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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
whart's avatar
whart
2,966 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.
inna
7,132 posts
 
I once had 10 original US copies of Bitches Brew, some did sound a little better than others. You know what, when I found first pressing Japanese promo, I discovered in a few seconds that it sounded better than any US that I had. I bet, test pressing, either the original US or the Japanese would cost a fortune in VG+ or better condition.
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon OP
12,531 posts
 
A common thing posted all over the site is something along the lines of only one in 20 copies is Hot Stamper quality. This is probably true for Tom. Based on my experience however it is probably more like one in 100. 

Tom Port does not personally go around scouring record stores for Hot Stampers. He has people all over the country who know a Hot Stamper is worth real money. So when these folks find a gem they can sell for $20 on discogs vs $50 or more to Tom, guess where they go?  

Which I know from having bought a record from a guy who has sold to Tom. So this guy, he scours around and does the same thing. He probably went through 20 copies of Steve Miller Book of Dreams to find the one he sold me, claiming it was Hot Stamper quality. Well it was awfully good, and after cleaning it up properly was probably right about Hot Stamper quality. Not A+++ for sure, but maybe A+.  

But that's not the point. The point is he went through a whole lot of copies before finding this one. This is probably the case for all the copies sent to Tom. When Tom does a shoot-out with say 20 copies and says only one in 20 is White Hot, that is 1 in 20 out of 1 in 20, which is actually 1 in 400. 

Some of them like Year of the Cat, the same guy who got me Book of Dreams said it is very hard to find a good copy of YOTC. A lot of records are like that. If they were popular then a lot of copies, which means a lot were stamped out which means a lot of worn stampers. Also means a lot of people playing them a lot. My copy of Honky Chateau is really surprisingly quiet, until you get to Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters which sounds like it was played a million times.  


jeecc's avatar
jeecc
11 posts
 
For the person who loves Year of the Cat, run and grab a original British pressing of Past, Present and Future, great sounding recording, awesome performance everything you are looking for a lot less than you would pay Tom. 
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