Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Miles Davis Available Now
We don’t know what the UHQR sounds like because we’ve never played one, and we certainly have no intention of spending the money to buy one and find out what the strengths and weaknesses might be, something we feel eminently qualified to do, as that is exactly what we do all here at Better Records.
However, one of our customers was at a friend’s house and he had one, one he was very impressed with and wanted him to hear. Our customer owned a Super Hot stamper pressing and thought it might be fun to compare the two.
Here is his story:
I went to my dearest friend’s house yesterday, he was SO excited to play for me his deluxe UHQR version of Kind of Blue.
We listened for a while and then I brought out the Super Hot Stamper of KOB that I got from you and played it.
About 90 seconds in, he was like “uh oh.” It was about 3 minutes into So What and his exact words were “oh…shit.”
The look on his face!
He’s now selling the UHQR.
Dear Josh,
That is a great story, more evidence that the three most important words in the world of audio are compared to what?
I was somewhat surprised to read a number of Discogs reviewers who did not find the sound to their liking. If you search for find the UHQR listing on Discogs you can read their critiques, most of which concern the noisy surfaces that plague a fairly high percentage of Chad’s pressing. Others fault the sound. Most love it. That’s Discogs for you.
Thanks again for your letter. As the proud new owner of an amazing EAR 324p phono stage, it’s likely that all of the Heavy Vinyl pressings you hear in your own system will sound less and less competitive with the better vintage records you will be listening to, the kind you own and the kind we sell.
Six thousand dollar phono stages have a way of tipping the scales, and they always seem to tip them in favor of plain old records. Funny how that works.
The only Analogue Productions UHQR we’ve played to date is the one they did for Aja, and, as you can imagine, we did not find it much to our liking.
UPDATE 2024:
In 2023 we played another Steely Dan UHQR and thought it was passable.]
To read more reviews of records put out by the single worst audiophile label of all time — in our opinion! — please click here.
An Overview of KOB
Kind of Blue is an album we admit to being obsessed with — just look at the number of commentaries we’ve written about it.
Some highlights include: