On September 30th, 1969, David Crosby’s then girlfriend was killed in a car accident. It was an event that would impact him emotionally and creatively for some time after. Crosby described the experience as “like being a little swimmer, big wave,”and that wave pushed back against him as he tried to move forward with his recording career. It wasn’t until the following summer that, with the encouragement of friends and fellow musicians, he managed to get into the studio to record his first solo effort, If Only I Could Remember My Name.
I first heard of this record on Tom Port’s blog The Skeptical Audiophile. Like many of the records I’ve heard about this way, I was drawn to it because of Tom describing it as a “TRUE ROCK DEMO DISC!”. And yet, as I’ve often found with other previously unfamiliar titles that I sought out because of their reputation for great sound, I’ve also come to appreciate the album for its music and artistry.
I wanted to get to know the album better, but I also wanted to explore another topic that’s been on my mind lately. If, like me, you regularly visit the Better Records website and have seen multiple copies of the same title with different sonic grades, you may have wondered, as I have, if it was worth ponying up the extra dough to get the better sounding copy. Does the White Hot Stamper sound several hundred dollars worth BETTER than the Super Hot? Certainly the price jump would indicate so.
In the case of . . . Remember My Name, I noticed that there were two copies available – one Super Hot graded A++ / A++, and another, a NEAR White Hot graded A++ to A+++ / A++ to A+++. The price difference between these two copies was about $100, much less than you’d have to pay to go from a SHS up to a White Hot copy, and a much easier sum to swallow if this was a record that was important to you.
Wanting to answer the question of the whether the relative value of these two records merited the price difference, and also eager to find out if . . . Remember My Name was a record that I’d love enough to invest in a Hot Stamper copy of, I asked Better Records to borrow both of their copies for this article and they agreed.
This is not the first time I’ve considered sonic grades and relative value. I have several Hot Stampers that have higher grades on one side than the other, and I’ve also had two copies of the same record with the same exact stampers where one, in some cases a Hot Stamper copy, had at least one side that was CLEARLY better sounding than that of the other. Therefore I’d had the chance to compare sides of the same record with different sonic grades before. My recent article on Santana’s Abraxas is a great example.
And what I’ve often found with these comparisons, in general, is that the difference between a Hot Stamper copy of a given record and a good, in some cases even a VERY good sounding copy of the same record, even with the same stampers, is that the better copy will almost invariably have more bass. In fact, if any recording has any significant amount of bass on it, a Hot Stamper copy will always give you that.
Is that extra bass important to you? I can tell you, it is to me, and I expect it’s important to anyone who has a stereo that can reproduce bass well. The reason being this – it’s not just that more bass is necessarily better, but because more bass = more SIZE, and more size = a record that will, given the right system and the right room, sound more like live music. Therefore more bass = a record that sounds MORE like live music, and if you ask me, that’s main reason to buy a Hot Stamper in the first place.
The other thing that any Hot Stamper will give you, relative to the average copy, is more transparency. As Tom Port puts it, a Hot Stamper gives you the ability to “see into the music.” And this seeing into the music is, in my experience, what you get a whole lot more of as you go up the Better Records sonic ladder. The White Hot Stampers are FABULOUSLY transparent. That’s what you pay the big bucks for. These records simply engage us as listeners in a way that no other records can, even Hot Stampers with lower sonic grades.
The extent to which this is true does, however, depend on the record. I recently wrote about two different classical records that were both rated Super Hot and most of the comparisons I made with them involved one side from each with both of those sides graded A++. To my ears, both of those records were wonderfully transparent, wth one being somewhat more so, despite receiving the same A++ grade.
Ultimately, I loved both records, and I found the experience of listening to each of them satisfying in a way that never left me wanting to upgrade my copies. One of the records has one side rated higher than the other, a side with an A++ to A+++ grade, but so far I haven’t found myself favoring that side of the record over the other.
With . . . Remember My Name, my experience was a little different. I did find that the different records with their different sonic grades yielded different listening experiences, although both copies were clearly wonderful.
I started my comparisons with the SHS, and it was apparent right away that it was a great sounding copy. The song “Cowboy Movie,” for instance, which features an absolutely HUGE bass guitar, can be a difficult song to play back. If the copy you have doesn’t resolve well in the lower frequencies (or if it’s mastered with too much bass, such as the MoFi), the bass dominates the sound so much you’ll have a difficult time appreciating the transients on the guitars and Crosby’s growling, impassioned vocals, which sit a little ways back in the mix.
I remember playing a German pressing of this album I used to own, and I recall how I could never get into it because I couldn’t get past this song on the first side. This time hearing it, I was fully engaged. The SHS had no trouble delivering the bass on this track with soundstage filling size and a clean, clear, tight transient edge. When reproduced well, the full force of this hypnotic, ruefully romantic song shines in all its power and cinematic glory.
I love “Cowboy Movie”, but the song on the first side that left me yearning to flip the record over was “Laughing.” This song highlights a quality on this album, as well as on this recording in general, that serves as an indelible contrast to the grandiosity of its predecessor. “Laughing, ” while displaying the same massiveness and power, also has a delicacy to it, a tenderness that drew me deeply into the performance.
On the SHS, the sound of this track is just SO wonderfully open, SO beautifully natural and SO touchingly melodic. Every element of the song from the vocals to the guitars lives and breathes in the mix. But when I put on the NWHS, and I first heard Jerry Garcia’s pedal steel guitar emerge from a seemingly impossible distance at the back of the soundstage, it darn near broke my heart. Right then, I was sold on . . . Remember My Name.
And yet, little did I know that I’d yet to hear the piece de resistance on this album. I flipped the record over, and I went back to the SHS, and soon came the song “Traction In The Rain.” My goodness! Those guitars! And Crosby’s voice on this track is just SO lovely. Talk about vocal presence! I thought to myself “this is SUCH a wonderful album.”
When I switched back to the NWHS though, I officially FELL IN LOVE with . . . Remember My Name. The NWHS had a fullness that gave the performances even more presence, enabled them to sound even more musical, and provided a listening experience that was even MORE satisfying, even SATIATING. I felt, listening to this copy, that I just wanted to BE THERE in the room with these performers. I wanted to LIVE in that space with them. I wanted to reach out and TOUCH the them the the way they were touching me.
On the very next track, “Song With No Words,” there’s a piano on the left side of the soundstage. Although it sits in the background, on the NWHS I could make it out clearly, and fully appreciate its weight and tonal clarity. I switched back to the SHS, and while the piano was still very clearly there, its sound was somewhat more abstract, and its key strokes didn’t have quite the same impact. I also liked the bass on this track better on the NWHS. It was a bit tighter, more solid and better defined.
It doesn’t hurt that this NWHS plays significantly quieter than the SHS. Not that the SHS is noisy, although there are some marks that play a little as indicated on the listing. But there is some very light surface noise in the background that emerges during the album’s quietest moments. Interestingly, this background noises doesn’t seem to have much if any impact on the record’s sound quality.
If you have a system that can do this album justice, especially deliver the bass, I’d say it’s more than worth the extra $100 to get the NWHS over the SHS. And if this is an album that you’re as big a fan of as I’ve become, the $300 price of the NWHS makes this a clear MUST HAVE for the reference section of your collection.
An interesting aside, as I was playing these Hot Stampers of . . . Remember My Name, I happened to look at the back of my phono preamp and realized I’d neglected to plug my Ventus grounding box back into my EAR 324 after disconnecting it to demo the Burmester 100 I just reviewed.
So I turned off the EAR and my amp and plugged the special interconnect that came with my Ventus Grab back into an empty input on my EAR and WOW! The soundstage opened up dramatically and my system played considerably quieter. This was confirmation of how good a product the Ventus Grab is, and why I recommended it so highly in my review.
Reconnecting my grounding box was also the perfect tweak for this record. The studio space opened up even more than it already had on these Hot Stampers, and I now found myself even closer to the performers on this intimate, lovingly recorded and eminently satisfying album.