My pleasure. Really wish you could hear it. Not as killer quiet as Patricia Barber 1Step. Not as dreamy liquid as Jennifer Warnes The Well 45. Yet in many ways better than either of em. And those are some mighty fine records. Tom Port coined the term, tubey magic. Or if he didn’t coin it, at least uses it a lot to describe a sound that is crisp and clean, yet full and warm, in equal measure. This record is a prime example of tubey magic.
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.
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.
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- 441 posts total
"Tubey Magic." A nice term ... and once heard, one will never want to go back. MC ... you mentioned strings. When done right on a great recording, played back through a highly resolving system, massed strings just seem to waft over you like a warm wave. Nothing like it. I have an orchestral CD of Bach's "Air On a G String" that does exactly that. Yep, a CD no less. Even CDs, believe it or not, have their Hot Stampers. Frank |
mglik- Doug Sax was one of the greatest mastering engineers in history. Almost missed this: You almost bought Sheffield Labs??! You are hereby officially invited to take up as much of my thread as you wish expanding on that comment! One of my most treasured recordings, Michael Ruff, Speaking in Melodies, is a Sheffield. Live studio recording, some of it direct to two-track, one of the most "you are there" sounds around. Janis Ian, Breaking Silence, the audiophile classic demo disc has a big section of small print on the back listing all the care taken, that it is all tubes, and of course "mastered by Doug Sax at The Mastering Lab on all tube electronics." There’s even a bit in there somewhere about the tube mic used on Janis Ian. Could this be a gauge for Better-Records buys? For sure it is a gauge of some kind. Thing of it is, the chain of events and components that runs from the performer to the listener is way longer and with way more links than most of us know. Maybe more than we can know. Here, for example, are some of the liner notes from Breaking Silence: Tracks were recorded at Nightingale Studio on a Studer 820, 24-track machine, 30ips, non-Dolby, at the elevation of +6/250nu using Ampex 499 tape. Okay. So that is just to give everyone some idea all the many links in the chain. Just a few of em anyway. And think of it, all we have at this point is a master tape. We say "master tape" like it’s nothing. But look what goes into producing it! All the above details amount to is the tip of the iceberg! The darn thing still needs to be pressed into albums! A process that itself is every bit as technically challenging as recording and mastering. All so we can drag a needle through it, something Peter Ledermann says, "This should not work!" Now the thing is, most of us have at one time or another noticed technical bits like the above on various audiophile recordings. How many have ever seen similar details describing the cutting lathe, mother, stamper, etc? Anyone? Beuller? Not talking about in general. We all know in general. Just like we all know in general they record, mix, master. We know they cut wax on a lathe, stamp out records. Where have you ever seen an album list the exact equipment used? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP0mQeLWCCo So yeah, like I said, a gauge of sorts. Just as it is possible to have a great sounding system with not so great speakers- resting on a foundation of outstanding upstream components- it is possible to have a not so good pressing sound great simply because it is the last link in an unusually strong recording chain. |
@millercarbon can you share what the hot stamper is for “Year of the Cat”? I love that album and continue to buy used in search of the holy grail. I have UK and USA copies with different matrix numbers in the inner grove. So what are the matrix numbers in the inner groove of your hot stamper? Thanks! |
- 441 posts total