michel-l

Letter of the Week – “The whole house lights when up I turn this up all the way, emitting positive vibes into the universe…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Art Pepper Available Now

Our good customer Michel wrote to us about his experience playing one of our records.

Hi Tom,

At 2 a.m. last night and again today, I simply cannot get over just how darn good the sound is on this 2.5 side 2
of the stereo Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section.

Truly, a magical experience indeed. The whole house lights up when I turn this copy up all the way, emitting positive vibes into the universe,
near and far.

All the other copies I had … no comparison at all.

One simply doesn’t know until one knows. That’s the crux of the biscuit as they say.

I sure do love my BR records!
Cheers,
Michel

Michel,

Thanks again for writing. I wish more audiophiles could have the kind of experience you apparently had with that killer copy of Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section you ordered.

As you say, your other copies could not hold a candle to the properly-cleaned, properly-mastered and properly-pressed copy we sent you.

And the Heavy Vinyl pressing that Chad and Bernie made is an insult to the record buying public.

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Letter of the Week – “The whole house lights up when I turn this copy up all the way, emitting positive vibes into the universe, near and far.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Art Pepper Available Now

Our good customer Michel wrote to us about his experience playing one of our records.

Hi Tom,

At 2 a.m. last night and again today, I simply cannot get over just how darn good the sound is on this 2.5 side 2
of the stereo Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section.

Truly, a magical experience indeed. The whole house lights up when I turn this copy up all the way, emitting positive vibes into the universe,
near and far.

All the other copies I had … no comparison at all.

One simply doesn’t know until one knows. That’s the crux of the biscuit as they say.

I sure do love my BR records!

Cheers,
Michel

Michel,

Thanks again for writing. I wish more audiophiles could have the kind of experience you apparently had with that killer copy of Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section you ordered.

As you say, your other copies could not hold a candle to the properly-cleaned, properly-mastered and properly-pressed copy we sent you.

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Letter of the Week – “I looked at the speakers in wonderment, goosebumps down my legs”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Peter Gabriel Available Now

Our good customer Michel wrote to tell us how much he liked the White Hot Peter Gabriel (3) Hot Stamper pressing we just sent him. (I have edited some of the text but mostly it came to me this way.)

Hi Tom,

Knowledge is everything and good ears don’t lie!

Side 2 of Peter Gabriel 3 is the side that I really like. I have had many pressings and many 12″ 45s made in the UK and a few 12″ 33s from the US.

Over the years I kept searching for good sound, but I never got there apparently. I simply stopped listening to the music. Maybe a Biko 12″ once in a while, but the LP never cut it. Not even the supercool packaging of the Classic along with the fancy clarity handmade super vinyl profile II. Now that’s a mouthful!

So in comes the 3+ side 2 that I just received. I played side two first.

It was all over.

I looked at the speakers in wonderment, goosebumps down my legs.

I was looking right into the music.

The separation was through the roof, everything in its proper proportion.

The naturalness of it all was astounding. The highs crystal clear, the mids all there, the bass punchy and tight.

The whole thing demanding to be turned up to maximum volume.

I play it over and over again, smiling all the way. This is the shit!

So then I put the Classic on. [Cue the sound of a needle sliding across a record.]

I could not keep turning it up, as the sound got worse on the top end. Their version, don’t know if it was BG, is whacked out.

Things are not in proper proportion in the soundfield. Too much and not enough kind of thing.

Why do they have to f*ck with the tape so much, as if they know better?

Michel

Michel,

Judging by the enthusiasm of your letter, I could not be happier to learn of the joy our Hot Stamper pressing of the album has brought you.

Good ears don’t lie, as you say, and we take that to mean that you’re hearing what we heard when we played side two of your copy, the side that won the shootout. We agree — it is a thrill to hear a record sound that good.

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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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Letter of the Week – “I did a lot of research on which pressing to purchase and nobody ever mentioned the version that you sell!”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Abbey Road Available Now

One our good customers wrote to tell us about his experience playing one of our Hot Stamper pressings of Abbey Road.

Hi Tom,

Tonight’s been really cool.

I got to hear Abbey Road in such a way that I had no idea existed. I put side one of the SHS I just got and my eyes popped out and my jaw dropped and I went ‘WTF’ was that.

Some of the extended bass rumbles on Come Together really made me smile and go ‘whoa.’

I know what my UK 1st pressing sounds like and I always thought that it was special in comparison to others l’d heard, like the MFSL and Japanese Pro Use.

So now I’m listening to yours somewhat in disbelief. The end of side one just about blew the windows out of the house! Then I put my UK copy on. By comparison, it just sounded flat… but on its own it sounds good.

What an amazing discovery. You are completely correct in your assessment of these ’69 UK pressings.

Thanks again,
Michel

P.S.

Over the last couple of years I did what I thought was a lot of research on which Abbey Road pressing to purchase for the best experience… and nobody ever mentioned the version that you sell.

Michel,

This letter warms our hearts. We’ve known that the original Abbey Road pressings are not the end-all and be-all that some audiophiles and record collectors think they are, and of course the same is true for the legendary Toshiba Pro-Use and MFSL discs.

Been there, done that, left them in the dust a long time ago. Now you know why. You own the pressing that trounces them all.

The fact that no one recommends the pressings we sell as superior to those commonly touted by the so-called experts just confirms that the work we do is difficult and simply cannot be accomplished without a staff and a budget, which, of course, no one in the audiophile or record collecting world has — staff or budget — besides us.

And that what we do is important. Essential even.

As we are the only operation dedicated to this kind of work, with either the staff or the budget it takes to succeed, it is not surprising that no one has figured out the key to Abbey Road. It took us a very long time too. As you may have read elsewhere on the blog:

Skeptical thinking has been key to our success from the very start, and it can be key to your success too. To understand records, you need to think about them critically, not naively, in order to get very far in this devilishly difficult hobby we have chosen for ourselves.

Our first big shootout was 2007, and since then we have carried out at least two dozen more for the album, making a lot of Beatles’ fans happy in the process. We helped them spend their money on something that will give them lifelong pleasure.

As for the original sounding flat, you may have seen this too:

Shootouts are the only way to answer the most important question in all of audio: “compared to what?”

Without shootouts, how can you begin to know what are the strengths and weaknesses of the copies you own?

Now that you have done your own shootout, you know how flat your copy was all along — but, as you say, “on its own it sounds good.”

This is the kind of progress in audio we love to hear about.

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Letter of the Week – “When the needle hit the record, the room suddenly expanded by two quadrants.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Queen Available Now

Our customer Michel wrote to tell us how much he likes the sound 0f his recently purchase Super Hot Stamper pressing of A Night at the Opera.

Hi Tom,
I should title this one “MFSL, Now You Can Kiss My Ass Goodbye” from the song, you know.

A Night at the Opera and Sheer Heart Attack are my two all time favorite Queen LPs. I’ve listened to so many copies of each and decades ago found happiness for sure, like when I got the MFSL.

But later in life, listening more critically, I was never happy… so much going on… always some sort of mish-mash of sound. Turning these LPs up to max volume and jamming out was no longer pleasurable, so I found myself not playing them anymore.

Recently I purchased A Night at the Opera from BR, a SHS.

When the needle hit the record, the room suddenly expanded by two quadrants. So wonderfully wide and big, the room was just filled with sound…..warmth abundant sound sans mish-mash.

The difference is truly dramatic. The depth is also there… you can feel the sound coming out of the shadows towards you in places. Absolutely stunning sound.

You have cracked the code on this one. This is an analog delight for sure. Many thanks.

Michel

Michel,

Thanks for your letter. I’m not sure how big two quadrants are, but I know a mish-mash when I hear one, and that is indeed the sound found on most pressings of the album, even the UK ones. I might describe it as a combination of congestion and vague imaging — a cloud of instruments, all mashed together.

A lot of records have that problem, especially if they haven’t been cleaned properly.

Later in life it seems you were rather less impressed with your MoFi than when you first bought it.

As I have said again and again on this very blog, it’s axiomatic with us here at Better Records that the better your stereo is at playing records, and the more critically you are able to listen, the worse their records will sound. There is no way their junk Half-Speed mastered vinyl can sound right on good equipment.

Now you know just how good a top quality pressing of A Night at the Opera can sound.

Even we didn’t until about seven years ago.

That’s how long it took us to crack the code, but I tell you this with confidence, having played practically every version of the UK pressings ever made: the right stampers are mindboggingly good and there is nothing like them. We wrote about the subject here:

As is sometimes the case, there is one and only one set of stamper numbers that consistently wins our Night at the Opera shootouts. We stumbled upon an out-of-this-world copy of the right pressing many years ago, a copy took the recording to a level we had no idea could even be possible. (We were going to give it Four Pluses, and probably should have, but cooler heads prevailed.)

Since then we have had many copies come in, but none that could compete with the Magic Stamper pressings. And the best part of this story is that, no, the best stampers are not 1, or 2, or even 3.

In other words they are far from the stampers found on the earliest pressings.

That’s one reason it took us so long to discover them, because they are much less commonly found than pressings with the earlier stampers. By the time these later pressings were mastered, pressed and released, the album’s biggest selling days were over.

Why is that, you ask?

Who knows? Who cares? What difference could it possibly make anyway?

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Letter of the Week – “Here I was with all these copies at home… went through them all, and yes, yours came out on top.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

This week’s testimonial letter comes from our good customer Michel, who was blown away by the Hot Stamper pressing of Aqualung we sent him.

Michel did a shootout of his own, comparing our Hot Stamper with everything he could throw at it. The result? Predictable, from where we stand anyway. If we can’t beat our copy, how can he expect to beat our copy?

Note that a well-known audiophile reviewer did his own shootout for the album years ago, in which he failed utterly and rather embarrassingly to come up with anything resembling a good answer. We are glad to report that our new customer, Michel, succeeded admirably.

To be fair, Michel had a lot of help.

He had a group of experts with many hard-won years of experience on his side.

Audiophile reviewers, without exception, at least to our knowledge, simply have neither the time nor the resources to figure out a title like Aqualung. When you’re a a one-man band, Aqualung is a puzzle you are not likely to solve.

We ourselves didn’t solve it until 2008, by which time I had been in the audiophile record business for more than twenty years. Without a staff to find, clean and help play the large numbers of copies needed to unlock  Aqualung’s secrets, not to mention a stereo that’s designed to be exceptionally hard to please, we would be just as lost as everyone else in the audiophile world, reviewers and forum posters alike.

Michel’s letter:

Thank You, Fred

I’ve got a LOT of listening to do ahead of me. Looking forward to it very much.

Reading on your website… omg… there is so much to read there… has been a real treat. I don’t read the intense notes on the LPs I buy until after I have listened to them, so as to be as objective as possible. It is really interesting to discover that LPs with the same stamper do not always sound the same. This is something I never really understood prior to discovering your company.

My sell pile of other copies, both reg. and fancy ‘audiophile,’ is growing. I don’t care what all the “experts” and youtubers say… if I can feel the music and it connects with me making me want to move my body around, then that is the best pressing.

Some of these titles are epic, like Aqualung for example. So here I was with all these copies at home… went through them all, and yes, yours came out on top.

I tried so hard to make it not so, but the proof is in the pudding as they say.

I am not a ‘high class audiophile’ with a mondo expensive system whose power amps costs more then everything I’ve got, but I’ve got a good set of ears, and I play it loud (no distortion) to expose everything… and I let me ears and my feelings do the selecting. All that gibberish people spout out is endless. I do not feel the need to justify how much I spent on this or that….just listen.

I have very much been enjoying my journey with Better Records, and yes I have spent of bunch of dollars, and yes if I tried to resell them I’d never get it back, but none of that matters…. only the sound is what matters to me…. and apparently to your company as well. Discovering BR has been a real blast!

Take Good Care,
Michel

Michel,

What can I add to anything you say? You totally get it.

You know exactly what your money is buying: the feeling you get from this music. You are not buying a collectible, nor an investment, nor anything but the rapture of a purely musical experience, one that you can repeat as often as you like for the rest of your life. What you have now is the beginning of a priceless collection.

Some might argue that the cost of the records you bought is excessive. I often read on forums that paying fifty or a hundred dollars for one record is a ridiculous waste of money. Some audiophiles think that having thirty Heavy Vinyl Jazz pressings that sound “just fine” is a much better use of your money than spending a thousand dollars on one exceptionally good vintage pressing.

We do not hold to that view, for the simple reason that when we play these modern records we feel next to nothing for the music or the musicians. (We feel contempt for those who make such shoddy products; I guess that that might be the strongest feeling aroused by most of the junk vinyl being pressed today.)

Oscar Wilde had a good take on it:

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

I think that speaks volumes for what some of us, like yourself, are trying to get out of this hobby. Thanks for writing,

TP

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Letter of the Week – “I feel like I’m right there … in the middle of analog heaven.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Miles Davis Available Now

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

Hi Tom,

It’s funny how, when the music sounds so good, a little surface noise here or there doesn’t bother me.

The sound of this SHS [Super Hot Stamper] is crazy good and very very engaging.

What an astonishing difference in what one feels when listening to the BR copy versus the Classic or the 33RPM UHQR.

I guess now I’ve got more minty LPs to sell.

This SHS may only be a 2/2 but it kicks ass. It really does.

Turn it up all the way and it just shines…. I feel like I’m right there, on the mezzanine, in the middle of analog heaven.

I am so glad I took a chance on this one.

Many thanks,

Michel

Michel followed up the next day, apparently after he had spent more time listening to the album, with this missive:

I just can’t get enough of KOB.

I can’t believe it sounds so f***ing good.

It’s like a celebration here at the house… hearing this music this way is a completely different thing.

So really I’ve only just heard it.

I remember reading a letter you posted where a customer went to a friend’s house with his BR KOB and when they got to playing that one after some of his friend’s copies,the friend went “oh shit” within like a minute.

Well ditto here. Who would have known?

Michel,

Thanks for writing. The letter you are referring to is this one. It’s a short letter, the best part of which I’ve reproduced below.

I went to my dearest friend’s house yesterday, he was SO excited to play for me his deluxe UHQR version of Kind of Blue.

We listened for a while and then I brought out the Super Hot Stamper of KOB that I got from you and played it.

About 90 seconds in, he was like “uh oh.”  It was about 3 minutes into So What and his exact words were “oh…shit.”

We love it when our customers tell us that they can’t get enough of one of our records, that they can’t believe the difference in the feeling they got when they finally heard a record sound the way it’s supposed to.

An “astonishing difference” hits it right on the head.

Best, TP

P.S.

We never officially reviewed the Classic Records pressing of Kind of Blue, the one that came out in 1995 with the speed-corrected side two. We felt it was no better than decent, another Classic Records jazz mediocrity that could not begin to compete with a properly-mastered, properly-pressed Columbia, regardless of which of the first three labels it might have had. (More on Kind of Blue labels here.)

As a non-trumpet-playing audiophile, the corrected speed side sounded pretty much like the non-corrected speed side to these ears.

But neither side sounded very much like the good copies I had been enjoying starting sometime in the early 90s, which, I admit, was a case of me coming late to the game. But better late than never.

Kind of Blue is an album we admit to being obsessed with — just look at the number of commentaries we’ve written about it.

Some highlights include:

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Letter of the Week – “…this BR copy just lifted the veil.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Pink Floyd Available Now

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

Hi Tom,

Just a quick note about Meddle WHS. I also had an A!/B! XXX which does sound pretty good and is quiet, but this BR copy just lifted the veil.

Once I dialed in the sweet spot it was a delightful experience.

This copy is the bomb!!

Many Thanks,
Michel

Michel,

Not all A!/B!’s are created equal!

Most copies of the album with the right stampers will earn a grade of Super Hot, A++.

Some will be White Hot, A+++.

Almost all the pressings we play will have the same stamper numbers, although you may have read that we did just find another stamper for side two that can win shootouts.

Some of the difference in sound is the result of our using The Prelude Record Cleaning System, in conjunction with the Odyssey record cleaning machine we purchased in 2007 (more on that here).

Clean records sound better than they otherwise would, and properly cleaned records often sound much better than they otherwise would, oftentimes a full grade better.

Glad you liked our copy. Lifting the veil is a good way to put it.  We have a list of records we found to be veiled, and you can find it here. We describe them this way:

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Letter of the Week – “So I know in my head what the AP 45 sounds like. It’s basically all I know…. except that I know I don’t ‘feel Jim’s rage’ on any of the AP 45 LPs.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Doors Available Now

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

Hi Tom,

What an incredible experience. I’ve never had anything close to an original of this one. Having heard some songs way too much on the radio didn’t help. I wound up with the AP 45, which compared to whatever I had, was better.

So I know in my head what the AP 45 sounds like. It’s basically all I know…. except that I know I don’t ‘feel Jim’s rage’ on any of the AP 45 LPs.

When I saw you guys had a copy, and it was a top notch one to boot, I was like, dude, you’ve gotta pull the trigger now without delay. What a terrific decision that was!

Raw, powerful, energetic, lively, warm, punchy, dynamic, begging for top volume, tonal qualities of Jim’s vocals absolutely perfect, effortless, you could turn it up to a thousand and it wouldn’t hurt your ears.

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