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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
 
Sweet. Why you been hiding? (I can imagine.) Thanks for posting. And thanks for the link!
audioguy85's avatar
audioguy85
1,989 posts
 
Better Records is a terrific resource! Bought many records from Tom over the years. There is indeed a difference heard between Tom's hot stampers and your average copy. If you want the best, you gotta pay, no two ways about it. Unless you want to spend all your time seeking out your own hot stampers.
fiesta75
1,378 posts
 
Thanks for the post millercarbon, I'm new to Audiogon. I always wondered why my original Chrysalis copy of Blondie Parallel Lines sounded way better than my MFSL of the same! Still learning.
musicpod
192 posts
 
Interesting change of pace on this topic.  I have never dealt with Tom Port or Better Records.
The interesting change of pace on this topic is that, AFAIK, this is the first time I have come across a thread expressing support for Better Records business model.  The typical thread on this topic is a negative thread upset at their pricing structure.
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon OP
12,531 posts
 
 For years I bought the hype of MFSL and other reissues being audiophile quality. For sure these were almost always much higher quality vinyl. Surface noise was indeed very quiet. This was easy to hear, and good enough to keep me convinced. For years, decades, I was quite certain the only difference between a good and a bad pressing was this sort of obvious noise. If there were no warps, skips or pops then it must be perfect. Right?

Then I started to notice, quite by accident, that cut-outs sounded a lot better than most other records. Cut-outs are where the cover is cut, a notch or a corner, sometimes also with a sticker or embossed with the warning Promotional Not For Resale or something similar. These would go to radio stations and such and tended to be among the earliest copies pressed.

If you know anything about records at all you should know they use a stamper to literally stamp out copies. Well obviously over time the stamper is going to wear out. Equally obviously the finest most subtle details will be the first to go. So no wonder the early pressings sound better.

Unfortunately there are no serial numbers or other markings to know which are early and which are late. Some people make a big deal of the scribbles in the "hot wax" which is typically insider engineer type info. This tells you almost nothing in terms of sound quality. Might help weed out the crap stampers but it will not help at all to identify the really good sounding copies.

One way I know for sure is by comparing some of my old records to the Hot Stampers. In every case so far they are absolutely identical. Only one way to tell them apart- play and listen. Then it becomes obvious. Absolutely unambiguously obvious.

Probably what happens is the first few hundred copies have pretty much all the detail that ever was on the stamper. These are White Hot Stampers. Then gradually over time as this detail wears away they are producing Super Hot Stampers, and then Hot Stampers. From that point on, from say a thousand to a hundred thousand, are all the vast majority of what we consider "good" pressings.

This is all assuming everything else is up to snuff. One tiny detail anywhere not quite right and it won’t matter how new the stamper or how good the engineering. Which details? Wish we knew. Something tells me even Tom Port, who being in the business he is probably knows more than anyone, never really knows for sure. Record pressing is after all very much like making virtuoso violins, where details as fine as what pigments were used in the varnish wind up influencing the resulting sound. The craftsmen who ran those old record machines are about as long gone as Stradivari himself- and their secrets gone with them.

That at least is how I figure it. This would explain how it is that even as obsessed an audiophile as Chad Kassem who bought an entire lathe and pressing plant and had it relocated and restored like some fine work of art, even he does not seem to be able to match some of these old records. Which is amazing, considering they were the CD of their day.

The info on Better-records.com is spot on. There are always exceptions, sure. But for the most part it really does come down to a choice- you can have quiet vinyl, or you can have tubey magic. Quiet vinyl we have in abundance. Tubey magic they just don't seem to be able to make any more. 

The last MoFi I bought will probably be the last MoFi I ever buy. Year of the Cat on MoFi is so stepped on, so devoid of life and presence and detail I sent it off to Tom for entertainment value. Some clown on discogs thought it was worth $20! Pure crap, even compared to my random average beat up played a million times copy. My White Hot Stamper is expected to be delivered tomorrow. I can hardly wait!
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