Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Deep Purple Available Now
Mastered by Kevin Gray, this record has what we would call ”modern” sound, which is to say it’s clean and tonally correct, but it’s missing the Tubey Magic the British originals are swimming in.
In other words, it sounds like a CD.
I’m guessing that very few people have ever heard this record sound the way our best Hot Stamper pressings can sound.
For one thing, the domestic pressings are made from dubbed tapes, and that’s what most of us Americans would have owned. The original domestic pressings are smeary, veiled and small as a rule
Yes, the average copy may be nothing special, but this one is a boring, lifeless mess, so save your money.
Rhino Records has really made a mockery of the analog medium. Rhino touts their releases as being pressed on “180 gram High Performance Vinyl.” However, if they are using “performance” as a synonym “sound quality,” we have found the performance of their vinyl to be quite low, lower than the average copy one might stumble upon in the used record bins.
Who can be bothered to play a record that has so few of the qualities audiophiles should be looking for on vinyl?
Back in 2007 we put the question this way: why own a turntable if you’re going to play mediocrities like these?
Further Reading
Records are getting awfully expensive these days, and it’s not just our Hot Stampers that seem priced for perfection.
If you are still buying these modern remastered pressings, making the same kind of mistakes that I was making before I knew better, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered LPs.