Top Artists – The Eagles

The Eagles / The Long Run

More of the Music of The Eagles

  • With INCREDIBLE 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
  • 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 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 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 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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Letter of the Week – “The vocal, dynamic range, space, punch, energy, detail … it was just a night and day difference.”

What’s It Like to Play a White Hot Stamper Pressing?

We’re happy to let our good customer Bill tell us all about his recent listening session with a couple of his fellow analog audio enthusiasts.

When it comes to the five amazingly well-recorded titles you see pictured, it’s clearly a very special experience, one he was lucky to be able to share with his friends, and what could be better than that?

Fred,

Several weeks ago, I hosted a Hot Stamper/heavy vinyl comparison for a couple of my friends. Both of my friends have spent most of their lives in the high-end music industry.

We started with Deja Vu. One of my friends had brought the 50th Anniversary deluxe edition, and warned me that it was amazing, and would be impossible to top. One of his clients had recommended it to him and raved about it. We played the first track of that edition, Carry On, and then played the same track on the Hot Stamper.

A few seconds into the Hot Stamper, when the harmonies kicked in, my friend’s mouth dropped. He managed to whisper “Glorious.” It was a revelation. And then we enjoyed several other songs on the album. It’s just great music, wonderfully recorded. As a result of this comparison, a few days later my friend bought a Super Hot Stamper of Deja Vu from you.

Next up was The Eagles debut album. This was not a straight-up comparison of albums, because I only had one copy of the album, and that was the Super Hot Stamper. But one of my friends had brought the DCC Greatest Hits album, which is widely recognized as being the best version of that album. [Not by us!]

We compared Witchy Woman on the two albums. And the contrast was even greater than the Carry On comparison. Everything was better on the Hot Stamper. The vocal, dynamic range, space, punch, energy, detail…it was just a night and day difference. Witchy Woman has become my favorite demo song.

The last of the comparisons was a White Hot Stamper RL Led Zeppelin 2 with the Classic Records version. We decided to focus on Bring it On Home and Moby Dick. You just couldn’t listen to the Classic at the same volume as the RL. It was painfully bright at loud volume. The RL was a joy to listen to.

And that harmonica on Bring it On Home—wow. It was in the room. And the drums on Moby Dick were as close to “live” as you could probably get. Gut-punchingly wonderful. So of course we listened to several more tracks just for enjoyment.

Wanting to hear more “blow your mind” rock, we listened to a White Hot Stamper of Who’s Next. We didn’t compare it to anything, we just listened. And were transported.

Finally, one of my friends said we had to call it a night, because he was jet lagged, felt a cold coming on, and was exhausted. As he got up to leave, he stopped and said “But wait. You said you just got a WH Stamper of Tapestry. Can I listen to that for a second? I’m wondering how it compares to the MoFi.”

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The Eagles – Hotel California

More of the Music of The Eagles

  • Both sides of this vintage copy were giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades
  • 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.

From first note to last, this pressing has superb, mind-blowing, Demo Disc 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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Don’t Blame Bill Szymczyk If The Long Run Doesn’t Sound Good

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Eagles Available Now

Most copies of The Long Run have a smeary, veiled, stuck-in-the-speaker quality that makes for some painful listening, especially on the tracks that are actually worth playing, which, depending on your taste and how much you like The Eagles, might work out to roughly half of them.

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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Most Domestic Pressings of On The Border Suck, and We Know Why

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Eagles Available Now

This is one of the pressings we’ve discovered with reversed polarity on some songs.

The domestic copies of On The Border have many tracks in reversed absolute phase, including and especially Midnight Flyer, a lifelong favorite of mine. The front and center banjo will positively tear your head off; it’s bright, sour, shrill, aggressive and full of distortion. Don’t look at me — that’s what reverse polarity sounds like!

I’ve known for some time that domestic pressings of On The Border have their phase reversed — just hadn’t gotten around to discussing the issue because I wasn’t ready to list the record and describe the phenomenon.

A while back [January 2005, time flies] I happened to play a copy of One Of These Nights and was appalled by the dismal quality of the sound. Last night I put two and two together. I pulled out both Eagles records and listened to them with the phase reversed. Voila! (On The Border is a favorite record of mine, dismissed by everyone else, but loved by yours truly.)

[I don’t think One of These Nights has its polarity reversed anymore, although some copies may.]

I’m of the opinion that only a very small percentage of records have their absolute phase reversed. Once you’ve learned to recognize the kind of distortion reversed polarity causes, you will hear recordings that may make you suspicious, and the only way to know for sure is to switch the positive and negative, wherever you choose to do so. 

With the help of our EAR 324 Phono Stage, the phase is reversible with the mere touch of a button, a wonderful convenience that we have grown to love, along with the amazingly transparent sound of course. (Hard to imagine living without either at this point.)

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Glenn Frey – No Fun Aloud

More Eagles

  • This vintage Asylum pressing (the first copy to hit the site in over three years) boasts INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “rich and relaxed”…”good weight”…”present and full and open vox”…”weighty and 3D”…”gets huge”…”powerful drums”
  • Big and lively, with rich, breathy vocals, this pressing will show you just how good No Fun Aloud can sound
  • Frey’s phenomenal talent as an artist is matched only by his songwriting genius on this album, which includes hits “The One You Love,” “I Found Somebody” and more
  • “… it’s Frey’s perfectly guided vocals and impeccable talent for crafting laid-back love songs that make the album noteworthy.”

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Glenn Frey – Soul Searchin’

More Eagles

  • With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides, this copy (only the second to hit the site in years) is practically as good as we have ever heard
  • We were shocked to find out that this album actually sounds very analog – rich, smooth, sweet and natural
  • Elliot Scheiner (Royal Scam, Aja, Nightfly) produced and also did some engineering – he is to be commended for his excellent work here
  • “Though I left Detroit and went to California to cut my teeth on country-rock, I’ve remained obsessed with the music of my adolescence, the great soul hits of the 60s and early 70s.”

The best copies are both rich and open, with the sound we tend to associate with the better 70s recordings and rarely hear on records from the 80s. But here’s a record from 1988 that sounds the way we like our records to sound — like analog. We don’t really know if it is or not, or mostly is or mostly isn’t, but we’ve never really cared about those sorts of things as long as the record sounds good.

It’s our one and only criterion. Any other criterion is a sign that you’re not really listening, you’re reading.

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Are All the Original Asylum Pressings of Desperado Demo Discs?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Eagles Available Now

No, and this should come as not much of a surprise to anyone that’s bought records from us or spent much time reading this blog.

As you can see from the notes below for this particular pressing of Desperado, both sides are passable, earning a minimal Hot Stamper grade of 1.5+.

It’s a decent sounding copy I suppose, but a long, long, long way from the best.

1.5+ is four grades down from the top copy. That’s a steep dropoff as far as we’re concerned. 1.5+ only hints at how good a recording Desperado can be on the best vintage pressings.

To see more records that earned the 1.5+ grade, please click here.

Incidentally, some of them are even on Heavy Vinyl. The better modern pressings have sometimes, if rarely, been known to earn Hot Stamper grades, and one shocked the hell out of us by actually winning a shootout. Wouldn’t you like to know which one!

For those who might be interested, there’s more on our grading scale here.

Desperado Is a True Super Disc 

Of course, the best sound on an Eagles record is found on the first album. For whatever reason, that record was left off the TAS super disc list, even though we feel that both musically and sonically it beats this one by a bit.

On the TAS Super Disc list. Harry Pearson recommends the British SYL pressings for this album. SYL pressings can sound very good; in fact, one of the top copies from a recent (2024) shootout was SYL. A bit of a surprise since our champion for both sides during the previous shootout was domestic.

Does that mean the best domestics will always beat the best SYL pressings? Not at all. Only critical listening can separate the superb pressings from the typical ones. After playing more than a dozen copies of this album this week, we can definitively tell you that there are far more mediocre copies of this record — both domestic and import — than truly exceptional ones. The typical pressing of this album, whether the domestic or SYL, falls far short of belonging on a Super disc list.

There are killer domestic copies and killer SYL imports out there, and the only way to know which ones sound good is to collect ’em, clean ’em, and play ’em.

Remember: TAS list doesn’t guarantee great sound, but Better Records does — if you don’t think a record sounds as good as we’ve stated, we’ll always happily take that record back and refund your money. Good luck getting ol’ Harry to send you a check when the TAS-approved pressings you pick up don’t deliver.

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Robert Brook Revisits a White Hot Stamper Pressing of The Eagles

Robert Brook runs a blog called The Broken Record, with a subtitle explaining that the aim of his blog is to serve as:

A GUIDE FOR THE DEDICATED ANALOG AUDIOPHILE

Here is a posting Robert wrote many years ago and has recently updated.

EAGLES: WHITE HOT and SOARING HIGHER!

A quote I rather liked:

You can throw a Hot Stamper onto your rig and hear that it sounds better than your crappy “audiophile” 180g reissue, but when you compare it to your high res digital file, you’re not quite sure which one you like better.

The digital vs. analog debate, perhaps the most enduring in all of audio, persists because only a handful of audiophiles have truly realized the full potential of analog in their systems.

You may be reading this thinking “hey whad’ya mean! My analog system sounds great!.” And it very well may sound great, but I thought and still think that my copy of Eagles sounds great, and let me tell you, the White Hot Stamper is a WHOLE new platter of wax!

The tubey jangle of the guitars, the room filling weight of the drums and bass, the airy, spacious, luscious vocal harmonies, and every last sumptuous element of the mix, unmoored, liberated from obscuration so completely that the music, freed from every conceivable resolution constraint, SOARS to life in the listening room.

That’s what this White Hot Stamper of Eagles sounds like, and that’s what analog is ALL ABOUT!

This record, The Dude be damned, is one of my all time favorites. It’s a delicious recording on even a decent copy. My current copy, which bested several others, was competitive on side 1, but laid to waste by the White Hot on side 2. And that was the side I thought mine had nailed!

Eagles lives and dies by the vocal harmonies, and when the backing vocals are as clear and present and alive as the lead vocal is on most other records then you know you’re hearing a very special copy.

Here is our description of a recent copy that is up on the site at this time.

Super Hot and $699 — affordable maybe for some, certainly not cheap, but as Robert makes clear in his review, one of the most amazing sounding recordings in the history of popular music on the right pressing, and the right pressings are the only ones we offer.

The notes for our Shootout Winning copy from 2024 can be seen at the very end of this post. Side two was a “strong 3+, ” which we would have called 4+, Beyond White Hot, way back when, but we stopped doing that many years ago.

Side two was HTF — Hard To Fault. This may have been the side two that Robert is raving about in his review.

My current copy, which bested several others, was competitive on side 1, but laid to waste by the White Hot on side 2. And that was the side I thought mine had nailed!

Eagles lives and dies by the vocal harmonies, and when the backing vocals are as clear and present and alive as the lead vocal is on most other records then you know you’re hearing a very special copy.

Can’t argue with any of that! That’s what we heard too.

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