Robert Brook has a blog which he calls
A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE
If you are new to the audio game, and even if you aren’t, we think you will find much of value there. (If you already think you know it all, his blog will be of little use, but of course neither will mine. You already know it all!)
This link will take you to a comparison Robert Brook carried out between some pressings of Abraxas: his own and a Hot Stamper pressing he borrowed from a friend.
I wrote to him about a few issues I had with his commentary.
Dear Robert,
Of course we love it when one of our records gives you the experience you had.
But there are some fine points to keep in mind so that we present our approach as correctly as possible with no hype.
I would not say you can’t hack a hot stamper.
I would say it is very hard.
You could say something like: “Tom says his superior cleaning techniques make it hard to compete with him. If you have a copy with the same stampers as his, his will sound better most of the time simply because the right cleaning noticeably improves the sound’
Which means that you need a different stamper to beat mine, the stamper of the record that won our shootout, not the one that came in at 2+!
Anyone can do it is our motto.
It’s hard is also our motto. (We have a lot of mottos.)
We only beat your other copies on one side, so imagine if the copy you heard did not have that one great side? That is something to think about!
And all the work you’ve done on your stereo is a key part of hearing Santana, a story we tell often ourselves.
Working on the stereo and working on the collection go hand in hand, you lived it and you know it is the only way it can work.
And now records that you thought were just fine, your copies, are unlistenable. This also is key to my experience.
You recommend doing more shootouts. I would add to your comments that you plan on buying more copies of Abraxas even though you already have some. Buy them when you see them.
And if, after a while, you haven’t found the one that does it, you can buy one from me that will do it.
Your point about the WHS and NWHS is a good one. Hard to beat. Not impossible, but so difficult as to make the effort hardly worth it.
We have no magical powers. We just have a staff of ten and forty years of experience. We can be wrong, but it does not happen very often, and if it does you get your money back.
We’ve written quite a bit about Abraxas, and you can find plenty of our Reviews and Commentaries for the album on this very blog.
