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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
arizonabob's avatar
arizonabob
85 posts
 
All true, but not so much. Thru this post, reading each one, no one mentioned the secret trail-off codes. That's probably OK too. Even if you're lucky enough to find that 1A stamper, how was it treated in it's former life (assuming buying a 'pre-owned' copy)? There are definite differences in where the disc was mastered and pressed. During the vinyl hey-day (mid-late 60's thru early-mid 70's) U.S. stampers may have been used to press up to 5000 copies to keep up with demand. Something' going to get lost there. Japanese, German and even U.K. stampers were limited to about 500 or so (your mileage may vary). There is also the sound preferences around the globe. Japanese pressings are tweaked to an almost sterile sound, they really love the almost pure laboratory nuances. German pressings, loud, bawdy and bass happy. U.K. pressings, well, polite is a appropriate description. So, depending on the music, these pressing may be more suitable to your listening preferences for a specific music type or title. Keep in mind, as with all things, exceptions to the rules are always prevalent. So many variables, so little time. AB
telefunkin74
6 posts
 
I've been collecting records for decades and I agree that the sound quality of different vinyl pressings can vary from brilliant to abysmal depending on many factors.  That is why I have at least 5 copies each of Kraftwerk Autobahn, King Crimson Starless and Bible Black, Pink Floyd Dark Side, etc.  I agree in theory with what Better Records does and that the product they offer could be as they advertise, a record that is a better than average sounding pressing, if not the best example of a particular album.  If people are willing to pay $$$ for those pressings, more power to them, but I can't afford it.  How can you ask $500 for a copy of Supertramp Breakfast in America?  Buying 50 copies of the album, cleaning each one, then listening to each one to find out which copy sounds the best would certainly make that exorbitant price tag seem reasonable.  Would it sound better than the copy I bought for $1 from HPBs?  I will never know and die a happy man.  Besides, record hunting is my job, not theirs.
whart's avatar
whart
2,967 posts
 
@arizonabob- you are right. However, the first pressing is not always the best sounding copy in my experience. And I’m not talking about audiophile reissues done later but just stuff that was remastered or reissued along the way. I think it varies, depending on the record- every one is sui generis, you can take account of different pressing plants within the same country bearing the same deadwax info and they sound different too. Condition is of course a huge factor. Some records that are bombastic are inherently noisy; some of the stuff cut by Bell Sound sounds amped up. Some are chewed up from kludgey tone arms. Given the inflated price of vinyl and the very loose standards for grading, it can be a crap shoot unless you are lucky or deal with a trusted seller--
I found a stash of Nathan Davis records from the early ’70s after he returned from Paris that a guy basically got from a dumpster when the studio and plant closed. They were cheap and got expensive fast. Pressed on the thinnest vinyl I’ve ever encountered. Had a few bad ones- but the seller replaced them.
I don’t know that there is any easy answer or rule of thumb- place of origin? Some of the UK Islands were mastered by Sterling in NY. Searching out the best sounding iterations is different than collecting, though they overlap--- sometimes, the best sounding one is the earliest pressing from the country of origin and is also collectible. And sometimes, the records were produced in such small runs that you don’t have much choice except over the condition of the copy, particularly small to private label stuff or obscurities that never found a market and were pressed once (apart from much later reissues, some of dubious origin). Then there’s the vinyl quality itself, which declined precipitously in the ’70s in the U.S.
FWIW, I used to think that Japanese pressings were usually EQ’d brighter and relied on safeties but some jazz and early prog is good on Japanese-- as is some rock. I think you hunt, compare and try to find what matches your fervor, budget and what’s available- thus, folks with a dozen copies of the same record as part of the quest.
mapman's avatar
mapman
21,838 posts
 
If you like a record enough of course you could buy many copies, keep them all and decide for yourself what to listen to and why. I have a few of those in the works. Maybe even sell your own designated “hot stampers”. You might decide that some are even “white hot”. No keeping the best one for yourself though. That would be very naughty!😼
Or if you want to pay top dollar for someone else that you trust to do that for you, then more power to you there as well. Enjoy!
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon OP
12,531 posts
 
arizonabob-
Thru this post, reading each one, no one mentioned the secret trail-off codes.

No one that is except the OP himself:

millercarbon-
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.
arizonabob again-
Even if you’re lucky enough to find that 1A stamper, how was it treated in it’s former life (assuming buying a ’pre-owned’ copy)?

They are all pre-owned, bob. Logically impossible not to be, if you think about it, since playing is the only way to judge, therefore they are all used records.

Might want to spend some time on the site checking it out. The info is scattered around and not always easy to find what you want, but altogether represents an incredible treasure trove of how to get the most out of your system and records, how to listen and evaluate, and not only in terms of sound quality but also what you just mentioned, condition. All Hot Stampers are graded both for sound quality and condition.

There’s standard text on every single item saying these are old records, Mint - - is about the best they ever are. In addition to this, anything more than normal groove wear type noise is always noted. There will be a comment like, "a soft pop plays 6 times at the beginning of track 2" or some such. There are also sometimes what they call "White Hot With Issues" which means A+++ sound quality but a scratch, tic or pop, some kind of issue that would probably make them toss a lesser quality record except for the rest of it sounding so good.

These things are incredibly highly particularized. In the first place they are not for casual listeners. Who cares? Why do you think so many people stream? They want to hear a lot of different crap! In that case as Obi Wan would say these are not the records you are looking for. They even go so far as to rate them side by side, and sometimes with the issues thing even track by track.

One time I ordered INXS and it was A+++ on side 1, A++ on side two. Before shipping they said sorry our mistake it is the other way around. Well my favorite song on there, one of my main reasons for getting it, just went from White to Super Hot. So I passed. (They would also have been happy to let me return it.) It is easy to imagine someone who wants a record really bad for one great song they absolutely love, and they find it and get a great deal because the record has "Issues" but the issue is a track they don’t care about. Score!


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