Top Artists – Joe Walsh

Don’t Blame Bill Szymczyk If Your Copy of The Long Run Doesn’t Sound Good

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Eagles Available Now

Most copies have a smeary, veiled, stuck-in-the-speaker quality that makes for some painful listening on the tracks that are worth playing on The Long Run, which, depending on your taste and how much you like The Eagles, might work out to roughly half of them for most people who own the album, I’m guessing. We think the first two tracks on either side are hard to fault.

We should know; we’ve played them by the score. Some of their more notable faults in addition to those mentioned above:

  • Cardboard drums.
  • Non-existent ambience.
  • No energy.

Unless you get one of the hard, edgy, thin ones. Hard to say which would be more unpleasant to play.

The best copies are a whole different story, with the kind of big, punchy, full-bodied sound one hears on good copies of Hotel California.

What’s Bill Szymczyk’s problem anyway, you might ask. Can’t the guy record an album any better than this after being in the studio for all these years?

Yes he can. Don’t make the mistake of judging The Long Run by the typical bad pressing of it, the kind that Elektra was churning out by the millions back in the day.

Believe me, the master tape must be awesome if the sound of some of the records we played is any indication (which of course it is).

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Eagles – Eagles Live

More of the Music of The Eagles

  • These vintage pressings of the band’s first live album boast solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on all FOUR sides
  • This copy is remarkably spacious, full-bodied and natural, with a nicely extended top end, plenty of space around the instruments and vocals, and few of the problems that plagued many pressings we played (discussed below)
  • The album provides a balanced document of the band’s musical history – four tracks were recorded in 1976, the rest in 1980
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • That said, this title in particular is almost always noisy, which is why you will rarely find it on our site — most of what we buy is just too noisy to sell

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Jimmy Witherspoon – Handbags and Gladrags

More Jimmy Witherspoon

More Soul, Blues, and R&B

  • With INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish, this vintage ABC pressing is certainly as good a copy as we have ever heard
  • These sides are doing everything right – they’re super big, rich and lively, with an abundance of extension at both ends
  • Spacious and transparent, this copy has the three-dimensional soundstaging and natural vocal reproduction that makes these kinds of records such a joy to play (and in the process a record this good makes a mockery of the veiled, lifeless, ambience-free sound of the modern Heavy Vinyl reissue)
  • Sorry about the ABC vinyl — it’s the rare copy that plays much quieter, one of the main reasons you never see this title on the site

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The Eagles / The Long Run

More of the Music of The Eagles

  • With KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides, this copy has a rockin’ “Long Run” like you have never heard
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “weighty and rich and punchy”…”jumping out of the speakers”…”very full vox”…”deep and rich and 3D”…”big and round and present”
  • The sonics are full, rich and vibrant with impressive punch down low and nice extension up top
  • The best songs prove that the Eagles were still at the height of their powers, at least some of the time…
  • The first two songs on both sides are practically as good as it gets for mainstream rock from this era – they’re playlist staples of Classic Rock stations from coast to coast to this day
  • “The Long Run is a chilling and altogether brilliant evocation of Hollywood’s nightly Witching Hour, that nocturnal feeding frenzy first detailed by Warren Zevon on his haunting Asylum debut (Warren Zevon, 1976) and the equally powerful Excitable Boy.” – Rolling Stone

The last song on side two, “The Sad Cafe,” is also a standout. Others, as they used to say in school, ‘need improvement.’

But five Killer Eagles songs is nothing to sneeze at. This is an album that belongs in most rock and pop collections, even if you choose to only listen to the best material on it.

The True Test For Side One

Want to know if you have a good side one on your copy? Here’s an easy test. Timothy B. Schmit’s vocal on “I Can’t Tell You Why” rarely sounds right. Most of the time he’s muffled, pretty far back in the soundstage, and the booth he’s in has practically no ambience. On the good copies, he’s not exactly jumping out of the speakers, but he’s clear, focused, and his voice is breathy and full of emotional subtleties that make the song the heartbreaking powerhouse it is.

This is why you need a Hot Stamper. Most copies don’t let you feel the song. Not like this one does. And the rest of the band is cookin’ here as well. From the big, full-bodied bass to the fat, punchy snare, this side is doing pretty much everything we want it to.

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Rockin’ Out to Victim of Love

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Eagles Available Now

This commentary was written more than ten years ago. Wouldn’t change a thing though!

Victim of Love is a classic case of yet another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you turn up your volume.

It’s the sound of this five piece tearing it up LIVE IN THE STUDIO. It’s also the track where the DCC just falls apart for us. Where did the rock and roll energy go? The DCC makes it sound like the band just doesn’t care, which was certainly not our experience when we were playing any of the killer Hot Stampers we came across.

Just the reverse was true; we had them turned up full blast and they ROCKED.

One reason the turn up your volume test is such a great test — in this case, the problem being the kind of lifeless sound that Heavy Vinyl pressings more often than not suffer from — the harder it is to ignore.

I might go so far as to say that Victim of Love is the best sounding track on the whole album. It’s punchy, real and MUSICAL in a way that nothing else on the album is, because it’s being played by a real band, live. The energy and coherency of the sound is like nothing else you will hear on Hotel California, and possibly on any other Eagles record. (more…)

The Eagles – Hotel California

More Eagles

  • This vintage copy was giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for, earning excellent Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom
  • Both sides play with shockingly quiet Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus surfaces and have no marks that play
  • In our experience, whatever the reasons may be, finding quiet vinyl on this album almost never happens – New Kid in Town is fairly ticky on probably 80% of what we can find of the originals (which are the only ones that sound any good)
  • If you have any modern remastered pressing of the album, please order this one so you can hear what you have been missing all these years
  • A Better Records Top 100 pick – here’s a copy that’s transparent and hi-rez, with all the energy and Tubey Magic that can only be found on the right pressings of the originals
  • Speaking of the right pressings, the right stampers are ten or twenty times as rare as the run-of-the-mill stampers that show up on ebay every day, which should explain why this multi-million selling title rarely makes it to the site
  • 5 stars: “Hotel California unveiled what seemed almost like a whole new band… The result was the Eagles’ biggest-selling regular album release, and one of the most successful rock albums ever.”
  • If ever there was a Must Own album from 1976, Hotel California has to be it – who doesn’t love this album?

We are having a devil of a time finding this album in audiophile playing condition these days, which is why you practically never see them on the site anymore, and copies quieter than Mint Minus Minus are rare indeed

We just finished a shootout for this title and this bad boy is truly a Demo Disc Quality Classic Rock LP.

From first note to last, this pressing has superb, mind-blowing, Demo Disc Quality Sound. Drop the needle on any track on either side to hear what we’re talking about. The highs are silky and delicate, the bottom end is tight and punchy, and the vocals sound AMAZING. The bass is PERFECTION, which really brings out the feel of the song “Hotel California.” It’s so deep and loping, the effect is practically narcotic.

“Life In The Fast Lane” is possibly the toughest song on the album to get right — it tends to have that transistory, compressed sound that we’ve come to expect from Bill Szymczyk. On this copy, it REALLY ROCKS — super-punchy with amazing presence and lots of meaty texture to the guitars. It will always sound a bit harsher than ideal on any copy with real presence, texture, and energy; that’s just the sound they were going for. It is what it is, which makes it not a good track to judge the first side by.

On side two, one of the better sounding tracks is “Try And Love Again.” On a superb copy like this one, it’s off the charts. The wonderful clarity and punchy bass here take this song to a whole new level.

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These Stampers Consistently Come in Last in Our Shootouts

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Eagles Available Now

All the original domestic pressings are cut by Ted Jensen at Sterling as far as we know.

You can find TJ and STERLING on every last one of them (with the notable exception of the SRC pressings, best avoided). What you can’t find is good sound on every last one of them.

The most common stampers can be found from pressing plants using the following label designations: MON, PRC, PRCW, AR and SP.

In our experience, two of the five labels listed above have the potential to win shootouts. Two of the others tend to end up somewhere in the middle of the grading curve. One consistently ends up at the bottom.

It’s important to keep in mind that in our shootouts, the person hearing the copy being played, the one who is carefully noting its strengths and weaknesses, has no idea what pressing plant actually produced the record, or what its specific stampers numbers might be.

That kind of  information is compiled after the grading has been done. That’s when these patterns emerge.

The domestic pressings with the stampers shown above have not done well in our shootouts for years now. If you own a copy with these stampers, or ones like them, the good news is that we can get you a much better sounding copy of The Long Run than you have ever heard. It won’t be cheap, but we guarantee that it will be very, very good.

Stamper numbers are not the be-all and end-all in the world of records, but after hearing too many copies with these stampers and less than stellar sound, from now on we are going to focus our attention on the stampers that do well and leave copies with these markings sitting in the bins.

Stampers

That the stampers are entirely responsible for the quality of any given record’s sound is a mistaken idea, and a rather convenient one when you stop to think about it. Audiophiles, like most everybody else on this planet, want answers, the simpler the better. Easier to memorize that way.

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The Long Run – The True Test for Side One

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Eagles Available Now

Want to know if you have a good side one on your copy? Here’s an easy test.

Timothy B. Schmit’s vocal on I Can’t Tell You Why rarely sounds right.

Most of the time he’s muffled, pretty far back in the soundstage, and the booth he’s in has practically no ambience.

On the good copies, he’s not exactly jumping out of the speakers, but he’s clear, focused, and his voice is breathy and full of emotional subtleties that make the song the heartbreaking powerhouse it is.

This is why you need a Hot Stamper. Most copies don’t let you FEEL the song.

And the rest of the band is cookin’ here as well. From the big, full-bodied bass to the fat, punchy snare, the best sides are doing practically everything we want them to.

James Gang – Thirds

More Joe Walsh

  • This excellent pressing boasts Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER on both sides – reasonably quiet vinyl too
  • Big, present and lively, with good weight to the bottom end, this is clearly the right sound for this music and may just make you a fan of Joe Walsh’s grungy guitar artistry
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more richness, smoothness, vocal presence and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market
  • 4 stars: “… Walsh was being hailed as a guitar hero to rank with the best rock had to offer… Thirds quickly earned a respectable chart position and eventually went gold…”

The copies that did well in our shootout managed to keep the grit and grain in the sound under control without smothering the top end or smearing the upper midrange. Clear, breathy vocals that don’t strain when loud were tough to find, but some copies did a whole lot better than others, and those are typically the ones we preferred.

Plenty of tight bass and lively rock energy are every bit as important of course. Nobody wants a leaned-out or boring James Gang record.

Although this record will never be a demo disc, at the very least the best copies should make you a fan of Joe Walsh‘s grungy guitar work, and we think this copy should do just that.

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The DCC Pressing of Hotel California – Not Bad!

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Eagles Available Now

Side one: B+ / Side two: B-

The DCC for this album is not a total disaster. In fact, the first side of the DCC is one of the better DCC sides we’ve played in recent memory. We dropped the needle on a few copies we had in the back (pressing variations exist for audiophile records too, don’t you know) and they averaged about a B+ for sound on side one. Side two was quite a bit too clean for our tastes — no real ambience or meaty texture to the guitars, about a B- for sound.

To flip something we say often: you can do worse, but you can do a LOT better.  

Differing Grading Scales

Note that the grading scale for Hot Stampers is slightly different than the grading scale we all grew up with in school.

The best Hot Stampers receive a grade of A Triple Plus.

This DCC record for side one is three steps down from that.

Three steps down from an A+ grade in school, the highest grade one could earn, would be a B+, hence the B+ grade you see above.

Our Most Recent Commentary

  • This vintage copy was giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for, earning excellent grades from top to bottom
  • In our experience, whatever the reasons may be, finding quiet vinyl on this album almost never happens – New Kid in Town is fairly ticky on probably 80% of what we can find of the originals (which are the only ones that sound any good)
  • If you have any modern remastered pressing of the album, please order this one so you can hear what you have been missing all these years
  • A Better Records Top 100 pick – here’s a copy that’s transparent and hi-rez, with all the energy and Tubey Magic that can only be found on the right pressings of the originals
  • Speaking of the right pressings, the right stampers are ten or twenty times as rare as the run-of-the-mill stampers that show up on ebay every day, which should explain why this multi-million selling title rarely makes it to the site

We are having a devil of a time finding this album in audiophile playing condition these days, which is why you practically never see them on the site anymore, and copies quieter than Mint Minus Minus are rare indeed

We just finished a shootout for this title and this bad boy is truly a Demo Disc quality classic rock LP.

From first note to last, this pressing has superb, mind-blowing, Demo Disc Quality Sound. Drop the needle on any track on either side to hear what we’re talking about. The highs are silky and delicate, the bottom end is tight and punchy, and the vocals sound AMAZING. The bass is PERFECTION, which really brings out the feel of the song “Hotel California.” It’s so deep and loping, the effect is practically narcotic.

“Life In The Fast Lane” is possibly the toughest song on the album to get right — it tends to have that transistory, compressed sound that we’ve come to expect from Bill Szymczyk. On this copy, it REALLY ROCKS — super-punchy with amazing presence and lots of meaty texture to the guitars. It will always sound a bit harsher than ideal on any copy with real presence, texture, and energy; that’s just the sound they were going for. It is what it is, which makes it not a good track to judge the first side by.

On side two, one of the better sounding tracks is “Try And Love Again.” On a superb copy like this one, it’s off the charts. The wonderful clarity and punchy bass here take this song to a whole new level.

(more…)