hs-letter

Hot Stamper letters.

“I assumed that there must be some better sounding pressings out there.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

The West Side Story I picked up from you a few months ago was just something else. I was sitting on my couch watching the stage as Tony and Maria sang through the WSS songbook. I mean, there they were.

Sure, Mono has a particular feel and you can only quiet down an old 6-eye so much, but it was just beautiful.

I was very happy with what I received. All four records sound wonderful and are well worth the outlay. I have had several copies of “El Rayo-X” and “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”.

They sounded quite good but I assumed that there must be some better sounding pressings out there. Now here they are.

Paul S.

Paul,

Thanks for your letter.

We love all those albums too, and we love finding killer pressings of them for our customers.

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Letter of the Week – “…the WHS is huge and clear. It had ALL the positive attributes I heard in the others.”

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 of Dark Side of the Moon he purchased a while back:

Dear Tom and Fred,

This is one of those records where I already had a handful of well-regarded pressings. How intriguing that it was such an obscure pressing that won your shootout! [1]

I compared the WHS to my early US pressing (Ken Perry mastered [2]), my MoFi [3], a Japanese “blue triangle” pressing, and of course, the 2016 remaster [4].

Sure, there are tons of sought-after pressings that go for prices even more exorbitant than what I paid you, none of which I’ve heard, so I guess it’s not a proper shootout. But, at least among the ones I have, the WHS bested them all handily. In each of the others I was able to find something that I could appreciate, that on its own compared well to the WHS. This is such a great, and well-recorded, album that any pressing of it is going to have something worthwhile to offer.

The Japanese pressing came closest to the WHS. [Doubtful we would agree with you on the merits of this Japanese pressing. We rarely like them, and we like them less with each passing year.]

At the other end of the spectrum the 2016 remaster, noted for its great bass, just sounded clogged and thudding [5].

Compared to each of them, the WHS is huge and clear. It had ALL the positive attributes I heard in the others. Is it 15x better than my next-best copy? Objectively, probably not. But, subjectively, it must be, since I’m keeping it.

Since the hot stamper arrived the day after my Legacy Signature III’s got here, it was one of the first records I played on them. What a great pairing they are! 

This was of course the first mini-shootout I’ve done using the Legacys. What a great window into a record these speakers provide. I switched back to my Bowers and Wilkins 805s and re-ran the shootout, just to see if my impressions would still align. They did, with the hot stamper providing more vividness and a bigger sound than the other pressings did, even on the B&Ws.

But on the bigger speakers the hot stamper stands apart from the others by a wider margin.

Thank you both for all the great records you find, and thank you Tom for the stereo advice. You keep doing what you’re doing, and I’ll keep doing what I’m doing.

Aaron

Aaron,

Glad to hear you are a Legacy man now. We love our Legacy Speakers and can’t imagine doing shootouts without them. (The old ones, not the newer models.) The Big Speaker sound, at loud levels, is what allows a record like Dark Side of the Moon to be every bit the immersive experience we know it can be if you have a top quality pressing to play. Now you know it too.

And thanks for doing the shootout so that you know exactly what our best copies of Dark Side are capable of. If you make any improvement to your system, be sure to go back to this Dark Side and hear the change for yourself.

Then play any of these other pressings and note how the gap has widened. That is our experience and we expect you will find the same differences in your listening room as well.

The following notes may be of general interest:

[1} Obscure pressings that sound better than everything else are our bread and butter here at Better Records.

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“Listening to my very first Hot Stamper purchase was by far the most significant event in my life as an audiophile.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Singer-Songwriters Available Now

Note: rarely do we have any records by Carole King on the site, and we almost never have any copies of Tapestry, a record we know from experience that is very hard to find with top quality sound and almost impossible to find with quiet vinyl. We do the best we can, better than anyone else, but we would surely love to do better.

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased back in 2017 [the bolding of the text has been added by us.]

Hey Tom, 

Listening to my very first Hot Stamper purchase was by far the most significant event in my life as an audiophile. I discovered the Better Records website way back in 2007, but being a hardcore skeptic I didn’t purchase anything until almost two years later. Although I agreed with the premise that different pressings have varying degrees of sound quality, I simply could not believe that any record could sound so much better to justify the prices. Frankly, I thought that the buyers of these records were folks with more money than sense.

What finally drove me to purchase my first Hot Stamper was my attempt to find a decent copy of Carole King’s Tapestry album. I had decided to try the Better Records approach and gathered half a dozen copies, as well as the Classic heavy vinyl reissue that I had read good things about. Talk about an exercise in futility. Despite a thorough cleaning with Disc Doctor, no copy sounded significantly better than any of the others. However, Better Records just happened to have a 1+ copy of Tapestry on sale for $75 at the time, so I decided to take the plunge and buy it, even though I still thought the price was outrageous.

What followed next absolutely stunned and amazed me. Although I was prepared to shoot out the Hot Stamper against my own copies, I knew within the first minute of play that it would be totally unnecessary. The Hot Stamper sounded like a completely different recording. I cannot stress this enough.

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“I was immersed. Thank you.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

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

Dear Sir,

You know when everything is just right? The record, the equipment, the space between your ears. The speakers disappear, the room, even yourself? And the only thing left is the music?

It doesn’t happen that often these days, but it did for me listening to side one of your UK Revolver. I was immersed. Thank you.

Dear Sir, 

Fantastic to hear, we love when that happens, to us and to anybody else of course. It’s the same high that gamblers get from winning big, and it keeps us audiophiles going until the next time it call comes together that way.

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Letter of the Week – “Then I did Street Fighting Man. The BR copy destroyed the other two!”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

Our new customer Michel wrote to tell us how much he likes his Super Hot Stamper pressing of Beggars Banquet.

Hi Tom,

Doing that shootout was really interesting. I had culled the two best I had some months ago which were two old London presses (one TH and one Monarch). So I mixed those two up so I didn’t know which was which, and then the BR copy would be third on the table.

I did Sympathy for the Devil first. I actually preferred one of my copies (monarch) for that track as the tone of the bass was a little more forward which I really like for that one song.

Then I did Street Fighting Man. The BR copy destroyed the other two!

What a pleasure it was to hear that song at max volume with everything just right.

That was definitely the very best I’d ever heard that song in 63 years. Well done BR!

Michel

Michel,

I would agree with you that Street Fighting Man is the better test. It’s easy to be thrown off by one aspect or another of the sound of a particular track. We always use at least two songs on each side in our shootouts and often three are required.

The production is heavy on strummed acoustic guitars. Those are a good test for any record.

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Getting the Wife On Board Is Key to Audiophile Happiness

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Rolling Stones Available Now

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

Hi Tom,

My wife and I had a sort of meditative / semi-religious experience the other night when we were a bit woozy just from a long day and we sat and listened to Can’t You Hear Me Knocking. It was almost transcendent.

I was playing her the record for the first time to show her the money wasn’t wasted. That convinced her.

Andrew

Dear Andrew,

A very good strategy. You have to actually hear the record to know what the value of it is. I Got the Blues would have been my first choice, but being woozy is a big help too no matter what track you play.

Best, TP

Andrew had earlier noted to my main man Fred (who runs the business now) how bad the MoFi Sticky Fingers sounded.

Anyway, I told [Fred] how worthwhile it was to finally have a good copy of Sticky Fingers. I have three other copies, including the MFSL (it’s embarrassing they even released the record to begin with.)

I was checking out the MFSL copy again and I think the thing that really caught my ears in the past was the bass on Can’t You Hear My Knocking during the last three minutes when they do the Santana breakdown. Then you kinda notice it as a dull thud on other songs also. But I think that was the worst offender, especially since everything drops out.

I was rereading the articles about your business to see what I could glean about how you clean the vinyl. I still can’t believe the criticism since A) they’ve never actually heard one of your records and B) you offer a no questions asked money back guarantee. That just screams legitimacy. A con man who offers a 100% refund. I don’t think so.

I think these remasters and half speed remasters are bullshit and cashing in. That’s the con. Those people wouldn’t be so pissed off if you didn’t win people over who actually take the time to listen. To me it’s like hearing the perfect balance and placement of a great remastered CD but with all the depth of vinyl.

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“I love Blood On The Tracks, I have 6 copies of it and none of them come near yours”

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.

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Letter of the Week – “Santana’s guitar is scorching on this record!”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Santana Available Now

Our good customer, Dan, wrote to tell us he was positively astounded by our Hot Stamper pressing of Abraxas. We told Dan to listen to this record as loud as his ears could take it. Take it from the man himself: “As you suggested, I played this album as loud as my ears could tolerate and the result was astounding.”

Hey Tom,

Today I was blown away by yet another Hot Stamper I bought from your store: Santana’s Abraxas. Now, I have always been in awe of the musicianship of the band’s first three albums, but it was not until I heard the grooves in this Hot Stamper that I realized they are geniuses. Santana’s guitar is scorching on this record! Those leads just burst out of the musical soundscape that’s behind him. But it never sounded like that in the hundreds of times I’ve heard it. Sure, his leads always stood out, but they didn’t leap out.

As you suggested, I played this album as loud as my ears could tolerate and the result was astounding. Though my stereo is still short of being able to reproduce a live concert (for now!), it felt pretty damn close to that experience with this record! Mike Shrieve’s drums positively exploded with power after that organ intro on “Hope You’re Feeling Better”. There’s no denying it, playing this music at a polite volume would be a sin, and one I happily did not commit. This record is just poppin’ all over the place with dynamics, and the only way to hear everything is to set the dial to 11.

On a similar topic, I recently purchased the Mofi pressing of Santana’s first album and later stumbled upon your commentary on it. It is indeed good, but no nowhere near alive. My hot stamper of “Abraxas” gives me an excellent reference point for the Santana sound, and I can see just how much is missing now from Mofi’s pressing of their debut.

Anyhow, just wanted to say thank you again a keep up the great work at Better Records!

Dan

Dan, I’m glad to see you hadn’t wasted your money on the awful MoFi pressing of Abraxas, which, as I pointed out in my blog, is so bad (compressed to death, whomp factor = zero) we refused to carry it.

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Letter of the Week – “…the overall sound is like as if I have upgraded my entire system.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

I just wanted to thank you for helping me own my first “White Hot Stamper.”

I have had two copies of After the Gold Rush and none of them comes close to my WHS copy.

I’m perfectly happy owning Hot Stampers and a few Super Hot Stampers, but this WHS is really different. To begin with, it is a quiet copy that allows you to hear and almost feel the texture of the instruments. It also has lots of energy, tight bass, big sound stage, and most of all a silky top end. 

Without exaggeration, the overall sound is like as if I have upgraded my entire system.

My biggest challenge now is, with few exceptions, all my favorite non-Hot Stamper albums need upgrading too. But with you guys around, I just have to wait till my favorite albums show up on your Hot Stampers list.

Gerardo

Gerardo,

Thanks for writing, and thanks for taking the time to do your own shootout.

Now you know from your own experience just how good the right pressings of After the Gold Rush can sound.

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Traveling Back in Time with Cat Stevens on Mobile Fidelity

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

Our good customer Roger wrote us a letter years ago about his Tea for the Tillerman on Mobile Fidelity, in which he remarked, “Sometimes I wish I kept my old crappy stereo to see if I could now tell what it was that made these audiophile pressings so attractive then.”

It got me to thinking. Yes, that would be fun, and better yet, it could be done. There are actually plenty of those old school audio systems of the 60s and 70s still around. Just look at what many of the forum posters — god bless ’em — are running. They’ve got some awesome ’70s Japanese turntables, some Monster Cable and some vintage tube gear and speakers designed in the ’50s.

With this stuff you could virtually travel back in time, in effect erasing all the audio progress made possible by the new technologies adopted by some of us over the last 30 years or so.

Then you could hear your Mobile Fidelity Tea for the Tillerman sound the way it used to when you could actually stand to be in the same room with it.

My question to Roger was “What on earth were we hearing that made us want to play these awful half-speed mastered records? What was our stereo doing that made these awful records sound good to us at the time?”

In Search of a Bad Stereo

I know how you can find out. You go to someone’s house who has a large collection of audiophile pressings and have him play you some of them. Chances are that his stereo will do pretty much what your old stereo and my old stereo used to do — be so wrong that really wrong records actually start to sound right! It seems crazy but it just might be true.

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