Hot Stamper Pressings of Psychedelic Rock Recordings Available Now
Here is our description for the Super Hot (2+) copy that is currently on the site:
One of the most important records in my growth as an audiophile from 1971 to the present – my stereo was forced to evolve in order to play this kind of big production rock at the loud levels that the album needs in order to work its magic.
No matter how many times you play it, you will most likely hear – or at least gain more of an appreciation for – something new in the exceptionally dense, sophisticated soundfield Chris Kimsey creates for these songs.
And each time you make an improvement in the quality of your playback, this is the album that will show you exactly what you have just accomplished.
Overall, the best performers in our most recent shootout were UK pressings. They ranged in sound from the 3/3 Shootout Winning pressing (not shown) to the lowest graded British copy which earned grades of 1.5+/2+ (at the bottom of the top box).
On the left is a portion of the breakdown, minus the actual stamper numbers that earned the highest grades (for obvious reasons.)
We had six UK pressings, all with the same stampers — the five you see graded and the one hidden to the left that actually won the shootout. (Three sides earned White Hot Stamper grades, an unusual outcome and a good one for the bottom line.)
Note that with the “right stampers” you could have ended up with an incredible Demo Disc (copy #1) or just a very good sounding copy on side two mated to a passable side one (copy #6).
Finding six clean UK pressings is, as you can well imagine, neither cheap nor easy. We probably bought close to twice that many to end up with six that we’re in something close to audiophile playing condition.
As you can see from the grades, two of them were clearly inferior to the other four. In the case of this title, a small sample size could have been very misleading. Fortunately for us, we spent the money and the time it takes to track down a good-sized batch of UK pressings in order to avoid that possibility.
Next come the better domestic pressings. There was a 2+/2+ that outscored all the other domestic pressings, and four others that came in behind it, all with the same stampers.
Of the five copies that had those stampers, two had side two’s that scored sub-Hot Stamper grades, which marked them as unsaleable. (Perhaps we will offer them as one-sided records since their side one’s are so good.)
KC VS PC
We rarely have good luck with PC reissue copies when the originals come with the KC prefix, rarely meaning we find a PC winner maybe once out of every ten titles we play.