no-demo-disc

We would never claim these titles have top quality sound.

The Hot Stamper pressings you see on our site offer the best available sound and nothing more.

Born in the U.S.A., for example, is not a great sounding record, but some pressings of it sound a lot better than others, and those are the ones we sell.

If you like the music found on these albums, we guarantee that our pressings will sound better than any others you may have heard, or we will get you your money back.

Prince And The Revolution – Parade

More of the Music of Prince

  • Parade returns to the site after a nearly five year hiatus, here with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Both of these sides are rich, full-bodied, Tubey Magical and wonderfully present with solid weight on the bottom end
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Prince & the Revolution shift musical moods and textures from song to song… All of the group’s musical adventures, even the cabaret-pop of “Venus de Milo” and “Do U Lie?” do nothing to undercut the melodicism of the record, and the amount of ground they cover in 12 songs is truly remarkable…”

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Derek and the Dominos – Layla

More of the Music of Eric Clapton

  • A Layla like you’ve never heard, with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on all FOUR sides of these vintage Polydor pressings
  • Many of our favorite Clapton songs are here: “Bell Bottom Blues,” “Tell The Truth,” “Little Wing,” “Layla” and “Have You Ever Loved A Woman?”
  • One of the most difficult albums to find great sound for, but the music makes it worth all the time and trouble we spent finding this amazing copy
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more richness, fullness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than most others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you own whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market, made from who-knows-what tapes, or an original Atco pressing, or an original British import, or… you get the idea
  • 5 stars: “What really makes Layla such a powerful record is that Clapton, ignoring the traditions that occasionally painted him into a corner, simply tears through these songs with burning, intense emotion.”

Sound this good simply means that you will more than likely hear these songs sound better than you ever imagined they could. We guarantee it.

Look at all these classics:

“I Looked Away”
“Bell Bottom Blues”
“Keep On Growing”
“Nobody Knows When You’re Down and Out”
“Tell The Truth”
“Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad?”
“Have You Ever Loved A Woman”

We rarely get around to this shootout because clean copies with potential for good sound are very hard to come by. After not having spent much quality time with the album for many years, we were pleasantly surprised at just how much fun we were having and at how well the music holds up 55 years after its recording.

On the better copies the sound is amazingly lively and rockin’ and, more importantly, completely engrossing. On this copy you’ll find yourself swept up in tracks like “Bell Bottom Blues,” “Tell The Truth,” “Little Wing,” “Layla” and at least a good half dozen more.

If you could only have one Clapton album, wouldn’t it have to be this one?

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The Rolling Stones – Out of Our Heads

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones

  • With INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades from top to bottom, this is certainly as good a copy as we have ever heard – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • These British sides impressed us with their Tubey Magical, fairly natural sound
  • With top engineers like Dave Hassinger and Glyn Johns one would hope for better sonics, but this is pretty much as good as it gets as far as we know
  • 4 1/2 stars: “In 1965, the Stones finally proved themselves capable of writing classic rock singles that mined their R&B/blues roots, but updated them into a more guitar-based, thoroughly contemporary context. The first enduring Jagger-Richards classics are here…”
  • Out of Our Heads is an album with one set of very special stampers that consistently win shootout after shootout, for years now

Like the really good Decca version of Aftermath, this record has amazing transparency, rich bass and relatively little distortion compared to many of the other versions we’ve played.

Also, like Aftermath, some songs sound much better than others. That’s just the way old Stones record are. Part of this album was recorded in Hollywood and part of it was recorded in Chicago — that may explain some of the variation in the quality of the sound.

By the way, stick with true stereo on this album; the mono pressings — at least the ones we played — aren’t worth anybody’s time (scratch that: any audiophile’s time).

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Bob Dylan and The Band – The Basement Tapes

More Bob Dylan

More of The Band

  • Boasting excellent Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER on all FOUR sides, this vintage copy will be very hard to beat
  • Side three was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • The recording may not be an audiophile dream come true, but these pressings are far better than most others we can ever recall playing, and lets the music come through in a way that we guarantee you have never heard before
  • 5 stars: “… the music here (including the Band’s) is astonishingly good. The party line on The Basement Tapes is that it is Americana, as Dylan and the Band pick up the weirdness inherent in old folk, country, and blues tunes, but it transcends mere historical arcana through its lively, humorous, full-bodied performances. Dylan never sounded as loose, nor was he ever as funny as he is here, and this positively revels in its weird, wild character… among the greatest American music ever made.”

This vintage Columbia Double LP pressing has some of the very best sound we’ve ever heard for this album.

Of course, given the nature of these recordings, you don’t get stunning sonics along the line of, say, Magical Mystery Tour or Dark Side Of The Moon, but at least you get to hear these great songs sound the way they were intended to, without the complications of bad mastering and pressing getting in the way.

Most of the copies we’ve heard wouldn’t be fit to list on the site at any price, but we felt strongly that this copy did justice to the music in a way that the typical pressing does not. While this may not be a Demo Disc, it’s MUCH better sounding than most copies we’ve come across. We’ve played a bunch of these over the years and most of them paled in comparison to this one.

This is of course a famous album, with The Band backing up Dylan (and adding some of their own material) in the famous Big Pink House which would later be the place where The Band’s 1st album was born. (more…)

Creedence Clearwater Revival – Mardi Gras

More Creedence Clearwater Revival

More Roots Rock

  • CCR’s final studio album appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with superb Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides of this original Fantasy pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • We shot out a number of copies and this one had the midrange presence, bass, and dynamics that were missing from most others we played
  • Analog at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • “Recorded after the departure of guitarist Tom Fogerty, it was the band’s only studio album as a trio, and featured songs written, sung, and produced by each of the remaining members [Stu Cook and Doug Clifford], rather than just John Fogerty” – Wikipedia

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Linda Ronstadt – Lush Life

More Linda Ronstadt

More Nelson Riddle

  • A vintage copy of Ronstadt’s 1984 release with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this stunning copy in our notes: “big and weighty”…”huge and rich and dynamic vox”…”3D and jumping out of the speakers”…”big bass”…”silky and huge”
  • Getting the strings to sound sweet and rosiny, not smeary and hard, is no mean feat, but it’s the kind of thing the best Hot Stamper pressings are guaranteed to give you on any of Linda’s American Songbook period albums
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, but once you hear just how killer sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • “What’s New illustrated that Linda Ronstadt was no longer interested in contemporary pop, and since it was a surprise success, there was no reason not to repeat the formula on Lush Life. Working again with Nelson Riddle, Ronstadt runs through several pop standards — ‘When I Fall in Love,’ ‘Sophisticated Lady,’ ‘Falling in Love Again,’ ‘It Never Entered My Mind’…”

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Billy Joel – Piano Man

More Billy Joel

  • Boasting two superb Double Plus (A++) sides, this vintage Columbia pressing was giving us the sound we were looking for on Joel’s sophomore release
  • The vocals are full-bodied and breathy, the bottom end is clean and punchy, and there’s more richness than on most other copies we played
  • It’s cleaner, clearer and more open, with the kind of vocal presence needed to make the title track come to life
  • 4 stars: “Piano Man makes it clear that [Joel’s] skills as a melodist can dazzle.”

We’ve been trying to find great copies of this one for ages, but it is tough. So many copies we played were thin, dry and grainy — sonic issues that really get in the way of enjoying this music.

The Piano Is Key

On the better copies of the album, the sound of the piano is solid, full-bodied, with both weight and warmth, just like the real thing. The copies of the album with a piano that sounded lean or hard always ended up having problems with the other instruments as well. (This should not be surprising; the piano was designed to be the single instrument most capable of reproducing the sound of an entire orchestra.)

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The Rolling Stones – Undercover

More of The Rolling Stones

More Rock and Pop

  • With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout, this copy is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Undercover you’ve heard – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “rich and punchy”…”roomy and breathy vox”…”huge and weighty”…”extended from top to bottom”
  • These sides are bigger and richer and have more of the rock solid energy that’s missing from the average copy
  • If you know Chris Kimsey‘s engineering work from Some Girls, Tattoo You, Frampton Comes Alive and the like, then you should have a good idea of what this album sounds like on the better copies
  • “As the Rolling Stones’ most ambitious album since Some Girls, Undercover is a weird, wild mix of hard rock, new wave pop, reggae, dub, and soul. [A] fascinating record…”

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Steely Dan / Katy Lied – Our Favorite Dan Album of Them All

More Steely Dan

Reviews and Commentaries for Katy Lied

  • A Katy Lied like you’ve never heard, with excellent Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it from start to finish
  • Our pick for the best Dan album of them all, a masterpiece of Jazzy Swing Pop that is sure to reward hundreds of plays in the decades to come
  • Take it from The Dan: “The sound created by musicians and singers is reproduced as faithfully as possible, and special care is taken to preserve the band-width and transient response of each performance.”
  • Special care may have been taken, but the DBX system put an end to any hope that the “transient response” would be preserved
  • For that, you will have to wait for next Steely Dan album to come out, The Royal Scam – it’s got transient response up the ying-yang
  • 5 stars: “Each song is given a glossy sheen, one that accentuates not only the stronger pop hooks, but also the precise technical skill of the professional musicians drafted to play the solos.”
  • This is a Must Own title from 1975, which, incidentally, turned out to be a great year for rock and pop music

The covers for these original Katy Lied pressings on ABC always have at least some edge, seam or ringwear. We will of course do our best to find you a cover with the fewest problems, but none of them will be perfect, or even all that close to it. It is by far the hardest Steely Dan album to find good covers for.

This copy has the all-important rock energy we look for, although rocking is not quite what Steely Dan are up to here. Cameron Crowe calls it “…absolutely impeccable swing-pop”, a four word description that gets to the heart of the music far better than any combination of adjectives and nouns containing the word “rock.” (more…)

The Monkees – Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd.

More of The Monkees

More Sixties Pop

  • A 1967 Colgems Stereo pressing with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this stunning copy in our notes: “big and lively”…”rich, note-like bass”…”vox very full and detailed”…”jumping out [of the speakers]”….”rich and present and relaxed”
  • These two sides are exceptionally (for this album) smooth, rich, sweet, and clear – and the vinyl is very quiet for a Monkees album, about as quiet as we can ever hope to find it
  • 4 1/2 stars: “To think that both this album and Headquarters came out the same year! Most bands would be lucky to have two albums this good come out their entire career. Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. is a must-have for any fan of smart, fun, and exciting 60s pop. It doesn’t get much better than this.”

One of the problems holding us back from discovering the best sounding pressings of The Monkees’ albums is the fact that 90+% of the copies we come across are beat to death. The average Rolling Stones record from the ’60s is in better shape.

We will, of course, keep looking, but it’s highly doubtful that any copy of the first two albums — you know, the ones that were at the top of the charts for so long they outsold The Beatles in 1967 — will ever make it to the site. Doubtful, but hope springs eternal in the record biz. You never know what gems you’ll discover until they somehow find themselves on your turntable.

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