Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bob Dylan Available Now
One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing he purchased recently:
Hey Tom,
Received the LP a few days ago, and thank you. I love Blood On The Tracks. I have 6 copies of it and none of them come near yours. I can stop looking now. Thank you.
Arun,
We love it when our customers take the time and make the effort to do their own shootouts, especially when we win, which is what happens about 98-99% of the time.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bob Dylan Available Now
UPDATED 2026
In reply to the letter below, I say only about one out of every five hundred records we’ve sold has ever been returned to us more than once.
I gave this more thought and I honestly cannot remember any record coming back more than once for substandard sound quality other than this very album. It was returned twice, and both times,after we played it again, it sounded fine to us.
Once a record has been returned, we tag it as a returned record so that if it ever does come back again, we know to check it extra carefully upon its return. We’ve been following this procedure for a while now, and, at least to my knowledge, no record has come back twice.
Our Older Commentary
One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing of John Wesley Harding he purchased a while back:
Hey Tom,
So many great records in this batch, but some solid misses too — details coming. John Wesley Harding for example sounds great but has some serious distortion through much of side two; a bit ’too vintage’, in spite of the sound it seems once to have had.
Dear Sir,
Definitely check your front end setup on this one, there is no actual distortion on the record, just sound that may be hard to reproduce.
My advice would be to make sure you have replaced your cartridge recently.
Carts that get old have a problem with records like these. We know, we replace our cartridge every three months when hard-to-play records start to sound strained or congested and gritty.
The sheen of massed strings, a sound critical to the orchestral recordings we play, are impossible to reproduce correctly with an older-than-it-should-be unit. A fresh cartridge can make all the difference in the sound of difficult to reproduce records.
Keeping a cartridge installed for too long is a mistake made by 100% of the audiophiles I have ever known.
The other explanation could be that our microfine tip is playing deeper in the groove and missing whatever damage is encoded above it, damage which may have been caused by the older cartridges of the day that were used to play the record by the previous owner or owners. We can’t say it doesn’t happen.
We can say that if you bring this record back, the next person to buy it has a roughly 98% chance of keeping it. Maybe one out of five hundred or so ever come back a second time. At least that’s how it has worked out over the last twenty-five years.
More of the Music of Bob Dylan
This letter comes from one of our best customers, our good friend Owais, who dropped us a line after he received his latest shipment of tasty Hot Stampers including a mono ’The Times They Are A-Changin’ and ’Bridge Over Troubled Water.’
Hi Tom,
Just a quick word on the last set of records that I received a couple of days ago, safe and sound. Have to agree with you – that mono of Dylan’s ‘The Times Thay Are A-Changin’ really is jaw-droppingly good, and with quiet vinyl to boot as well!
As for Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, I have bought quite a few copies of this LP and, to my ears, nothing sounded as good as the Classic reissue… that is, until I got your Hot Stamper. Again, you got this one spot-on. The Classic just doesn’t come close in terms of warmth and tonality.
All the best,
Owais
Owais, thanks for your letter. We love beating Heavy Vinyl pressings, especially the good ones! Both those titles are quite well-mastered, and that’s precisely why we carry them. Classic and Sundazed are each responsible for a world of bad sounding LPs, but every once in a while they get one right, and those they got right, all things considered.
UPDATE 2025
It is doubtful that these days we would agree with our previous estimation of those two titles being “right.” When we revisit the Heavy Vinyl pressings we used to like, even those with the caveat “all things considered,” rarely do we find that they have stood the test of time sonically.
But of course, as we never tire of pointing out, the real thing just can’t be beat, and the real thing is almost always an old record (and almost never a new one; seems like that should be the logical corollary, and by golly it is).
As for Bob, we were knocked out by that mono copy. We dropped the needle on side one and our jaws hit the floor — we’d never heard a Bob Dylan record sound so warm, rich, and sweet.
Columbia 360 Mono Mania
I was actually a big fan of the Sundazed Mono, but this has more of that Tubey Magic, richness, and overall naturalness that you find on old records, qualities that seem to be sorely lacking on even the best 180 gram remasterings. MoFi also did this title and ruined it in the process (shocker!).
I just don’t think you could make this record sound any better than it does here. Everything you could want from this music is here: wonderful clarity, mindblowing transparency, clearly audible transients on the guitar, texture to the vocals, full-bodied acoustic guitar sound, and so on.
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bob Dylan Available Now
One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:
Hey Tom,
I just got my Freewheelin’ Super Hot Stamper. This may be the best record I have bought from you. Magical. I almost cried when I heard Girl From North Country.
How you could give Side 1 only an A+ is shocking and a real testament to how hard you judge, but I think it was a Double Plus for sure. Side two blew me away. You guys are the best, I love this record.
I have to say I have totally changed my record collecting since I discovered your site. It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality. Otherwise it might as well be streamed.
I think you’re the only people that really understand.
Jamie
Jamie,
Thanks for your letter. We are indeed very tough graders. At these prices we have to be.
Once you’ve heard an early Dylan records sound as good as this one, all your old standards go right out the window!
Best, TP
Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bob Dylan Available Now
One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:
Dear Tom,
Four 3+ sides that sound unlike any other version of this available, of arguably one of the most important rock records of the century from its top artist… It may be a niche taste compared to Zep etc., but you could probably have charged $2k for this.
Never had any idea Blonde on Blonde could sound so 3D and live… it’s really well recorded.
Reinvigorated my passion for this music which I’ve heard a million times over the decades.
Wow… at $1.3k you definitely underpriced this one!
Conrad
Dear Conrad,
Awesome to hear. It is a really well recorded album, but how would anyone know that who hasn’t heard it sound like the copy we sent you?
We’d love to charge $2k. It is indeed worth every penny of what you paid. (Some folks think some of our records are worth $15,000, but that may be a bit of a stretch.)
It takes many years to find a copy that sounds like that one. When we get hold of such a copy, we really have no idea whether it’s a diamond in the rough — since all the early 360 pressings we prefer look pretty much the same — or just another run-of-the-mill Columbia pressing with good, not great, sound. Fortunately, once the needle had dropped that copy showed us that it had the right stuff in its grooves.
Thanks for your letter.
Best, TP
P.S.
We talked about this very issue in a commentary describing bell curve distributions (which, as I’m sure you can imagine, makes for some fun reading!)