SUPERB SOUND on Hot Stamper 2-pack! This is not an easy album to find with audiophile sound, and since our best sides were less impressive on their flipsides, we paired up these two copies to give you incredible sound for the album from first note to last.
Side two of the second record is the real deal, with BIG, RICH and ROCKIN’ White Hot Stamper sound. Side one of the first record is nearly as good (A++ to A+++), boasting exceptional transparency, excellent balance and something we didn’t hear on most copies: ENERGY.
Far too many original pressings (the only ones we liked, the reissues sounded too dubby to be taken seriously) were overly compressed and lifeless. This bad boy brought the band to life like practically no other.
When we set out to do this shootout, our first for the album, there was no question in our minds that Run With The Pack had the potential to be a great sounding LP. Ron Nevison, the man behind the board for the first two Bad Co. releases, both of which can be shockingly good and certainly deserve a place on our Top 100, engineered this one as well, with Eddie Kramer mixing at Kendun. RWTP may not be quite up to the standards set by those two monster rock albums, but on the best copies RWTP delivers the Classic Rock weight and energy that our audiophile fans have come to expect from their better records.
Scratch that — what we should have said was the best sides deliver that sound. The first record here, with nearly White Hot Stamper sound, has a side two with anemic vocals and no top end to speak of. The tonal balance is so far off we just called it NFG and moved on to the next copy. Who wants to play a Bad Company album that sounds as thin as a bad CD?