"Better Records" website and their business practices as they apply to our hobby*

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by violetvinyl, Jul 14, 2014.

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  1. Slick Willie

    Slick Willie Decisively Indecisive

    Location:
    sweet VA.
    45 rpm, at times!!!:uhhuh:
     
  2. Slick Willie

    Slick Willie Decisively Indecisive

    Location:
    sweet VA.
    Well.........I must say.....SS has less of a chance to color......I like tubes.....they are really sweet....and soft/warm. Nothing wrong with vintage, I have some. But....just sayin'...
     
  3. Monsieur Gadbois

    Monsieur Gadbois Senior Member

    Location:
    Hotel California
    And he describes most of his prized white hot stampers - glowing with "tubey magic".
     
  4. [​IMG]
     
  5. DeRosa

    DeRosa Vinyl Forever

    What's funny about calling 30 watts "feeble" is that many of the uber-expensive Japanese tube amps
    only make between 15 and 30 watts. It means nothing. Matched with the right speakers, you don't
    need a lot of power to make great music.
     
    jgrillo, Slick Willie and Mr Bass like this.
  6. DeRosa

    DeRosa Vinyl Forever

    which were probably recorded and mastered with a bunch of gear that had tubes in the chain too.
     
  7. murphywmm

    murphywmm Senior Member

    I am definitely in the wrong business.
    Seriously though, this guy's hyperbole is way too much for me. His site makes my head hurt. I also CAN'T STAND when people TYPE like THIS. :p
     
    patient_ot and DeRosa like this.
  8. Scott Wheeler

    Scott Wheeler Forum Resident

    Location:
    ---------------
    The business model as I understand it is that there are many different incarnations of any given title and they vary in sound quality and the way to find out which sound better is by careful listening. His business model is to do that for audiophiles. How is that model in and of itself a joke? I think his execution of that model comes flying off the rails but what is it about the model itself that is a joke? Essentially that was how Chad Kassem started his business. He was originally just record dealer that specialized in used audiophile records.
     
  9. Slick Willie

    Slick Willie Decisively Indecisive

    Location:
    sweet VA.
    Tom Port hate day!!!!!!! Can we make it were we get time off????? If so, I'm on board!!!!! If not.........lighten up on tha' dude........haters be haters I guess....
     
  10. trumpetplayer

    trumpetplayer Senior Member

    Location:
    michigan
    You beat me to it:D
     
  11. John Moschella

    John Moschella Senior Member

    Location:
    Christiansburg, VA
    It's actually pretty simple. The sonic grade is the sound quality, as it dynamics, midrange presence etc. The other grade is the surface quality. So say you have a awesome sounding LP that is A+++ but it has some surface noise, thus it might be VG+. I think the way he does this makes logical sense.
     
  12. snorker

    snorker Big Daddy

    I don't think you can necessarily separate the two grades that way. I guess everyone has a different tolerance for surface noise, but in my mind surface noise does not equal A+++ sound. But even if it does, I can find a lot of copies of Abbey Road with A+++ sound and some surface noise for a lot less than $600.
     
    Lost In The Flood likes this.
  13. Some interesting thoughts on UK Beatle album hot stampers from Better Records:

    Originals Vs. Reissues
    If you're an Audiophile Record Collector -- and by that I mean an Audiophile who is also a Record Collector, not a person who collects Audiophile Records -- you may have been told that the original British pressings of The Beatles albums are the best way to hear them.
    They are not. Any Hot Stamper pressing of any Beatles album we sell up through Sgt. Pepper will eat those originals for lunch. The originals are simply not very good representations of what is actually on the master tape, and a good reissue -- the kind we sell all day long -- will convince you of that fact the moment the needle hits the groove. (Well, maybe not quite that fast, but it definitely will not take long. One song should be plenty.)

    http://www.better-records.com/product.aspx?pf_id=beatlhelp_1505
     
  14. AppleCorp3

    AppleCorp3 Forum Resident

    I saw that too and I also noticed that they don't say which pressing you are buying. Imagine paying 500 bucks for an 80s reissue? I think you can still get those sealed for less than half that.

    I'm also curious about the dead wax markings they say are the secret sauce to those hot stampers.
     
  15. Bobbo

    Bobbo Well-Known Member

    Location:
    New Mexico
    Unless I win the lottery, I'm not going to spend 300 bucks on a copy of "Beatles For Sale" that somebody else considers to be cream of the crop. OTOH, I'd love to work for these guys. Listening to records all day and having a bull session about which copy sounded better would be a dream job! :p
     
    AppleCorp3 likes this.
  16. snorker

    snorker Big Daddy

    That is interesting. The implication then is that he thinks the original pressings of anything post-Sgt. Pepper, like Abbey Road, The Beatles (White Album) and Let it Be ARE better than the reissues. I am also reminded though that our host has written here that Tom Port introduced him to the superiority of the Beatles for Sale -1/-1 "tube cut." Does that mean Mr. Port doesn't like the early -1/-1 on the yellow and black label, but only the later pressings that still use the -1/-1 stampers?

    I do agree with this assessment to some degree actually. I like some of the Blue Box pressings better than the earlier ones. Of course, these pressings are not as hard to find in NM condition, which helps.
     
    Bobbo likes this.
  17. Slick Willie

    Slick Willie Decisively Indecisive

    Location:
    sweet VA.
    I just checked, this forum has a tad over 47,600 members. Just a percentage point in the grand scheme of things. Many more out there available to be BR customers. This forum is uniquely edumacated - is it not?
    So our voice/views are small?
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2015
  18. Dennis0675

    Dennis0675 Hyperactive!

    Location:
    Ohio
    One thing about it is that he is resolute in his opinions.
     
  19. Dennis0675

    Dennis0675 Hyperactive!

    Location:
    Ohio
    It would be interesting to know how many unique visits the BR Web page gets in a month. I would guess it to be in the 100's. Comparatively speaking the vinyl market is small. The vinyl market for $500 records that can be easily found for $10 has to be very small.
     
  20. AppleCorp3

    AppleCorp3 Forum Resident

    Isn't that what his whole site is though? He's selling his opinion at a premium and - trust him - the albums sound great.

    I don't know...I'd rather come here and read what the folks have to say about various releases. It's still opinion but they're not trying to sell something to me which doesn't set off my BS detector.
     
    Bobbo and Dennis0675 like this.
  21. Bobbo

    Bobbo Well-Known Member

    Location:
    New Mexico
    I'd happily pay $40.00 (going rate) for a Wally rainbow label eighties 'White Album' or a bit less for "Abbey Road".
    There wasn't a lot of horn tooting when those were initially released, but there should have been. The CDs that came out a couple of years later weren't a patch on these. The sound is excellent.
     
  22. ifyouever

    ifyouever Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York City
    Best I can suss it, the guy is a mean-spirited, egotistical snake oil salesman and shyster. If his system and product were so unassailable, it would not be necessary for him to so viciously go after competition like AP and MFSL. Clearly he does so because he is endeavoring to browbeat a certain moneyed but gullible sector away from often meticulously pressed records mastered from original tapes by professionals as skilled as Chris Bellman, Bernie Grundman, Steve Hoffman and Doug Sax. If this clown is finding people willing to part with $500 for a copy of Aja, why not let them have their own heads to buy a few AP records of given titles at 10% of that for honest shootouts against what he purveys? And the fact that, after having gotten his start selling DCC cutouts, he now cheerfully trashes Steve's work also makes him disloyal to the point of treachery, in my book.

    There's a great story about Jimmy Carter being approached as a young man by a John Birch or KKK-type organization member for a donation. Carter replied, "I only have five dollars but I'd flush it down the toilet before I gave it to you." I'd just about as soon give Tom Port my money for one of his "better records."
     
    Gumboo, Blue Cactus, Dr. Mudd and 2 others like this.
  23. snorker

    snorker Big Daddy

    I've actually not heard those. I will have to look out for some. I only have the UK ones, and a couple later Wally's cut from the digital masters.

    Incidentally, those digital ones actually don't sound bad either. I've A/B'd a couple of them with the UK analog cuts, and some of them actually compare pretty favorably. The Abbey Road sounded a lot better than the 70s orange label Capitol at least.
     
    Bobbo likes this.
  24. DeRosa

    DeRosa Vinyl Forever

    From the Wired article, posted previously in this thread;

    "success of this bold enterprise hinges on 20 to 30 “preferred customers” who spend as much as $100,000 a year on hot stampers. These clients are wealthy audiophiles with a penchant for classic rock who like nothing better than to sit in an overstuffed wing chair sipping Pétrus and reading Tom Port’s vivid descriptions of the latest shootout winners."
     
    Bobbo likes this.
  25. John Moschella

    John Moschella Senior Member

    Location:
    Christiansburg, VA

    That's fine, I just telling you what he does. To me it makes perfect sense.
     
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