pricing

We Have to Pay $18 for Albums Like This Now?

More of the Music of The Talking Heads

UPDATE 2020

Our first shootout was in 2011. You will see below that we complain about copies of this record costing us all of $18.

They run us about four to five times that much now.

If you have a clean original MASTERDISK pressing that you want to sell, please contact us, we may want to buy it and we do we will happily pay you good money for it.

AMAZING SOUND ON BOTH SIDES of this White Hot Stamper LP. Side two rates A+++ and side one is not far behind at A++ – A+++. This copy murdered the typical pressings in an incredibly enjoyable shootout.We couldn’t believe how amazing this album can sound on a top copy. I’d even say that it’s a sonic step up from More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear Of Music and Remain In Light, probably tying with Little Creatures for top Talking Heads honors.

We’re huge Talking Heads fans at Better Records, but we’ve never tried to shoot out this album before this year because the copies we had played to this point were no great shakes. Regular copies of this album are now getting priced up to $17.99 at our local stores, so we just hadn’t bothered to pick up too many until we heard a surprisingly good copy earlier this year. We started stocking up on them and we ended needing a big stack, because only a few of them were able to show us what this album can really do.

This album, and specifically this Hot Stamper, has the energy and power of live rock and roll, no doubt about it. The sound here is so analog — warm, rich and smooth. This copy has the kind of fullness and life that are hard to come by for this music. Put this one up against your old copy and you’ll hear what I’m talking about.

Further Reading

A Ten to Twenty Dollar Used Record? Yeah, We Know Already

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now

You would have to go through at least a dozen or more copies of Rumours to even hope to find one in a league with our best pressings. That’s a lot of record hunting, record cleaning and record playing!

If you know anything about this record, you know that the average domestic pressing of this album is quite average sounding; the good ones are few and far between.

And the stampers, as we’ve come to learn, aren’t the whole story. For one thing, there are at least 75 different side ones and 75 different side twos, all cut by Ken Perry at Capitol on the same three cutters from — we’re assuming, we weren’t there — the same tapes.

But of course they all sound different. Ken also cut the original English and Japanese pressings; his KP is in the dead wax for all to see. The two import KP copies that I heard were quite good, by the way. Not the best, but very good. He only cut the originals though, so practically every import copy you can find will be a reissue made from a dub, ugh.

A Ten to Twenty Dollar Used Record? Yeah, We Know Already

So if you’re the kind of person who likes to complain about us charging hundreds of dollars for a record that can be found in every used bin in town for under twenty, save yourself some typing: that’s the price we pay too.

And if the copy you paid fifteen bucks for sounds good enough, more power to you. Go with god, as they say.

But if your copy doesn’t thrill you — and it’s unlikely that it does — then you have a lot of work ahead of you if you expect to find one that sounds like ours. We wish you well. We wish everybody who likes to do his own shootouts well.

We know the kind of time and energy it takes to find great records, probably better than anyone on the planet. If you have that kind of time and energy available to you, go for it. It takes us a staff of six and access to all the records in the record capitol of the world to pull it off, with thirty years experience doing it no less.

But it can be done, and you can do it. You just have to be willing to put in the time and effort. The records are cheap, right? Fifteen bucks each, we know already.

Miles Davis / Steamin’ – A Thousand Bucks and Worth Every Penny (When It Sounds Like This)

More of the Music of Miles Davis

  • Insanely good sound throughout for this extremely rare original Prestige Yellow and Black label pressing with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This early Mono pressing takes the sound of the recording to a place we never thought it could go – never have we heard an album from these famous sessions sound as good as this very LP
  • An original in pristine condition, with this kind of sound, is a record that is very unlikely to pass our way again
  • 5 stars: “The end results are consistently astonishing. At the center of Steamin’, as with most outings by this band, are the group improvisations which consist of solo upon solo of arguably the sweetest and otherwise most swinging interactions known to have existed between musicians.”

WOW — this Prestige Yellow Label Mono pressing has some of the most realistic, natural Miles Davis sound we’ve ever heard! Both sides earned A+++ grades and play Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus, truly exceptional for a vintage pressing such as this one. You will have an incredibly difficult time finding a copy that can hold its own with this one. (more…)

Tea For The Tillerman – Our Four Plus Shootout Winner from 2019

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

We award this copy our very special Four Plus A++++ grade, which is strictly limited to pressings (really, individual sides of pressings) that take a given recording to a level we’ve never experienced before and had no idea could even exist. We estimate that about one per cent of the Hot Stamper pressings we come across in our shootouts earn this grade.

Our lengthy commentary entitled Outliers & Out-of-This-World Sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how to go about finding them.

We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.

It sold for $1200 and was, to our way of thinking, unquestionably worth every penny.

One out of ten thousand audiophiles has ever heard Tea for the Tillerman sound this good, maybe fewer. Maybe none.

We estimate that about one per cent of the Hot Stamper pressings we come across in our shootouts earn this grade. You can’t get much more rare than that.  This copy is ALIVE with musical energy. (more…)

The Royal Ballet / Gala Performances – Our Shootout Winner from 2005

Living Stereo Titles Available Now

More Orchestral Music Conducted by Ernest Ansermet

This is a QUIET RCA Soria Shaded Dog Box Set with some of the BEST SOUND I HAVE EVER HEARD for this music on Disc One. This is truly DEMONSTRATION QUALITY SOUND if what you are demonstrating is not the merely Hi-Fi, but the relaxed beauty and naturalness of what many consider to be the finest example of Living Stereo Magic brought to the greatest performances of ballet music ever committed to tape.

Allow me to paraphrase some commentary from another Shaded Dog (LSC 2307) we currently have up on the site: 

This record shows off Living Stereo sound at its best. The full range of colors of the orchestra are here presented with remarkable clarity, dynamic contrast, spaciousness, sweetness, and timbral accuracy. If you want to demonstrate to a novice listener why modern recordings are unsatisfactory, all you have to do is play this record for them. No CD ever sounded like this.

I don’t think the RCA engineers can cut this record any better — it has all the Living Stereo magic one could ask for, as well as the bass and dynamics that are missing from so many other vintage Golden Age records. This is pretty much as good as it gets, folks.

All of which is true. The interesting thing about the Royal Gala Ballet Box is how FEW of them sound as good as their press would have you think. And the little shootout we conducted for this set was more evidence of this very fact. (more…)

Letter of the Week – “These prices are insane – but then so is the quality. And you notice I keep buying more.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Fleetwood Mac Available Now

Hey Tom, 

Please let me know if you have a better copy on hand. Being Rumours and all you will probably want a fortune for it I’m sure, but please let me know anyway. These prices are insane – but then so is the quality. And you notice I keep buying more. Thanks!

Charles

Charles,

We do indeed charge a fortune for Rumours these days, but the music and the sound justify the price many times over in our opinion. We can’t keep them in stock, if that tells you anything.

Happy to put you on the list for the next killer copy. Like you, those who have tried one of our Hot Stamper pressings seem more than a little pleased with the sound quality.

Thanks for writing,

TP

We Loved This Copy So Much in 2005 We Had the Gall to Charge $200 for It

More of the Music of Neil Young

Reviews and Commentaries for After the Gold Rush

This is the story of how we discovered our very first killer copy of After the Gold Rush. What a thrill it was to finally hear the album sound so amazing, this after hearing so many mediocre copies over the years.

It’s records like this that made us eventually put 100% of our resources into finding records that sound like this one — or better!  

This is the way we heard After the Gold Rush in 2005. Embarrassingly, we liked it so much we compared it to the best DCC records we were selling back then, ouch! A textbook case of Live and Learn. (more…)