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WHY AUDIOPHILES ARE PAYING $1,000 FOR THIS MAN’S VINYL
http://www.wired.com/2015/03/hot-stampers/
How much would you pay for an original copy of The Beatles’ Abbey Road? If you shop at Better Records, the answer is plenty: $650. Other staples from the heyday of vinyl command equally astronomical prices. Fleetwood Mac’s eponymous LP: $500. The Police’s Synchronicity: $350. Even kitsch like The B-52s is a sticker shocker at $220.
And that’s the cheap stuff. Prices for wish list titles like The Who’s Tommy, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and The Beatles’ White Album would make a military contractor blush: $1,000.
Price gouging? Not according to Better Records owner Tom Port. He thinks a thousand bucks is a bargain to hear a classic rock opus sound better than you’ve ever heard it sound before—stoned or sober.
“I’d like to charge $1,500, because that’s what I think these records are worth,” he says. “But I don’t, because the customers balk.”
This is what passes for fiscal restraint in the world of high-end audio: drawing the line at three figures for mass-produced records that sold in the millions, the same dorm room relics found in milk crates at tag sales. But Port insists that his meticulously curated discs are special. Unlike many record dealers, he doesn’t peddle the usual dreck pocked with scratches and pot resin. He traffics strictly in “hot stampers,” the very best of the best.
Hundreds of factors determine what a vintage record will sound like, from the chain of ownership and whether it’s been properly stored to the purity of the vinyl stock and the quality of the equipment that produced it. One factor many serious record collectors fixate on is the quality of the stampers, the grooved metal plates used to press a lump of hot vinyl into a record album. Like any metal die, these molds have a finite lifespan. The accumulation of scratches, flaws, and other damage resulting from the tremendous mechanical stress a stamper is subjected to—100 tons of pressure during a production run—leads to a gradual loss of audio fidelity in the finished records. To ensure the best sound quality, some boutique companies that press heavy vinyl today limit their stampers to 1,000 pressings. In contrast, during the peak of the vinyl boom, major labels churned out as many as 10,000 copies on a single stamper. It’s preferable to have a record pressed early in a production run, before the metal exhibits signs of wear, rather than toward the end, right before a fresh stamper is slapped on.
Tom Port thinks a thousand bucks is a bargain to hear a classic rock opus sound better than you've ever heard it sound before—stoned or sober.
Nab an early pressing of an iconic title produced under ideal conditions, take really (really) good care of it for 40 years, and maybe it’ll be judged a hot stamper worth four figures.
Scott Hull, a recording engineer who owns Masterdisk, one of the world’s premier mastering facilities, compares producing a vinyl record to making wine. “Each pressing of the grape, and each pressing of the disc, is unique,” Hull says. “Hundreds of subtle things contribute to each pressing being different. Everything matters, from plating the lacquers to various molding issues to the quality of the vinyl pellets.”
Copies of this Beatles classic all sound different.
Brian Guido/WIRED
Selling these artifacts at these prices requires more than a list of customers with too much disposable income. It takes hard work, chutzpa and catalog copy that ignites neural brush fires in the amygdala.
Consider these tasting notes for the Rolling Stones’ Emotional Rescue ($230): “A killer pressing … serious punch down low, superb clarity, all the extension up top and a HUGE open sound field … you’ll have a hard time finding any Stones record that sounds this good period!” Confirmation bias? Probably. Port had me at “killer pressing.”
Although Better Records offers jazz, blues, classical, and the occasional genre novelty (faux-Polynesian exotica is a recurring guilty pleasure), invariably it’s nostalgic classic rock albums like that Stones semi-classic from 1980 that become hot stampers.
But finding such pristine and aurally transcendent records isn’t easy.
Συνεχεια στο λινκ, ειναι μεγαλουτσικο...
btw, μπορει να κανει καποιος μια περιληψη , γιατι βαριεμαι να το διαβαζω?
http://www.wired.com/2015/03/hot-stampers/
How much would you pay for an original copy of The Beatles’ Abbey Road? If you shop at Better Records, the answer is plenty: $650. Other staples from the heyday of vinyl command equally astronomical prices. Fleetwood Mac’s eponymous LP: $500. The Police’s Synchronicity: $350. Even kitsch like The B-52s is a sticker shocker at $220.
And that’s the cheap stuff. Prices for wish list titles like The Who’s Tommy, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and The Beatles’ White Album would make a military contractor blush: $1,000.
Price gouging? Not according to Better Records owner Tom Port. He thinks a thousand bucks is a bargain to hear a classic rock opus sound better than you’ve ever heard it sound before—stoned or sober.
“I’d like to charge $1,500, because that’s what I think these records are worth,” he says. “But I don’t, because the customers balk.”
This is what passes for fiscal restraint in the world of high-end audio: drawing the line at three figures for mass-produced records that sold in the millions, the same dorm room relics found in milk crates at tag sales. But Port insists that his meticulously curated discs are special. Unlike many record dealers, he doesn’t peddle the usual dreck pocked with scratches and pot resin. He traffics strictly in “hot stampers,” the very best of the best.
Hundreds of factors determine what a vintage record will sound like, from the chain of ownership and whether it’s been properly stored to the purity of the vinyl stock and the quality of the equipment that produced it. One factor many serious record collectors fixate on is the quality of the stampers, the grooved metal plates used to press a lump of hot vinyl into a record album. Like any metal die, these molds have a finite lifespan. The accumulation of scratches, flaws, and other damage resulting from the tremendous mechanical stress a stamper is subjected to—100 tons of pressure during a production run—leads to a gradual loss of audio fidelity in the finished records. To ensure the best sound quality, some boutique companies that press heavy vinyl today limit their stampers to 1,000 pressings. In contrast, during the peak of the vinyl boom, major labels churned out as many as 10,000 copies on a single stamper. It’s preferable to have a record pressed early in a production run, before the metal exhibits signs of wear, rather than toward the end, right before a fresh stamper is slapped on.
Tom Port thinks a thousand bucks is a bargain to hear a classic rock opus sound better than you've ever heard it sound before—stoned or sober.
Nab an early pressing of an iconic title produced under ideal conditions, take really (really) good care of it for 40 years, and maybe it’ll be judged a hot stamper worth four figures.
Scott Hull, a recording engineer who owns Masterdisk, one of the world’s premier mastering facilities, compares producing a vinyl record to making wine. “Each pressing of the grape, and each pressing of the disc, is unique,” Hull says. “Hundreds of subtle things contribute to each pressing being different. Everything matters, from plating the lacquers to various molding issues to the quality of the vinyl pellets.”
Copies of this Beatles classic all sound different.
Selling these artifacts at these prices requires more than a list of customers with too much disposable income. It takes hard work, chutzpa and catalog copy that ignites neural brush fires in the amygdala.
Consider these tasting notes for the Rolling Stones’ Emotional Rescue ($230): “A killer pressing … serious punch down low, superb clarity, all the extension up top and a HUGE open sound field … you’ll have a hard time finding any Stones record that sounds this good period!” Confirmation bias? Probably. Port had me at “killer pressing.”
Although Better Records offers jazz, blues, classical, and the occasional genre novelty (faux-Polynesian exotica is a recurring guilty pleasure), invariably it’s nostalgic classic rock albums like that Stones semi-classic from 1980 that become hot stampers.
But finding such pristine and aurally transcendent records isn’t easy.
Συνεχεια στο λινκ, ειναι μεγαλουτσικο...
btw, μπορει να κανει καποιος μια περιληψη , γιατι βαριεμαι να το διαβαζω?