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2-Packs – The Best Case for Dramatic Pressing Variations

More of the Music of The Eagles

Just today (3/16/15) we put up a White Hot Stamper 2-pack of the Eagles’ First Album. One of the two pressings that made up the 2-pack had a killer side two, practically As Good As It Gets. 

What was interesting about that particular record was how bad side one was.

Side one of that copy — on the white label, with stampers that are usually killer — was terrible.

The vocals were hard, shrill and spitty. My notes say “CD sound.”

When a record sounds like a CD it goes in the trade-in pile, not on our site.

We encouraged the lucky owner to play the bad side for himself, just to hear how awful it is. Yet surprisingly, one might even say shockingly, it has exactly the qualities that audiophiles and collectors are most often satisfied with: the right label, and, in this case, even the right stampers (assuming anyone besides us would know what the right stampers are).

The problem was it didn’t have the right sound.

I know our customers can hear the difference, but can the rest of the audio world? Most of my reading on the internet makes me doubt that they can. When some people say that the differences between pressings can’t be all that big, I only wish they could have played the two sides of this copy.

Or  had higher quality reproduction so that these differences become less ignorable.

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Smooth or Detailed, Which Is the Right Sound for Jackson Browne’s Debut?

More of the Music of Jackson Browne

The real trick with this album is in striking the right balance between richness and presence. A White Hot Stamper from years back made me change my mind about this recording. I used to think it was dull, but I was wrong. I used to think that even the best copies of this recording sounded rolled off on the top end. I no longer believe that to be true. On the best pressings the top end is correct for this music.

It took the right pressing to show me the error of my ways.

Side one of that copy was rich and full and sweet as can be. Playing side two I noticed more transparency and clarity, especially in the guitars and voices. It seemed to have correct highs, highs that were a little soft on the first side.

But the more I listened, the less I liked it. It started to sound more like a record and less like music. Going back and forth between sides one and two, it was obvious that side one had less clarity because it had the kind of richness and fullness that made all the musicians and their instruments sound real in a way that wasn’t happening on side two.

Side two had clarity, it had transparency, but it kept reminding me that it was a recording.

Side one allowed me to forget that I was playing a record.

When the music started, my attention was completely focused on the songwriting and the performing. Aspects of the recording were lost in my enjoyment of the music. I kept thinking what a great album this is, not what a great recording it is. That tells me that both the recording engineer and the mastering engineer did their jobs right. They created a sound that best served this music.

I think if an audiophile label had produced a version of this album that sounded like side two, most audiophiles would love it. They would hear detail that they’d never heard before. (It’s my belief that the original Asylum master tape has been lost, so the details of which we speak can be heard on these good originals and nowhere else.)

But, fooled into listening for details in the music rather than the music as a whole, they would never know how RIGHT the album can really sound.

The best of our Hot Stampers are the ones that have the right sound for this music.

Energy Is Key to Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues

More of the Music of Janis Joplin

ENERGY is the key element missing from the average copy of I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, but not on this bad boy (or girl if you prefer). 

Drop the needle on the song Try and just listen to how crisp, punchy, and BIG the drums sound.

On many copies — too many copies — the vocals are pinched and edgy. Here they’re breathy and full — a much better way for Janis to sound. There’s some grit to the vocals at times and the brass as well, but the life force on these sides is so strong that we much preferred it to the smoother, duller, deader copies we heard that didn’t have that issue.

On copy after copy we heard pinched squawky horns and harsh vocals, not a good sound for this album.

Janis’ voice needs lots of space up top to get good and loud, and the best sides give her all the space she needs.

This record, along with the others linked below, is good for testing the following qualities:

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Wildflowers – Sometimes the Hits Are Mastered from Sub-Generation Tapes…

More of the Music of Judy Collins

And there’s not much you can do about it.

Both Sides Now, the Top Ten hit that finally put Judy on the map, is clearly made from a copy tape and doesn’t sound as good as the songs that follow it on side two. Hey, it happens, and I suspect it happens more often than most audiophiles think. I would wager that back in the day most people who bought this album never even noticed.

One thing I’ve noticed about audiophiles over the years is that they’re pretty much like most people.

The difference of course is that they call themselves audiophiles, and audiophiles are supposed to care about sound quality.

They may care about it, but are they capable of evaluating high quality sound? What is the evidence for the affirmative in this proposition?

Are they actually capable of critical listening?

Do they listen critically enough to notice a dubby track on an otherwise good sounding record when they hear it?

Or dubby sound in general?

Or to notice that one side of a record often sounds very different from another?

Or that some reissues sound better than the originals of the album?

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Rockin’ the Fat Snare on Dreams

More of the Music of Fleetwood Mac

This is a rock album — it needs to be played loud and it needs to be played on a dynamic system.

What do the best copies have that the also-rans don’t?

Lots and lots of qualities, far too many to mention here, but there is one you may want to pay special attention to: the sound of the snare.

When the snare is fat and solid and present, with a good “slap” to the sound, you have a copy with weight, presence, transparency, energy — all the stuff we ADORE about the sound of the best copies of Rumours.

Next time you are on the hunt to buy new speakers, see which ones can really rock the snare on Dreams. That’s probably going to be the speaker that can do justice to the entire Rumours album, as well as anything by The Beatles, and Neil Young’s Zuma, and lots of other favorite records of ours, and we expect favorites of yours too.

Side One

Dreams

The drums that open this track and the one monster cymbal crash at the beginning are PERFECTION on the best pressings. If you took ten copies of this album and just played that cymbal crash, I’m guessing you could tell the difference in the sound of every copy. If that cymbal crash doesn’t splash you in the face like a bucket of cold water, you do not have a killer copy. It’s way out front in the mix and that’s the way they want it.

Ideally the bass is very prominent on this track. It should be way up in the mix, loud, tight and note-like, with the guitar and kick drum clearly separated. It absolutely drives the song; the copies that got the bass right on this track really came to life. If you want to know why Fleetwood and Mac are revered as one of the all-time great rhythm sections, this song should provide all the evidence you need. (Try Werewolves of London if this song doesn’t convince you. Same sound too.)

Listen for Stevie Nick’s humming before she starts to sing. On the good copies it’s quite clear.

Punchy bass and punchy drums are key to the best sounding copies of Rumours.

What to Listen For in General

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John’s Really Digging a Pony. Are You?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

The best copies of Let It Be are Demo Discs for energy, and here are some others that we’ve discovered are good for testing that quality on vinyl.

What blew our minds about the Shootout Winning side one we played recently was how outrageously big, open and transparent it was on the song Dig a Pony. As the song started up the studio space seemed to expand in every direction, creating more height, width and depth than we’d ever experienced with this song before. 

But there is no studio space; the song was recorded on Apple’s rooftop. The “space” has to be some combination of “air” from the live event and artificial reverb added live or later during mixing. Whatever it is, the copies with more resolution and transparency show you a lot more of “it” than run-of-the-mill pressings do (including the new Heavy Vinyl, which is so airless and compressed we gave it a grade of F and banished it to our Shame Hall).  (more…)

Beethoven – Listening for Side to Side Differences

Hot Stamper Pressings of Violin Recordings Available Now

This RCA White Dog pressing of the Quartet in C-Sharp Minor contains what many consider to be Beethoven’s greatest string quartet, with SUPERB better than Super Hot Stamper sound on BOTH sides, each of which rated grades of A++ to A+++.

The reason we held back on the full Three Plus White Hot Stamper designation is simple: each side had slightly more of a fairly important quality that the other side lacked. When you play this record at home see if you don’t agree with us that this is an AMAZING sounding chamber music record, with minor, albeit recognizable and appreciable differences in its strengths on each side.

We’ve always found it odd that reviewers of audiophile records (and records in general for that matter) never seem to notice these sonic differences from side to side. The differences seem quite obvious to us, as I’m sure they do to you, dear reader, or you wouldn’t be on this site.

After all, most of the records we offer have different grades for their two (or four or six and sometimes even eight) sides, different sonic grades as well as different surface grades. From our point of view nothing could be more obvious.

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The Book of Hot Stampers – We’d Love to Read It

_1400755003Some Moderately Helpful Title Specific Advice

I received this email about fifteen years ago:

Hi Tom,

Could you please recommend a book which would give the stamper numbers associated with the different pressings of a particular record.

Dear Sir,

Let me take this opportunity to give a more comprehensive answer, since the concept of Hot Stampers is not especially well understood by the audiophile community outside of our admittedly rather small customer base. Only those who have spent a great deal of time reading the reviews and commentary on the site are likely to understand the importance of stampers. This is partly my fault, as this issue of stamper variability and quality is spread out all over the place, exactly where, no one really knows.

First of All, There Is No Such Book

I regret to say there is no such book and probably never will be. To my knowledge, we are the only guys on the planet selling records who know much about the subject. In fact, we pioneered the very concept, starting about fifteen years ago.

Back in the early ’90s I complained that the TAS Super Disc List didn’t list the “correct” stampers: the stampers (or matrix numbers if you prefer) being the individual markings associated with the actual pressing HP was calling a Super Disc. Without knowing those stampers almost any pressing one might acquire would be different from the one on the list, and quite possibly inferior (or superior; in any event, different sounding).

The catalog number or label — practically all that could be gleaned from his writings — serves as a very poor guide in this respect. Occasionally one might read a review which mentioned stampers, but any such mentions were few and infrequent. To do much good they would have had to be much more systematic, and that never happened (mostly because the reviewers making these pronouncements were of course not very systematic and never pretended to be).

So, since we do not have the time or the intention to write such a book, and no one else to my knowledge has the necessary expertise, one will probably never be written. There are at least two good reasons for not even attempting such an endeavor, however. One is selfish, one is not.

Trade Secrets

First off, when we discover hot stampers, they become the equivalent of trade secrets — we never reveal them to anyone. Over the last twenty five years of collecting we have bought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of records and spent tens of thousands of hours of our time deciphering those arcane little squiggles in the dead wax that correlate, however imperfectly, with both the good records and the bad ones. Why would we want to give that hard-earned information away? It’s priceless, to us anyway.

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Tell Us More About “Hot Stampers”

More Straight Answers to Your Hot Stamper Questions

Many of the basic questions concerning Hot Stampers, including our grading system, 2-packs, coupons, the mailing list, as well as more general ordering and payment information, can be found in our FAQ on our website.

The links below deal specifically with the kinds of issues that potential customers, as well as skeptics and forum posters (god bless ’em!) have raised with us over the years.

We think sitting down to play a Hot Stamper pressing is the best way to appreciate its superior sound, in the same way that hearing a vintage LP played back on a top quality audio system is the best way to appreciate the superiority of analog.

If you want to skip all that and just buy a record or two in order to hear what you’ve been missing, click here.

To expand on the basics discussed above, you might want to check out some of these next:

  1. How can I find my own Hot Stamper pressings?
  2. Do I already have some Hot Stamper pressings in my collection?

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Spending More Time With The Beatles

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Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

To find the Hottest Stampers it helps to have piles and piles of minty British pressings. And lots of time on your hands. And lots of help. Fortunately, with a staff of ten and nothing else to do all day, we have all three.

This is a tough album to get to sound right, as long-time readers of our site surely know, but on a good copy it can sound wonderful. This one really delivers, with plenty of presence and energy as well as natural, balanced tonality.

So, What’s Out There?

We’ve heard copies that were smeared, murky, muddy, grainy, or all of the above. Almost all of them had no real magic in the midrange. And of course, we heard tons of copies with the kind of gritty vocals that you’ll find all over the average Parlophone Beatles pressing.

Early or Late Pressing?

So many Parlophone copies would have you think With The Beatles is a gritty, edgy, crude recording — especially if you made the mistake of buying an early pressing.

The early pressings are consistently grittier, edgier and more crude than the later pressings we played.

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