More of the Music of Peter Gabriel
More Letters from Customers and Critics Alike
One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing he purchased recently:
Hi Tom,
Just a note. I forgot I had Red Rain/Sledgehammer on a 45 rpm clarity vinyl from Classic.
So I compared them. What the fuck! It was absolutely, completely lifeless. I was amazed at how lifeless it was.
It’s crazy that once upon a time I thought it sounded really great.
The journey continues to amaze.
Take Care,
Michel
Michel,
Thanks for your letter. You are not the first person to notice that Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered records do not hold up well when played head to head with the Hot Stamper pressings we offer.
Bernie Grundman has a fairly spotty record in the modern era. Starting with the work he did for Classic Records in the 90s, it’s hard to think of too many BG-mastered titles that sounded all that good to us. If pressed, I might be able to name five, but please don’t press me, coming up with five would be more work than I’d want to do.
The record you played probably sounded a lot like the pressing of So he remastered for Classic in 2002. We didn’t like it then and we doubt it has gotten better with age. Flat as a pancake and dead as a doornail are our go-to descriptions for the mostly irritating records that the various audiophile labels were putting out in those days, and they’re still at it. (To be honest, we were fooled plenty of times ourselves and have the embarrassing catalog entries to prove it.)
You were amazed by how lifeless it was, yet you used to like it.
Aren’t other audiophiles in exactly the same boat you were in until just a few days ago? Until you paid all that money to us for a copy that blew your Classic right out of the water?
Without knowing it, what you actually bought was a copy that sounded the way the Classic should have.
You thought you were getting top quality sound with Classic’s releases, especially when it has the advantage of being one song on a 12″ disc mastered at 45RPM. That record should have been killer, a Demo Disc of a great song guaranteed to blow your own and your audiophile friends’ minds.
Maybe it would have. Maybe, like you, they would think the Classic sounds amazing.
What’s amazing most of the time is just how relative “amazing” can be.
So, now you own the record that is a true Demo Disc, and one that can demonstrate not just top quality sound, but how inferior these modern-mastered titles really are up against the real deal — the real deal being a plain old mass-produced record that everybody and his uncle could have bought for relatively cheap in 1986. No fancy packaging, no high price tag, no virgin vinyl, just a record properly-pressed and properly-mastered. The world is full of them.
Audiophiles may be incredulous at the thought, but all it would take to show them how wrong their approach to collecting better pressings has been is the right pressing.