for it would be to use it as a comparison pressing next time somebody comes over to your house and wants to hear the album. You could do a little shootout for them, just to see how far their jaw drops when the needle hits the groove on your Hot Stamper pressing.

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Roger The Engineer Is Awful on the Early UK Pressing

Hot Stamper Pressings of British Blues Rock Albums Available Now

A hall of shame pressing if there ever was one.

The UK pressing of Roger the Engineer we played was pure crap.

Cool for collectors I suppose, but very bad news for audiophiles.

Your response to this news may depend on which camp you find yourself in. If you love collecting original pressings, we would put you in the record collector camp, not the audiophile one. Audiophiles are supposed to care about sound quality, so if the more original pressing is the one you want, then you are a record collector first and an audiophile second, if at all. Harsh? Let’s call a spade a spade.

Regardless, we ask that you please not buy into that record collecting / audiophile canard that the originals are always going to be the best sounding pressings. The hundreds of reissues listed here prove otherwise.

The original British pressing — true, we only had the one, so take it for what it’s worth — was a poor imitation of what was most likely on the master tape, as revealed by the Edsel reissues.

Maybe you have a good sounding one. We can’t say you don’t.  But we would be very unlikely to spend much money on an original import pressing after hearing this one.

And the domestic records we’ve played were clearly made from dub tapes, so they’re a bust too.

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With This UK Copy You’d Better Be Ready to Rock

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

UPDATE 2026

The shootout for Zep IV discussed below was carried out in 2012.

It seems an early British PORKY/PECKO pressing did very well, winning side one and coming close to the best on side two.

For at least five years now we have been unable to find a British pressing that eaned grades better than 2+, or Super Hot. Since the British pressings tend to be very expensive and hard to find in good shape, we have simply stopped buying them as they do not seem to be capable of winning shootouts anymore.

Other comments may be problematic in this review as well, so best to consult our latest listing for what we think we currently know about the album. Here is a short test to get you started.

Our Review from 2012

We did a massive shootout in 2012 for Zep’s beloved fourth album and this British pressing earned a nearly perfect score with some of the BIGGEST, BOLDEST, HARDEST Rockin’ sound we have ever heard on the album. Without a doubt this is the best sounding IV side two we’ve ever played, with the biggest bottom of them all.

When the Levee Breaks, a problematical track on even the best copies, finally sounds the way you’ve always heard it in your head — relentless and so powerful it’s downright scary.

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Three Labels, But Only One Wins Shootouts

More Hot Stamper Pressings that Sound Better on the Right Reissue

There are three Epic labels for this record.

The originals are yellow, the first reissue is orange, and the last reissue is bluish-black.

I can tell you that only one of those labels produced the best sounding copies in our shootout.

Beyond that you will have to buy a sample of each and do your own shootout. Finding clean copies was quite difficult; it took us a long time to get enough to play, and, as we said, most pressings are dreadful.

Those of you who like to read our commentaries and play along at home are going to have a rough time with this title. We sure did.

But the results are worth it, because we LOVE this music! Music just doesn’t get any better. If this album doesn’t lift your spirits, I can’t imagine what would. And note that many of the best songs here are exclusive to this greatest hits and cannot be found on any other album. That makes it a Must Own in our book.

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A 45 RPM Audiophile Pressing to Put Them All to Shame

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Prokofiev Available Now

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.

The drum is clearly and precisely located at the back of the stage; even better, it’s as huge and powerful and room-filling as it would have been had you attended the session yourself. That’s our idea of hi-fidelity here at Better Records.

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