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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
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon OP
12,531 posts
 
Whart raises a good point and something I had to think about a lot. Stereo Review used to have this standard format for music reviews where they would rate the recording and the performance. The recording being the record/playback part of how it sounds. The performance being the quality of the music. Two very different things.

Hot Stampers add another level to this because now in addition to the quality of the recording we are also now giving weight to the quality of the pressing, as something distinctly separate and different from the recording. That is to say you can have an absolutely fabulous pressing, but if the recording quality (reference the master tape) is poor it is not going to suddenly magically improve just by being pressed real good. Stones, cough cough, Springsteen... 

Read through enough of the descriptions on better-records.com you will find this mentioned, and even some full articles expanding on it. This came up with my second one Peter Gabriel, So. A completely different sounding recording from Rumours yet also crazy good. Way better than I ever heard it anywhere else.

The Beatles Help, Elton John GBYBR, Honky Chateau, these are not going to magically transform into audiophile reference material. They do however sound so much better than anything I ever heard before it is literally like taking a step back in time to be there in the studio with them. Elton is right there in front of me, easily as spooky real as any other vocal on any really good recording. Nilsson Schmilsson, now there is a bona fide audiophile reference! Some of these tracks it is flat-out insane how good they sound. Transform your system, they will!

Several times now this level of improved sound quality has allowed me to really enjoy some music way more than I ever thought possible. Classical for example was one that was always sort of there on the shelf but never with any real desire to play. Now the 1812 is so emotionally powerful I can’t explain. It just is!

This is another area where Tom shines. This particular recording, he noted that not only is it A+++ quality, it is also (in his opinion) one of the best performances. Not being into classical that long I couldn’t say but the feeling comes across in the performance, for sure.

There’s definitely two sorts of audiophiles, the ones who enjoy listening to everything in the world once, and ones like me who crave spellbinding, have a hard time finding it, but when we do are happy to play it over and over again. A highly specialized market niche, for sure.
tablejockey
3,793 posts
 
Finding a "White Hot Stamper" isn't rocket science.

You just need to buy 20 or so copies of Aja or whatever and listen.
That's what stamper guy and his crew do-find every  AA1006 and cross your fingers.
https://www.discogs.com/Steely-Dan-Aja/release/368605
That's what your $400 is paying for- hassle and time sorting thru the mess.

Something I REALLY want, I will go thru 3-4 max to find my personal "stamper". They're at least the same pile of junk stamper guy sends his scouts buying from my neighborhood store.

I only wish I had the vision 20 years ago to offer such a service. Stamper guy has developed a niche, along with his writing skills hyping up an album. Some of it is a little goofy but it must be working.

If I had a top notch 50k+ setup, I would throw down on a couple of classics.
fuzztone's avatar
fuzztone
5,502 posts
 
Still not interested.
And I wouldn't listen to Rumours or Year of the Cat even at the original sessions.
Much less repeatedly at home when so much good music is available. 
I'd rather be out anyway.
whart's avatar
whart
2,973 posts
 
Inna- the tapes for a lot of these more obscure records are gone. I'm trying to find out if the original master tape still exists for Alice Coltrane's Ptah the El Daoud. It's a marvelous recording that was done in the Coltrane family's home studio that was completed after John died. That record and several others were recorded by Alice there before she went into the ashram. The ambience of the thing is great. Copies are scarce on the market, and command money because it wasn't reissued-- the last extant pressing was 1974 if memory serves. 
The missing tape issue isn't uncommon. Sometimes safeties are used and that may be the source of the dubs. Leave aside the copyright issues- purely on the basis of access to music, tape narrows what is available to me. Otherwise I would have already gone that route. I'm aiming for good quality sound, but also interesting music and tape limits the latter by a wide margin. That isn't to say I could not come up with 100 tapes that probably are available if I choose to do that, but still....
inna
7,132 posts
 
Bill, of course you are right. Is it worth having Studer to play 100 tapes ?
Well, why not ? And maybe eventually more than 100.
So, yeah, if someone wants to reach for the stars and cover everything possible, one got to have both deck and turntable.
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