Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Recordings Available Now
UPDATE 2021
The discussion here is for a Oval label copy of Suites for Solo Cello (SR 90370) we reviewed in 2010. These days the Oval label pressings from the early 60s almost never sound very good to us. We no longer buy them and we certainly don’t bother to put them in shootouts.
This record on the Oval Label would be very unlikely to qualify as a Hot Stamper pressing anymore, although we liked it just fine in 2010, as you can see from our old review.
In 2024 we actually put an Oval Label pressing of SR 90370 in a shootout and it did about as poorly as we would have expected. What a waste of time and money. Never again.