What's up with the quality control on MFSL UD1S

After several Hot Stampers from Better-records.com I have pretty much given up on reissues. When a guy tells you your Super Hot Sinatra-Basie is the best recording he has ever heard you know you are on the right track. Everyone I play them for is like WTF how is this so good??! No, they are not that quiet. Yes they are used. Yes they will take them back. For any reason. Or none at all. No, I have never felt like sending one back. Even though my Silk Degrees is very noisy, much noisier than my other two copies, but the sound quality is like the master tape. Not from the master tape. The master tape.

I have never heard that anywhere else. Patricia Barber Cafe Blue 1STEP is awfully close. Clearly this is a superb recording. Certainly the vinyl is incredibly dead silent. I could almost swear the groove noise I’m hearing is actually tape hiss from the master. Maybe it is. Yet for all its technical perfection there is some spooky black magic going on with these Hot Stampers.

Try and hear for yourself why I am done with MFSL.

Just another reason I don't bother with them. Those pricey RI's (but not so much compared with buying a "stamper") just haven't proved more convincing to my ears. If it all starts with the record, still makes sense(at least to me)to get as close to the period press.

Be it a "stamper" from Mr Stamper or going thru a  couple bin finds yourself and  just keeping  the best of the lot. My obsession gets confirmed when playing my personal stampers on other systems and getting feedback from other ears. Even my crappy hearing still hears a decent regular but period press. Maybe greatest hits/compilation and 2nd 3press of something  really popular will be inferior in SQ to these new audiophile presses? Just a guess and not my thing.

Because of my quirky tastes, a RI of something is the only way I can play something. I just get the "regular" copies. This fortunately is uncommon.

One thing certain, an UBER or my quite generic system to my ears sounds more organic via a real deal perfect period press. 

For anyone wanting to hear what superior LP mastering/plating/stamping can afford, try the two Buddy Holly titles offered by Analogue Productions. Then find original copies of those LP’s (good luck ;-), and compare them with the AP reissues. Michael Ludwig (45 RPM Audiophile on YouTube) includes one of them in his "10 Best Sounding LP’s Of All Time" list.

Chad Kassem (owner of Analogue Productions, that company’s Acoustic Sounds Distribution, and Quality Record Production) has spared no expense in creating the best LP manufacturing facility in the world at QRP in Salina, Kansas. That expense includes the kind of tweaks audiophiles install in their systems, like vibration isolation of the LP pressing machines. Too bad Max Townshend doesn’t make Seismic Pods that can handle the weight of those presses!

As for price: the AP reissues are $35 for a single disc, $55 for doubles. Original pressings of the two Buddy Holly pressings will run you many times that amount, and will in all likelihood be in pretty bad shape.

By the way, the improvement in sound quality QRP made to the Beach Boys catalog is off the charts! I have multiple copies of most of the originals, as well as later reissues. They all pale in comparison with the sound heard on the Analogue Production LP’s.

Another company doing great reissue work Is Speaker’s Corner, based in Germany. Try their version of the fantastic debut by The Flying Burrito Brothers (Gram Parson and Chris Hillman’s post-Byrds group). I have an original (bought at the time of it’s 1968 release), which is pretty darn good. The SC is better. They also offer a goodly number of excellent Classical titles, including a 4-LP boxset of Janos Starker preforming J.S. Bach’s Suites For Unaccompanied Cello ($99, I believe. I got my copy during last year’s Black Friday sale). Analogue Productions offers the same on 8-45 RPM LP’s, supposedly in slightly better sound. Again, originals will cost you far more than will either reissue.

Oops. Speaker's Corner does great work, but The Flying Burrito Brothers reissue is not theirs, it's on Intervention Records.