hv-letter

Letters from customers who’ve compared our Hot Stamper pressings to their Heavy Vinyl counterparts.

Letter of the Week – “Oh man, what a difference. Huge sound – really alive – the way you remember this sound should be like.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Van Halen Available Now

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

Hey Tom,  

I just got a super hot stamper Van Halen and immediately got out my DCC version – which is a record I’ve had no complaints about – compared to most of the heavy vinyl remaster crap – but, oh man, what a difference.

Huge sound – really alive – the way you remember this sound should be like – I saw these boys when they first hit – one of my first rock concerts.

Thanks again – this was money well spent – and on this one, I can even ebay away the DCC and more than break even (I almost feel guilty about that!).

Richard

Richard,

Isn’t it funny how a record that doesn’t sound “bad” in any way — the DCC – falls so far short of what it really should have sounded like? How will the audiophile record collectors of the world ever get better sound when they already think they have it?

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Letter of the Week – “…so much more engaging and rich than I was used to.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Charles Mingus Available Now

This posting on an audiophile forum was made by our good customer ab_ba who authorized me to print it here. (It started out on Hoffman’s forum but was quickly taken down as the subject of Hot Stampers is verboten. I have added some bolding and italics.)

The title is the author’s.

Better Records Hot Stampers: Or, how I learned to stop collecting and love listening

We are witnessing an absolute explosion in vinyl. It’s thrilling, but it has also become frankly overwhelming.

What matters? The experience of listening, of course. But, how do we know, I mean, how do we really know, what listening experiences are going to be sublime?

Too often, collectability becomes our proxy for listening. We’ve all done it – chasing a near mint early pressing, a Japanese or German pressing, a re-press from a label we trust. We all end up with multiple copies of our favorite records, but only listen to one or two of them. And whether we sell them or not, it brings us some comfort to see their going rates on Discogs continue to climb. For me at least, FOMO was a strange driver of my buying habits. I regretted records I didn’t purchase, far more often than I regretted purchases I did make, even as I have about a year’s worth of listening in records still sealed on the shelf. I’m even afraid to open some of them because I can see their value is rising. Isn’t that silly?

My Philosophy Was Off-Base

I love records. Listening to them, curating a collection, is a joyful hobby. It gets at some need I can’t quite name. But, of course, records shouldn’t be only for collecting. They are for the pleasure of listening. My philosophy was pretty off-base. I didn’t even perceive it that way, and here’s what got me to realize it, and get out of it.

Last summer, I came across an original mono pressing of Mingus Ah Um in one of my local shops. It was labelled as a “top copy” and the surface looked pretty good. The price was a little absurd, and considering I had the [MoFi] OneStep and the Classic Records pressings, I wasn’t sure I needed it. But, this is an album I loved, even as a kid, even on digital, and a first pressing held a lot of allure. I took some time to think about it, do some online comparison shopping, and by the time I got back to the shop, it was gone.

In a fit of pique, I bought the copy Better Records was selling.

It was listed as a Super Hot Stamper, and it was slightly cheaper than the copy the shop was selling. With a 30-day no-questions-asked return policy, it seemed a safe bet.

An Initially Disappointing Hot Stamper Reissue Pressing

Well, you can imagine my disappointment when it arrived a few days later. Nicely boxed for shipping, I unsleeved what was clearly a later pressing. My disappointment magnified when the needle dropped and the first thing I heard was surface noise. I’ve been conditioned by the heavy vinyl renaissance to equate surface noise with a bad-sounding record.

But then, the instruments kicked in, and from the first notes I could tell I was listening to something really different.

It was clear, forward, and dynamic. Nothing harsh, even in the horns, but so much more engaging and rich than I was used to. It was the drum solo partway through the first track that convinced me I was hearing something special in this pressing. I sat and listened to the entire record without doing anything else, and for me, something that holds my attention to where I don’t want to grab my phone or a book is part of what defines a peak listening experience.

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Letter of the Week – “The extra deep bass and dynamics to the drums on Who’s Next vs my new one was particularly eye opening!”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper copy of Who’s Next he bought a while back:

Tom,

Meeting Robert [Robert Brook] has energized me to upgrade my vinyl rig to a MC with a nicer table. (Currently I use a VPI Traveler with Clearaudio Artist v2).  Robert also showed me how my supposedly fancy new 180g “audiophile” pressings can often be used to wipe the floor by vintage pressings. 

The extra deep bass and dynamics to the drums on his copy of Who’s Next vs my new one was particularly eye opening!

Robert Brook does indeed have some good records to play on his much better sounding rig. His blog is definitely worth reading on that score. Here is a link.

I’ve purchased a VPI Classic 3se with the 3d arm, and I’m led to believe that the Dynavector is a great match for it.  A friend of a friend has this exact set up and is very happy with it. Robert says you also use a Dynavector for your record shootouts.

Yes, the 17dx is at the heart of our system’s accuracy. Most cartridges would have put us out of business long ago with their wacky EQ, the opposite of what we need to do out job. We talked about it here.

Thanks for your letter,

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Letter of the Week – “My stereo upgrades have widened the sonic chasm between good, old-fashioned records and their nouveau imposters.”

Record Collecting for Audiophiles – These Are the Fundamentals

One of our good customers, Dan, found much to agree with in our recent Better Record’s record collecting commentary and offered up his own two cents worth in the letter below. (Emphasis added.)

Tom,

Just wanted to affirm the new Better Records axiom of “the better your stereo gets, the fewer modern reissues you will own.” My collection has dozens of these Heavy Vinyl reissues, and none of them are holding up after a year and half’s worth of significant improvements to my stereo.

It was only at the beginning of last year that I found myself pleased with roughly 50% of my heavy vinyl purchases. Now, that number has plummeted to less than 10%. Almost everything that’s being put out today is an utter disappointment.

Of course, part of the explanation may be that my listening skills have improved. But it’s hard to imagine that I would have liked dull, dreary, lifeless vinyl a year or two ago. I like to think not.

More probable is that my stereo upgrades have widened the sonic chasm between good, old-fashioned records and their nouveau imposters.

I’d also like to second the avoidance of new vinyl purchases until major stereo improvements are made. I’m trudging through the laborious task of replacing these records with older, better sounding copies. It’s excellent advice to those new to the game or young (or both).

Amazingly, hearing the difference doesn’t even require a Hot Stamper, almost any original or early reissue will beat the Sundazed, Classic, etc. That’s how inferior they are. To borrow from The Who, the sound must change.

Dan,

I agree with this bit at the end of your letter, with one caveat:

Amazingly, hearing the difference doesn’t even require a Hot Stamper, almost any original or early reissue will beat the Sundazed, Classic, etc. That’s how inferior they are.

The caveat would be if you know how to clean your records right, right in this case being the way we recommend you clean them, using Prelude fluids and a machine.

Old uncleaned records can sound pretty bad. An audiophile pressing may beat your old original — until you clean it.

It’s one of the revolutionary changes in audio we spend so much time talking about, and it can make all the difference in the world on some records, especially old ones.

Thanks for your letter. You are not alone in swearing off these modern mediocrities. Many of our customers went through the same process you have, and it seems they are as pleased with the results as you.

Best, TP

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Letter of the Week – “I’m hearing things I’ve never heard before. Orders of magnitude better.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Available Now

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

Hey Tom,   

Once again, you folks have proved that your albums are worth EVERY PENNY that you charge for them.

For years, I’ve had a couple of domestic pressings, and a “200 gram Anadisq” MOFI, of ELP’s Trilogy. Always thought the sound was pretty solid.

But I JUST finished spinning the British A+++ pressing I scored from you folks this past week, and OH MY. It absolutely CRUSHES all prior versions. It leaves the MOFI in the DUST. I mean, it’s not even close. Not subtle. Not “Well, if I listen closely, I think I MIGHT hear a difference….”

NO. It’s utterly ridiculous. I’m hearing things I’ve never heard before. Orders of magnitude better.

THANK YOU, for your dedication to optimizing the quality of listening. SUCH a great album – and sound that finally is commensurate to the quality of the musicianship. 🙂

Steve

Steve,

So glad to hear it!

I was selling MoFi records when that pressing of Trilogy came out. What a murky piece of crap that was. The cutting system they were using was a joke, and the one they have now is not much better.

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Letter of the Week – “These days I don’t believe sh*t until my ears hear it, which is quite different than in the past.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Peter Gabriel Available Now

Our good customer Michel wrote to tell us — again — just how much he likes his Peter Gabriel Hot Stamper pressing of So.

I remember when I bought a 2+ copy of So. I had always thought that the UK’s would be the way to go, but even though I had a first press, ear fatigue set in quickly.

My US copy was not very good, so I wound up with the Classic gatefold … kind of cool packaging … so when I first listened to the 2+ I was besides myself, goosebumps and all.

Fast forward and I purchased a 2.5/2.5 Nearly White Hot Stamper copy. What a pleasure to be able to hear the improvement in the sound to yet another level. Bliss!

You guys have totally revolutionized my ears and my listening capabilities, which is utterly fantastic. Many thanks for that.

These days I don’t believe sh*t until my ears hear it, which is quite different than in the past.

Question … when you guys do shootouts for a particular LP, do you just compare the copies you have just procured, or do you have a +3/+3 house copy to compare to during your shootout?

What I like about the write-ups you do is it always gets me to thinking and going back to my LPs and relistening to them with my ‘new’ ears.

This process has been quite revealing.

Michel

Michel,

Thanks for your letter. As for your thinking that the Brit copies would be the way to go on So — and finding out otherwise — that’s precisely what happened to us about fifteen years ago:

We did a shootout many years ago that taught us a few things. The most surprising finding? The Brit copy I had in my own collection sucked — how about that! As a rule, I like the Brit pressings best for PG, but that rule got broken after playing all these domestic copies, some of which really sound good, clearly better than the Brits we had on hand.

Are rules made to be broken?

Yes they are.

This is a digital recording, and most of the time it is BRIGHT, SPITTY and GRAINY the way digital recordings tend to be, which plays right into the prejudices of most audiophiles for the “100% analog” approach they favor.

After hearing a bad copy, what audiophile wouldn’t conclude that all copies will have these bad qualities?

After all, it’s digital. It can’t be fixed simply by putting it on vinyl.

Ah, but that’s where logic breaks down. Proper mastering can ameliorate many if not most of a recording’s shortcomings. When we say Hot Stampers, we are talking about high-quality mastering doing exactly that.

But of course the mastering is only one part of the puzzle. I have multiple copies with the same stampers. Some of them are terrible, some of them are wonderful — you just can’t rely on the numbers to guide you with a piece of mass-produced plastic like this. You have no choice but to play the record to know what it sounds like. (And that’s a good thing. Keeps you honest. There’s no “cheating” when you have nothing to go by but the sound.)

The Classic Records pressing is at best mediocre — like most of the mid-fi junk they put out, we never bothered to write a review of it. We did manage to write more than 90, which means that as far as we’re concerned, we went beyond the call of duty and then some.

We did however happen to review the 2 LP 45 RPM Numbered Limited Edition that came out in 2016. We found it to be one of the worst sounding pressings of the album ever made. Of course it went right into our audiophile hall of shame with others of its ilk where it belonged.

As for the question of having a 3+ reference copy on the shelf to keep around for the next shootout, we have some, but not that many, probably less than a hundred.

Since we do more than a thousand different titles over the course of a decade, it would be nice to have more, but they aren’t really needed. It’s easy to hear when a record is doing everything right. When a record has one side that is not quite up to snuff, it’s the shootout that shows us in what area it may be lacking.

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Heavy Vinyl – Audiophile Blessing or Curse?

More Letters Comparing Hot Stamper Pressings to their Heavy Vinyl Counterparts

Two editorial points to make up front:

The run-of-the-mill Heavy Vinyl pressing is so lifeless and opaque that we think the run-of-the-mill CD, on average, will sound better.

If you’re an audiophile who is currently collecting and playing Heavy Vinyl pressings, you are making the worst choice possible: second- or third-rate sound quality coupled with the hassle and expense of the modern LP.

In this letter Dan tells us of his disappointment with the new reissues he’s been trying:

I can’t tell you how many modern reissues I’ve bought over the past couple months that have lost, and lost badly, to just my one single original or early pressing of an album. Reissues by AC/DC, The Who, ZZ Top, The Rolling Stones, and Patti Smith have all failed miserably against my merely average sounding originals.

As a result, I have almost zero interest in buying anything that’s reissued nowadays. But I believe you said in a recent commentary that the less audiophile pressings you have in your collection the better. So I suppose the fact that I’m weeding these out from my collection is good news as far as my ears and stereo are concerned. But it’s still a sad state for the audio industry as a whole. It’s too bad we can’t tell a different story. I don’t know what in the mastering/pressing process needs to be different, but something does.

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Letter of the Week – “It really beats the pants off of my George Marino remaster…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of AC/DC Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing of Back in Black he purchased a while back (emphasis added).

It must have been quite a long time ago, mostly because the Aurios he mentions have not been made for more than a decade. Not to worrry: The Seismic Platform we tout here on the blog will make an even more dramatic improvement to your playback and can be purchased directly from Townshend, eliminating the middleman, us.

Hey Tom,  

I’ve been spending time this week listening to the seven records that arrived from you last week, and have been having a fabulous time doing it. So I thought I’d write to say THANKS – you guys really know how to pick ‘em!

Top honors in the batch definitely goes to the AC/DC Back in Black Hot Stamper. Wow, does it ever ROCK! And it’s not even the best one you had – which makes me wonder just how amazing the best copies sound. It really beats the pants off of my George Marino remaster, to say nothing of my old Canadian pressing.

The sheer energy that leaps off the vinyl is incredible.

To me, this record supports again the hypothesis that I first tested when I bought my Joni Mitchell Hot Stamper from you last fall: That I don’t have to wait until I manage to put together a really top notch stereo system before I can enjoy at least some of what Hot Stampers have to offer.

Obviously, as my system gets better I imagine I’ll enjoy them even more; but even with my current budget-ish system, recently much improved with Aurios and an EAR 834p (both recommended by you – thank you!), the Back in Black Hot Stamper shines. There’s truly nothing finer than listening to a record that sounds that good!

Anyway, all in all, it’s a pleasure purchasing from you, so thanks again. I’ll be back for more once my budget allows.

Martin H.

Martin,

Happy to help. We’re convinced that the better your system sounds, the bigger the difference will be between our Hot Stampers and everything else out there in record land.

Sometimes the difference is so great that even a modest system makes it obvious just how much better a Hot Stamper LP is than anything being pressed these days on modern Heavy Vinyl, famous mastering engineer or no famous mastering engineer.

UPDATE 2025

After George Marino cut this pressing of Tea for the Tillerman, I lost all respect for him. He was undoubtedly a good mastering engineer back in his day, but he stayed too long at the party and lost whatever skills he might have possessed, judging from the single disc TFTT he cut as well as the 45 2 disc set.

Regarding the importance of energy in the pressings we audition, this commentary on Zuma may be of some interest.

There is an abundance of audiophile collector hype surrounding the hundreds of Heavy Vinyl pressings currently in print. I read a lot about how wonderful their sound is, but when I actually play them, I rarely find them to be any better than mediocre, and many of them are awful.

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Letter of the Week – “I think It’s a bargain at $800. It absolutely trashes my Mofi version…”

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

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing he purchased recently:

Hey Tom,   

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing on the Crosby Still, Nash & Young Deja Vu White Hot stamper A+++ on both sides and absolutely dead quiet. I think It’s a bargain at $800.00. It absolutely trashes my Mofi version into bits and pieces. I don’t even want to mention the Classic records version because it’s painful to listen to. I’m writing up this record today and the Frank Sinatra and Count Basie Live at the Sands tomorrow.

Thanks,

Naz

Naz,

The Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed Mastered pressings of Deja Vu are, as you say, practically unlistenable once you know what that record should really sound like, and now that you have a Hot Stamper pressing, you definitely know just how good the record can sound.

Demo Disc barely begins to do it justice.

Hey, I was fooled back in the mid-’80s – I used to demonstrate my system with the MoFi Deja Vu! How screwed up is that?

Let’s just say we have made a lot of progress in audio since then. We’ve learned a great deal about record collecting too, practically all of it derived from the thousands of shootouts we’ve conducted over the last twenty years, using tens of thousands of different pressings.

Letter of the Week – “It was so good that I got transported somewhere and back and didn’t even realize it.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing he purchased recently:

Hi Tom,

Last night I had a ticket to a very special show.

It was my first ever listen to a 3+ Side 1 of Dark Side of the Moon.

It was so good that I got transported somewhere and back and didn’t even realize it. I had the gain turned all the way up. Perhaps it would have been better for the vocals on the first track to turn the gain down a little, but not for the music.

I have heard a 2.5+ before on my other copy which has a 3+ side 2, but the 3+ completely takes the cake.

What a pleasure it was to listen to. The vinyl was pretty darn quiet too.

I mean… over the years… Japanese, Japanese Pro Use, MFSL, UHQR, UK, UK A2/B2, UK A3/B3, US 30th Anniversary…

And you mean to tell me it all comes down to a variant of a [redacted] with several deadwax configurations. Only the super lucky might have ever figured it out. I didn’t have a chance in hell!

Take good care,
Michel

Michel,

Think of all the money you spent chasing one copy after another of Dark Side of the Moon, only to be disappointed time and time again.

Somehow none of those pressings, the ones that have been idolized by in-the-know audiophiles for more than fifty years — promoted again and again as the only possible solution to your problem, the true answer you seek — could take you to the places our humble mass-produced import reissue took you to.

This is absurd. It flies in the face of everything we know! Do you really expect other enthusiasts to believe your story that all the most highly-regarded audiophile versions couldn’t get the job done?

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