who_whosn

How We Rationalized Selling Heavy Vinyl Even as Late as 2007

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Who Available Now

UPDATE 2026

We were still recommending the Classic Records pressing of Who’s Next as late as 2007 (2007 being the year that everything changed) by considering its sound quality, quiet vinyl and price relative to the expensive, vintage Hot Stamper pressings we had started to offer at the time.

Hot Stamper copies are not particularly quiet, and they are never cheap, which is in marked contrast to Classic Records’ heavy vinyl pressings, which are fairly quiet and also fairly cheap. Some of you may think $30 is a lot of money for a record, but we do not. It’s a fair price.

When you buy Crosby Stills and Nash’s first album or Tapestry or Bridge Over Troubled Water on Classic for $30, you are getting your money’s worth.

But don’t kid yourself. You are not getting anything remotely close to the best pressing available, because the best pressings are hard to find. We do find them, and we do charge a lot of money for them, because they sound absolutely AMAZING in a direct head to head comparison to the Classic versions and anything else you may have heard.

We recommend you use the Classic version of Who’s Next as benchmark. When you find something that beats it, you have yourself a very good record. Until then, you still have a good, quiet record to enjoy. You win either way.

But some enough, sometime in 2007 as a matter of fact, we did our first big shootout for the album, and, as so often happens, our appreciation of the recording changed dramatically. We were finally able to hear it in all its glory on the right reissue — yes, the conventional wisdom had been wrong all along once again — and that experience left the Classic Records pressing in the dust so to speak.

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Letter of the Week – “The vocal, dynamic range, space, punch, energy, detail … it was just a night and day difference.”

What’s It Like to Play a White Hot Stamper Pressing?

We’re happy to let our good customer Bill tell us all about his recent listening session with a couple of his fellow analog audio enthusiasts.

When it comes to the five amazingly well-recorded titles you see pictured, it’s clearly a very special experience, one he was lucky to be able to share with his friends, and what could be better than that?

Fred,

Several weeks ago, I hosted a Hot Stamper/heavy vinyl comparison for a couple of my friends. Both of my friends have spent most of their lives in the high-end music industry.

We started with Deja Vu. One of my friends had brought the 50th Anniversary deluxe edition, and warned me that it was amazing, and would be impossible to top. One of his clients had recommended it to him and raved about it. We played the first track of that edition, Carry On, and then played the same track on the Hot Stamper.

A few seconds into the Hot Stamper, when the harmonies kicked in, my friend’s mouth dropped. He managed to whisper “Glorious.” It was a revelation. And then we enjoyed several other songs on the album. It’s just great music, wonderfully recorded. As a result of this comparison, a few days later my friend bought a Super Hot Stamper of Deja Vu from you.

Next up was The Eagles debut album. This was not a straight-up comparison of albums, because I only had one copy of the album, and that was the Super Hot Stamper. But one of my friends had brought the DCC Greatest Hits album, which is widely recognized as being the best version of that album. [Not by us!]

We compared Witchy Woman on the two albums. And the contrast was even greater than the Carry On comparison. Everything was better on the Hot Stamper. The vocal, dynamic range, space, punch, energy, detail…it was just a night and day difference. Witchy Woman has become my favorite demo song.

The last of the comparisons was a White Hot Stamper RL Led Zeppelin 2 with the Classic Records version. We decided to focus on Bring it On Home and Moby Dick. You just couldn’t listen to the Classic at the same volume as the RL. It was painfully bright at loud volume. The RL was a joy to listen to.

And that harmonica on Bring it On Home—wow. It was in the room. And the drums on Moby Dick were as close to “live” as you could probably get. Gut-punchingly wonderful. So of course we listened to several more tracks just for enjoyment.

Wanting to hear more “blow your mind” rock, we listened to a White Hot Stamper of Who’s Next. We didn’t compare it to anything, we just listened. And were transported.

Finally, one of my friends said we had to call it a night, because he was jet lagged, felt a cold coming on, and was exhausted. As he got up to leave, he stopped and said “But wait. You said you just got a WH Stamper of Tapestry. Can I listen to that for a second? I’m wondering how it compares to the MoFi.”

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