The Beatles in Mono, Our Grading System, Our Cleaning System and More

We discuss a number of issues with our letter writer, the kinds of questions we often get, so here are some of the answers we often give out.

• While Prices for Many Records Have Trended Down, Others Have Gone Up
• The Beatles in Mono
• Our White Hot Triple Plus Grade
• Why Our Stereo Is Good at Its Job, and
• Record Cleaning

  Hey Tom, 

First off, I got to say, congratulations on a great concept. Also, congrats on having the balls to charge what these albums are worth.

Thanks. Like any business, we charge what the market will bear, and it seems people are willing to pay a lot for these records, although less for some than they used to — some of our records now sell for half or even less than what we were getting two or three or five years ago.

That said, the top copies have held their prices pretty well over the years and often gone up substantially. It’s the second tier and third tier titles and the Super Hots that have really fallen in price. That’s where the real “bargains” are these days.

Ok – I spent a fortune on my system. Including acoustic design, the best of everything – speakers, turntable, preamp, amps – you get it. The whole set up probably cost me over $600k.

Wow. I don’t have $600k in my system, but I do have about $600k worth of labor in it (!) You can read all about Our Stereo here.

I am a crazy fanatic – audio perfection is something that really moves me.

Me too. I wrote about it here, when I fell in love with a record that gave me a good reason to get seriously into audio.

So, you can imagine I am intrigued with what you are doing. I will try you guys out (already bought my first album – CSNY) very hopeful that I will notice a difference between your albums and others.

Hard to imagine that you won’t hear a huge difference. Most versions of Deja Vu, including audiophile ones, are terrible.

I’d love to set up a call to discuss some questions I have regarding some of your best vs. say, they latest Neil Young releases with his archive release bundles. I have first pressings of the newly analog remasters and they are amazing.

I hope we’re not talking about this pressing: After the Gold Rush

I also purchased the Beatles mono set and have a separate mono cartridge and tone arm just for this set. They are real nice – not as great sonically as the Neil releases, but better than the Beatles Stereo box set.

We had a mono set in and spent about a half hour trying to figure out what was wrong with it. I realized in the end that the sound was dead as a doornail. If you want to hear The Beatles sound better than you ever imagined, we can make that happen.

But not in mono. Here are our in-stock Hot Stampers pressings of The Beatles, guaranteed to blow your mind.

I am also curious as to the system you use to evaluate your albums – and what you see as the holy grail of the A+++ standard.

Triple Plus means this: (more…)