Soundboard 9.3 - For the uninitiated, get ready for mind blowing and far ahead of its time guitar shredding.

Soundboard 9.2 - The band, and Ted especially, are red hot and the board mix is quite good allowing for equal distribution of bass, drums, guitars, and vocals.

Audience 7.8 - Great guitar, decent and clear!

Soundboard 9.2

Soundboard 9.0

Audience 7.8 - Kind of noisy but Ted’s guitar is very up front here, that is kind of all you really need to be honest. It’s actually not that bad really.

Audience 9.3 - A great, loud and clear tape, some very minor tape hiss is all but when the music is cranking it ain’t even there. Hot guitar, screaming tone, mean blues riffing everywhere.

Audience 9.5 - Interesting recording, it’s very clear and present and you might assume it is a board tape, but it sounds like mic capture to my ears. Very bright and clear, a MUST have!

Audience 9.4 - Recorded by the band for a possible live album that wasn’t released. A later concert from the following year eventually did come out though. This one smokes, hence the name!

Soundboard 8.8 - Another strange board tape, probably because they used different effects in their live performance that had to be run through the board. Sometimes you also get a little over-driving when the kick drum pedal hits. It’s a blasting board tape, extremely kinetic and strange at times but a lot of fun too.

Audience 8.8 - Fantastic capture that gives the sound a really spacey and breathing feel, like it is wrapping around your ears and not just coming straight at you.

Audience 8.5 - Everything very present, only faults are the loss of uppers and lower frequency response due to limitations of analog tape and time. You can add some EQ, although this does sound reasonably fine as it is but season to taste.

Soundboard 9.3

Live in Studio Pro 9.4

Audience 9.0 - Great low end and high end signal! Rare to find both intact, you can turn this up loud.

Audience 8.0 - Typical big rock sound. I like the Palo Alto show here, it’s the stronger of the two as far as clarity, but the San Francisco show sounds somewhat meatier ~ it’s a trade off.

Studio and Live - Excellent source material used, especially the studio stuff. The June 10, 1979 performance is perhaps the weakest tape here but one can still hear all the action from the stage even if it sounds a little far back. Fans consider the Accolades set to be a classic piece, it’s easy to hear why.

Audience 8.8 - Very well recorded, superb atmosphere!

Pro Broadcast 9.3 - Excellent quality!

Soundboard 8.7 - Sounds like it comes from a video source, with some of that compression factor present. For such a major stadium act, there are surprisingly few tapes out there of him.

CD 1 - Soundboard 9.0 and Audience 8.7 - The Sparrow show is great, amazing that such an early document was captured so well (by a radio station no less). The Dallas material comes after and is also very good, and at first it may seem it could even be a board tape but closer inspection suggests otherwise but it’s pretty decent. The Baltimore material filling out the 2nd half of Disc 2 is the worst of this collection at an 8.3 Audience rating which is not bad at all really. John Kay sounds very prominent in the mix, guitar and bass pretty heavy sounding, keys and drums kind of washed out a bit, but you hear pretty much all of it nonetheless.

CD 1 - Audience 7.4 - A much better source tape here for this show, sounds a lot better than I remember it being. It’s still somewhat thin, but the bass guitar is very clear note-wise, just do not expect slamming bottom end. The second show on CD 1 is Soundboard 9.4 - Superb! CD 2 - Audience 7.4 - Similar to the Portland show, with more emphasis on drums, less clarity in the total mix- but heavier low end. CD 3 - All Radio Broadcast 8.8

Audience 8.8 - Great stuff, a lot of atmosphere without sounding super distant. Love it!

Soundboard 9.5 - An absolutely marvelous, bright, snappy recording here! Get it!