ZZ TOP Eliminator HOT STAMPER MINT 1983 Warner 1ST PRESSING

$

60

Vinyl:  HOT STAMPER!  MINT!  TOP COPY!  Appeared to have never been played! Super High Gloss vinyl. The Warner Brothers Labels are Clean and Bright. This is the 1983 Warner Brothers 23774-1 1ST PRESSING!

I did an audio "shootout" between 5 copies of Eliminator and discovered this Hot Stamper among them!  It has energy, presence and immediacy, with the vocals front and center, not buried in the mix.  It has wall to wall sound, with three dimensionality between the high end guitar, tight punchy bass and fat bottom end on the drums.  This record has warm Midrange Tube Amp Magic, which you could still find until the early 1980s and which was sacrificed when recordings went digital.  Not a problem here, as this was ZZ Top's final analog driven LP.  On any quality audio system, this record will POP!  If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to "see" the performers, and feeling as if you are listening live or sitting in the studio with the band, this is the Eliminator for you.  It's what all vintage analog recordings are known for--that SOUND! 

This is a party record, friend, Turn It Up!!!     ZZ Top is the first and last name in Texas Boogie and this is one of their greatest albums, big on Monster hits and a generous heaping of incredible Power Boogie that should be on every Classic Rock station the world over!   Here, they actually manage to keep their cred with an unpredictably successful addition of synth-sounds on top of the Monster Texas Boogie...To paraphrase one of their finest songs:  they're Bad and they're Nationwide!...  Crucial!  allmusic gives it 4 1/2 stars!!  

See Review Below!
In the Dead Wax:  Matrices, stamped.  Complete Dead Wax information cheerfully provided upon request.

Cover: NM-  (see photos)  Nice high gloss on cover.  Front and back of cover artwork and text are rich, clear and bright.   Seams, corners  and spine are solid and clean.  No splits.  No writing.  Spine print is crystal clear.
Goldmine Standards.   I play grade every album that I sell on eBay as I have found you can't rate an LP accurately by just visually inspecting an album.  I wipe the dust off of every cover with clean, unscented baby wipes.  I professionally clean the vinyl.
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Why buy a first or early pressing and not a re-issue or a ‘re-mastered’ vinyl album? 
First and early pressings are pressed from the first generation lacquers and stampers. They usually sound vastly superior to later issues/re-issues (which, in recent times, are often pressed from whatever 'best' tapes or digital sources are currently available) - many so-called 'audiophile' new 180g pressings are cut from hi-res digital sources…essentially an expensive CD pressed on vinyl.  Why  experience the worse elements of both formats?  These are just High Maintenance CDs, with mid-ranges so cloaked with a veil as to sound smeared.  They are nearly always compressed with murky transients and a general lifelessness in the overall sound.  There are exceptions where re-masters/re-presses outshine the original issues, but they are exceptions and not the norm. 

First or early pressings nearly always have more immediacy, presence and dynamics. The sound staging is wider.  Subtle instrument nuances are better placed with more spacious textures. Balances are firmer in the bottom end with a far-tighter bass. Upper-mid ranges shine without harshness, and the overall depth is more immersive.  Inner details are  clearer.  

 On first and early pressings, the music tends to sound more ‘alive’ and vibrant.  The physics of sound energy is hard to clarify and write about from a listening perspective, but the best we can describe it is to say that you can 'hear' what the mixing and mastering engineers wanted you to hear when they first recorded the music.    

Eliminator Review

by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

ZZ Top had reached the top of the charts before, but that didn't make their sudden popularity in 1983 any more predictable. It wasn't that they were just popular -- they were hip, for God's sake, since they were one of the only AOR favorites to figure out to harness the stylish, synthesized grooves of new wave, and then figure out how to sell it on MTV. Of course, it helped that they had songs that deserved to be hits. With "Gimme All Your Lovin'," "Sharp Dressed Man," and "Legs," they had their greatest set of singles since the heady days of Tres Hombres, and the songs that surrounded them weren't bad either -- they would have been singles on El Loco, as a matter of fact. The songs alone would have made Eliminator one of ZZ Top's three greatest albums, but their embrace of synths and sequencers made it a blockbuster hit, since it was the sound of the times. Years later, the sound of the times winds up sounding a bit stiff. It's still an excellent ZZ Top album, one of their best, yet it sounds like a mechanized ZZ Top thanks to the unflaggingly accurate grooves. Then again, that's part of the album's charm -- this is new wave blues-rock, glossed up for the video, looking as good as the omnipresent convertible on the cover and sounding as irresistible as Reaganomics. Not the sort the old-school fans or blues-rock purists will love, but ZZ Top never sounded as much like a band of its time as they did here.