hsm-letter

Letters from customers about Half-Speed mastered records.

Letter of the Week – “I was dumbfounded when the horn blast opening the title track practically leapt out of my speakers.”

More of the Music of The Beatles

More Customer Letters that Extoll the Virtues of Our Beatles LPs

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently: 

Hey Tom,   

Just wanted to say I was blown away by this copy. Having lived with the MoFi pressing since the box set first came out in the 80’s I was dumbfounded when the horn blast opening the title track practically leapt out of my speakers. I am so impressed that I just placed an order for 3 more Hot Stamper Beatles vinyl. It’s time to replace the MoFi.

Honrado L.

Thanks for writing, Honrado.

You’re not the only person who wants to get rid of their half-speed mastered records after playing a Beatles pressing that is mastered in real time and pressed properly.

And, if you are still buying modern pressings that are not half-speed mastered, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl too.

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Comparing a Hot Stamper of Rumours to an Original and the Nautilus LP

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now

This letter from quite a few years ago comes from our good customer Roger, who was blown away by our Hot Stamper pressing of Rumours. Roger did his usual thorough shootout of our Hot Stamper against his own pressings. The results? Another knockout for our Hot Stamper.
Hi Tom,

Just a quick note on the Fleetwood Mac Rumors Hot Stamper I just bought. I have a Nautilus pressing and my original pressing I bought in college when it came out. I have never liked this record as much as Fleetwood Mac Fleetwood Mac, perhaps partly because its sonics were somewhat inferior.

So I played the Nautilus and quickly remembered what a piece of sonic detritus this thing is. How can audiophile labels like Nautilus put out something that is as thin, bright, flat, and compressed as this thing is? It obviously reinforces your point that most audiophiles are lemmings when it comes to audiophile records. If some audiophile guru said the Japanese pressing of Girl Scout Troup #657 singing the Girl Scout Theme Song was sonic nirvana, it would show up on every internet record website for $50 each.

Next up was my original pressing with an F16 matrix on side one, and man, what a relief after following the Nautilus disaster. In fact, I resisted buying a pricey hot stamper because I always felt my pressing to be pretty darned good, which it was. So I was shocked to hear just how much better the hot stamper was.

I played Dreams on side one and it took all of about 5 seconds of hearing the massive bass and startlingly dynamic cymbal crashes on this track to find the hot stamper worth every penny I paid for it. If the drum kit on Oh Daddy doesn’t get your pants flapping, time for a new stereo. Voices were eerily present, guitars had great detail, pianos had weight just like in real life (we have a piano in our house), and best of all, the highs were arrayed in space and were delicate and detailed.

Since the Nautilus is too thin to make a good frisbee and would probably fetch big bucks on ebay I will stuff it back on my shelf forever, unless I need a good laugh, and add the HS Rumors to my favorite recordings.

Roger
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Letter of the Week – “So I say damn you but thank you for steering me in the right direction.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

One of our good customers wrote to tell us about his record collection about 15 years ago. We were still recommending Disc Doctor fluid at the time and it has been a very long while since we sold anything but Walker Record Cleaning Fluid.

Hi Tom,

Just a note to thank and curse you for opening my ears. On one hand, the audio enhancements (Aurios, Stillpoints, Talisman and Disc Doctor fluid) you’ve suggested have greatly improved my stereo system. I also upgraded my phono cartridge and had the entire front end fine-tuned.

Now, LPs I’d once regarded as mediocre have shown new life and become much more enjoyable. On the other hand, those I’d once thought sounded impressive, have revealed themselves to be uninspiring. My entire Steely
Dan collection, for example, has become a major disappointment.

Almost all the half speeds, heavy vinyl and otherwise “audiophile” type pressings have revealed themselves to be impostors.

What’s an audiophile to do? In my case, all the improvements I’ve made have resulted in a thinning of the herd, so to speak, but I simply can’t listen to crappy vinyl anymore. I’ve always maintained that the music should be the most important thing but, what’s the point of listening to sub-par pressings when you find yourself becoming easily distracted and wanting to hear something with some life in the grooves?

So I say damn you but thank you, Tom, for steering me in the right direction. I’ll have a smaller collection as a result but will appreciate the sonics of what’s left much more. You are a credit to a hobby which is, otherwise, drowning in snake oil!

Bob M.

Bob,

Thanks for your letter. We can assure you that are Hot Stamper pressings of the Steely Dan catalog are amazing sounding. Would love to have you try one.

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Letter of the Week – “Meanwhile I sold out near all my pseudo-audiophile LPs – they are useless.”

What Exactly Are Hot Stamper Pressings?

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he has been buying lately [emphasis added].

Hey Tom, 

I want to express my gratitude to your long-lasting efforts with regard to music.

It has fully changed my whole life as a listener of music. 

It’s a great pleasure and I reached a complete different level of enjoyment and listening habits. To hear a Hot Stamper it’s also often a physical and emotional experience (sensation of heat, tears in the eyes, palpitations etc.). Thanks to your great Hot Stampers I might experience with so much pleasure.

Meanwhile I sold out near all my pseudo-audiophile LP’s (i.e. MFSL, Nautilus, DCC, Simply Vinyl etc.) – they are useless.

And last but not least it’s very important to buy these hot LPs now and here, before deafness, tinnitus (my greatest fear) and dementia are going to kill us. All LPs are worth their price, because I can imagine how much effort it takes to do the shootouts. (I did some.) (more…)

Letter of the Week – A $100 Hot Stamper Is Now My Reference Album!

More of the Music of Cat Stevens

More Reviews and Commentaries for Tea for the Tillerman

More Reviews and Commentaries for Teaser and the Firecat

[This letter is from a long time ago, 2005 perhaps. A killer copy may have been a hundred bucks back then, but times have changed!]

One of our best customers, Gerardo, who has to have his Hot Stampers shipped all the way to the Philippines where he lives, asked recently about Tea for the Tillerman. He wanted to know if we had something that would beat the MoFi pressing. Having recently played one (for condition; we already know how bad the sound is) we said HELL YEAH!

In fact, about the cheapest clean plain old American copy we can dig up for you will beat the pants of the MoFi. So we charged him $100 and sent it on out. Not having heard back, we followed up with this email:  

Hi Gerardo,

We were just wondering if you ever got to have the Tea For The Tillerman Hot Stamper vs. MoFi / UHQR shootout. Hope it went well.

His reply can be seen below.

Hi Tom and Crew,

I have already listened to my Hot Stamper copy and have forwarded the MFSL pressing to my friend. However, we have not done the shootout because I’m out of Manila now… We should be able to do the shootout as soon as I return.

I have listened to my copy the day it arrived. I’m not very good at describing the sound of an album, that’s why I love reading your commentaries, because it accurately describes what I actually hear. The HS Tillerman is now my reference album where I test all improvements/adjustments I make in my system or my turntable.

All the hot stamper copies I have bought from you really beat all other copies I have. A good example is my Hot Stamper Santana. The instruments sound tonally right, distinctly separate from each other. There is no harshness on the top end and the bass is tight and defined. I had five copies of the album before I got my HS copy, all are”360″ including a WLP copy. None of the five came close to the sound of my Hot Stamper.

I will definitely update you as soon as we finish the shootout next year.

Happy holidays,
Gerardo

Gerardo, so glad to hear you liked your Tea for the Tillerman. It’s always been one of my favorite test discs as well, although I would say Teaser and the Firecat is even better in that respect. [Not really.]

As for Santana’s first album, that is a record that typically sounds terrible — dull and smeary. We have to work very hard to find a good copy like the one we sent you, and the proof of our efforts is that it beat the five you already owned. As far as stampers go, ours was hot, yours were not! No surprise there. Most copies suck, 360 or otherwise. We look forward to hearing your full report on the Tillerman shootout.

Best,
TP

Chicago Transit Authority on MoFi – Or Is It The Glade Spray Mist Septet?

More of the Music of Chicago

UPDATE 2020

The last time I played a copy of the MoFi Chicago debut was about twenty years ago. My all tube system was much darker and dramatically less resolving than the one I have now, having made score upon score of improvements since then.

I suspect I would not be so kind to the MoFi today, and in that way I would surely be much more in agreement with Roger than I was about ten years ago when his letter arrived.

Our good customer Roger wrote to tell us of his Chicago shootout which included the MoFi, some later pressings and our Hot Stamper. Here is his story.

HI Tom

Got a chance to listen to your Chicago Transit Authority hot stamper and compare it to regular US and MFSL pressings. It has been a while since I last listened to this recording, but I listened to a lot of Chicago; Blood, Sweat, and Tears; and The Ides of March when I was in high school and college. I loved this music back then, as short-lived as it was, unfortunately.

Maybe this was because my two brothers played horns in concert bands, as does my youngest son now. A real shame that Chicago, at least, morphed into a whiny, wimpy, sappy Top 40 radio ballad band after their first two records. Anyway, it was fun listening to it again.

I recently picked up a couple of US copies of CTA to compare against my Mobile Fidelity version and the hot stamper. Both regular US copies had later Columbia labels, and had I only heard these, I might never have listened to this record again. Dull, compressed, murky, detail-challenged would be descriptive words for both copies. Muddy bass and absolutely no highs, I mean none.

The MFSL version did not have this lack-of-highs problem. In fact, it sounds like a lot of MoFi’s, the treble completely overcooked, sounding like cans of spray mist being actuated and overwhelming the rest of the music. This has to be one of the most hideous recordings in existence. With the MFSL version, Chicago has been transformed into the Glade Spray Mist Septet, with a psst psst here, a psst psst there, here a psst, there a psst, everywhere a psst psst. Arrggg! I was getting more and more psst off listening to this sonic detritus. Unless you have a Mattel Close-And-Play record player, how can anyone listen to this thing? Did MFSL engineers moonlight as gunnery sergeants on the artillery range? And the MoFi’s complete lack of bass left the overwhelming treble out to hang and dry. Unreal.

So the Hot Stamper was next, and you know what, it sounds like my son’s high school concert band (only a lot better but don’t tell him). After the MoFi, the highs sounded somewhat recessed, but more in line with the rest of the sonic spectrum. There was real bass weight, maybe not the lowest bass, but good just the same, and the midrange was much more full and weighty, something this recording needs. Trombones sounded like trombones and saxes like saxes. So perhaps the hot stamper will make my new regular record rotation now and my listening room won’t smell like a Glade pine forest. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “I almost fell off my listening chair.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and (Sometimes) Young

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom,   

I wanted to thank you and the crew at Better Records for fulfilling my dreams when it comes to your Super hot stampers and, of course, the mind blowing White hot stampers. Two White hot stampers with A+++ sound on all sides come to mind.

I received the Frank Sinatra and Count Basie Live at the Sands about a week ago, and the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Deja Vu a couple of days ago. Not in a million years did I ever think a record could have a truly master tape sound. And man, these two White hot stamper have it in spades.

On the Frank Sinatra and Count Basie Live at the Sands, from the moment I dropped the needle on side four or any other side, I almost fell off my listening chair. The presence and immediacy is so staggering on this Lp its as if Frank Sinatra rose from the dead and he transforms into a living, breathing person in my listening room.

Well, this Lp is so darn realistic it boggles my mind that the long playing Lp is capable of sounding like this. The highs are silky sweet and extended, and the bass is extremely tight. As far as the midrange and life on this recording, I’m not sure if there is a single word in the dictionary to describe it.

The Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Deja Vu absolutely blew my mind and then some. First of all, it absolutely trashed my MoFi into bits and pieces which I have for sale on Ebay, as well as every other MoFi I own. I can’t believe how many Audiophiles love the MoFi version of this Lp.

Back to this mind blowing Lp, nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to hear on this recording. The power of the sound and resolution was so captivating it took my breath completely away. The midrange and highs was one of the best I have ever heard from a Classic rock recording. OMG the textures and vocals on this recording have to be heard to be believed and the bass was extremely deep and tight. I’m talking rock solid right down to the lowest region. Clarity and transparency were simply off the charts on this Lp.

I truly believe in order for you to fully understand what I’m talking about when it comes to these two White hot stampers, you have to experience it for yourself. I’m sure some of you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Some folks who read this might think spending $1,500.00 for two Lp’s is absolutely crazy — not for this discriminating music lover who wants to get master tape sound. I know for a “fact” once you hear the sound of a White hot stamper with A+++ sound, there is no going back to anything else, period!

Tom, I want to thank you and the crew at Better Records for having the unique hearing ability to seek out these mind blowing Hot Stampers. They are truly what I call Masterpieces.

Thanks, N.

Letter of the Week – “…slow, murky and all the other things that your commentary says…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Boston Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased a while back:

Hey Tom, 

Just wanted to say thanks for finding a record like this. I looked in my collection and thought, wow I have an anadisc (Serial #5), let’s see how they compare?

The MOFI is so bad! It sounds like there are three layers of Saran wrap on it… slow, murky and all the other things that your commentary says… the food analogy would be crappy soggy french fries… bloated… lifeless…

There is no comparison to the sound on side two…. the organ is rolling and alive and sounds like the Hammonds I have heard through Leslie cabinets… on the MOFI it was like the organ was behind glass doors… flat… no life…. I could go on and on.

The other songs were so much better on the Hot Stamper… makes me want to go frisbee my MOFI or maybe just sell it on ebay.

Ed F.

Little Queen – CBS Half-Speed Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Heart Available Now

Sonic Grade: D

No slam, no real weight and no truly deep bass, just that 50-plus-cycles stuff and barely any of that, mostly 60 and up if you’re lucky, and BLUBBERY.

Our good customer Roger wrote to tell me how much better he liked our $100 Hot Stamper of Little Queen compared to his CBS Mastersound Half-Speed Mastered LP.

As you can see from our old commentary, I used to actually think the Mastersound pressing was pretty good, with better extension on the top to help overcome this album’s typically dull, thick, opaque sound.

But that’s before I discovered the Hottest Stampers and how to clean them and play them, which fixes EVERYTHING and turns this album into a real Demo Disc. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “Great job on finding what for me is a new reference disk”

More of the Music of Elton John

More Reviews and Commentaries for Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

The entire letter can be found below, along with our general notes about the recording.

Hi, Tom:

Got a chance to try your Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road hot stamper, and wow! EJ has never been one of my favorite artists, my liking his earlier output to some degree, but in my opinion GYBR is his magnum opus and his high water mark, down from which he slid rapidly into mediocrity.

I have tried a number of pressings of this record and always found it to be a good, but not great, recording, which is a shame considering it is one of the few double LP’s extant without anything approaching filler material. So I tried my Direct Disk Labs version, which was OK, but sounded veiled compared to the MFSL version, actually not bad for one of their efforts.

But the cinemascape evolved entirely with the hot stamper, bringing these great songs to life in my listening room like few others I have heard. If you want to hear a demo disk performance of this record you won’t find it outside a hot stamper in my experience. EJ’s voice is front and center, rich and full, allowing me to hear every vocal inflection. I swear I could tell what EJ had for breakfast–eggs and chutney, even! Pianos were arrayed in space with the correct surface loudness, guitars crunched on Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, the drums on Jamaica Jerkoff were massive and dynamic, and the bass drum whacks on I’ve Seen That Movie Too had that sock-in-the-gut punch.

This hot stamper shows off the difference between a recording and a performance. Great job on finding what for me is a new reference disk.

Roger

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