Better Records White Hot Stampers: Now the Story Can Be Told!


Just got shipping notification, so now the story can be told!

  Better-Records.com is a small, incredibly valuable yet little known company run out of Thousand Oaks, CA by Tom Port. The business started out many years ago when Tom Port noticed no two records sound quite the same. Evidently Tom is a sound quality fanatic on a scale maybe even higher than mine, and he started getting together with some of his audio buds doing shoot-outs in a friendly competition to see who has the best sounding copy.   

Over time this evolved into Better-Records.com, where the best of the best of these shoot-outs can be bought by regular guys like me who live for the sound, but just don't have the time or the drive to go through all the work of finding these rare gems.

The difference in quality between your average pressing and a White Hot Stamper is truly incredible. If you don't have the system or the ears of course you may never notice. If you do though then nothing else comes even close.   

Tom will say things like only one in twenty copies is Hot Stamper worthy. This doesn't even come close to conveying the magnitude. Last night for example, wife and I were listening to our White Hot Stamper of Tchaikovsky 1812. Then we played another White Hot Tchaikovsky. Then we played the Tchaikovsky tracks from my copy of Clair deLune.  

Without hearing a White Hot you would think Clair de Lune is about as good as it gets. After two sides of Tom's wonders it was flat, dull, mid-fi. Not even in the same ball park. And yet this is quite honestly a very good record. How many of these he has to clean, play, and compare to find the rare few magical sounding copies, I don't even know!  

Copies of Hot Stamper quality being so hard to find means of course they are not always available. This is not like going to the record store. There are not 50 copies of Year of the Cat just sitting around. Most of the time there are no copies at all. When there are, they get snapped up fast. Especially the popular titles. Fleetwood Mac Rumours, Tom Petty Southern Accents, whole bunch of em like this get sold pretty fast even in spite of the astronomically outrageous prices they command. Then again, since people pay - and fast - maybe not so outrageous after all.   

So I spent months looking, hoping for Year of the Cat to show up. When it did, YES! Click on it and.... Sorry, this copy is SOLD! What the...? It was only up a day! If that!  

Well now this puts me in a bit of a spot. Because, see, besides loving music and being obsessed with sound quality, I'm also enthusiastic about sharing this with others. With most things, no problem. Eric makes an endless supply of Tekton Moabs. Talking up Tekton or Townshend or whatever has no effect on my ability to get mine. With Better-records.com however the supply is so limited the last thing I need is more competition. Bit of a bind.   

Even so, can't keep my big mouth shut. Been telling everyone how great these are. One day someone buys one based on my recommendation, Tom finds out, next thing you know I'm a Good Customer. What does that mean? Well is there anything you're looking for? Year of the Cat. That's a hard one. Tell me about it. Might take a while. Take all the time you need. Just get me one. Please. Okay.  

That was months ago. Other day, hey we're doing a shoot-out. No guarantees but should be able to find you one. So for the last few days I was all Are we there yet? Are we there yet? And now finally, like I said, shipped!  

So now I have my Grail, and the story can be told. Got a nice little collection of Hot Stampers, and will be adding more, but this for me is The One. Might not be for you, but that is the beauty of it all. Many of us have that one special record we love. If you do too, and you want to hear it like listening to the master tape, this is the way to go.
128x128millercarbon
“White hot stamper”

So the seller has a stamping machine? Because the stamper is that which does the stamping.

A “white hot stamping” would be a record very well stamped by a white hot stamper.

”My white hot stamper produces white hot stampings” vs. “I have a white hot stamper but nothing to stamp.”

or

“I bought a white hot stamping from my friend’s white hot stamper.”




ego will only get you so far.... search pressing plant runout etchings...

and i find the newfound obsession with the recording chain, including microphones hilarious.....
Tom Port must have thick skin.  Personally, I’m a big fan of White Hots.  Own too many to admit.  It’s real, what MC is saying.  Except for the part about Picasso painting Starry Night.  
Picasso, Van Gogh, whatever. Wasn't even Starry Night. The Night Cafe. Like it matters. Leave it to an audiophile to go off topic just to show off and get a dig in. Even when they agree, even when it detracts from the point they're trying to make, just got to show off and get the dig in. So mind-numbingly boringly repetitious. 

Tom said get ready to be slashed to death. Then said pleasantly surprised it hasn't degenerated quite as fast or as much as usual. 

He's right. First time I brought this up it was something like 99 to 1 insults and arguments. This time several here have bought them, heard them, and agree. Based on my personal experience there's way more who agree than are willing to post about it and endure the barrage of bullying blowhards. Too bad about the bozo's but the good news is, they don't seem to be able to stop the good news getting out.
the best sounding records i ever heard, were japanese pressings. of course the MFSL versions sounded just as good but not discernibly better to me despite the half-speed mastering. best of all was a universe of records played on an ELP, that thing is MAGIC! a trashed record, once it is lab-grade clean [must be that clean to play on an ELP or you'll be sorry!] the normal playback sins [pinch effect, mistracking damage] are GONE! it is [with few exceptions] the closest i've come to hearing the actual by-god analog master tape.