That said.....Folks, Hot Stampers are everywhere! We just have to find them. I prefer the journey, but I'd be open to forking over $500 for the best copy of a handful of albums.
We already have some hot stampers in our collections!
Yes technically, based on mathematical probability, if you have a hundred records there may be one in there somewhere. That is about what it would have to be.
I like to test things out and so one of the first things I did after hearing about this was to take the LPs I had two or more of the same and do my own shoot-outs. Sure enough, no two were ever quite the same. I remember getting excited when one copy was a lot more open and detailed than another. Eureka! Until a minute later that copy had really messy sibilance. Oh.
Now about a dozen or so Hot Stampers later it is clear none of my couple hundred records is Hot Stamper level. Not a one. This is not to say they all sound bad. People love to twist that one around. This is not a zero sum game folks! They just don't have that Master Tape level of detail that characterizes a Hot Stamper.
Frankly, I love the luxuriously liquid sound on my 45 Jennifer Warnes The Well just as much as any Hot Stamper. At the same time, if this makes any sense, I wish I had a Hot Stamper of that same LP. Somewhere among the 5k or so pressings is probably one that is simply extraordinarily good. Probably. Maybe. If we had them all to compare....