sprinborni

Letter of the Week – “I called off a meeting, poured a whiskey, and let it rip.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bruce Springsteen Available Now

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

Dear Tom,

My White Hot Stamper of Born in the USA arrived today.

I called off a meeting, poured a whiskey, and let it rip.

How nice to be able to finally hear one of the albums I’ve listened to the most in my life.

Hearing where the backing vocalists are standing on Darlington County was a revelation.

Aaron

Dear Aaron,

Thanks for your letter.

Yeah, Born in the U.S.A. is a tough one — so much distortion and processing make for a tough shootout!

We would be foolish to make claims for “audiophile quality” sound on Springsteen’s albums — they are what they are. The simple claim we make for our Hot Stampers is that the best of them sound as good as the album can sound, and we back that up with a 100% Money Back guarantee.

Born in the U.S.A. is yet another example of an album that must be graded on a curve.

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Bruce Springsteen – Born In The U.S.A.

More of the Music of Bruce Springsteen

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on both sides of this gazillion-selling 80s classic – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • We would be foolish to make claims for “audiophile” sound on Springsteen’s albums – they are what they are, but the better copies are head and shoulders above anything else you’ve heard
  • Some of The Boss’s biggest hits are here, including “Glory Days” and “Dancin’ in the Dark.”
  • 5 stars: “… where Springsteen remembered that he was a rock & roll star, which is how a vastly increased public was happy to treat him.”

It’s tough to find great sounding copies of this album — or any Springsteen album for that matter — but this one is a step up from most of the copies we played, with less distortion and more energy, two qualities that are not easy to come by on Born In The U.S.A.

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For Born In The U.S.A. We Make No Claims of Audiophile Quality Sound

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bruce Springsteen Available Now

We would be foolish to make claims for “audiophile quality” sound on Springsteen’s albums — they are what they are. The simple claim we make for our Hot Stampers is that the best of them sound as good as the album can sound, and we back that up with a 100% Money Back guarantee.

Born in the U.S.A. is yet another example of an album that must be graded on a curve.

(Technically, all Hot Stamper pressings are graded on a curve, since the record shootouts we do are simply our way of comparing one pressings with a slough of others.)

It’s tough to find great sounding copies of this album — or any Springsteen album for that matter — but we played one not long ago that was a HUGE step up, with the kind of clarity and fullness that most copies have in short supply.

Take it from us, it is the rare pressing that manages to get rid of the harshness and congestion that plague so many copies.

When you hear a copy sound relatively rich and sweet, the minor shortcomings of the recording no longer seem to interfere as much with your enjoyment of the music. Like a properly tweaked stereo, a good record lets you forget all that audio stuff and just listen to the music as music. We here at Better Records — like our customers — think that’s what it’s all about.

And we know that only the top copies will let you do that, something that not everyone in the audiophile community fully appreciates to this day. We’re doing what we can to change that way of thinking, but progress is, as you may well imagine, slow.

What To Listen For

The best copies have superb extension up top, which allows the grit and edge on the vocals to almost entirely disappear.

Some of it is there on the tape for a reason. That’s partly the sound Springsteen was going for, this is after all a Bob Clearmountain mix.

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