A couple years back, Mobile Fidelity announced they were reissuing the first six Van Halen albums in their high-fidelity format, which brought joy to many a collector. What’s a little less exciting is the price tag: $35 for the hybrid SACD and $125 for the double album version of each.

Now, the immediate facts: This is a high-quality remaster of Van Halen’s fourth album, and that is all it is. There are no bonus tracks or weird remixes or live versions. Since the album is 30 minutes long, this means that there are only two or three short songs on each side and you have to turn on the 45rpm setting on the turntable. So it’s expensive, inconvenient and kind of a gimmick, to be paying $125 for the same album you bought at $10 at the local record shop last week.

More facts: the album is part of the UltraDisc series, pressed on high-quality 180g vinyl, and only 5,000 numbered copies were made. The music is sourced from the original master tapes; evidently, MoFi removes two steps from the plating process to reduce any chance of noise and hiss, restoring any details that might have been lost during the original pressing process, getting it as close to the original lacquer as possible.

The thing is, audiophiles already know this, and nothing I write is going to convince anyone not to buy it who has the money and can tell the difference. But I never thought of Van Halen as the sort of band where the listener would put on headphones and really concentrate to tell the difference, where the subtleties mattered to the sound and mood, where spending $125 for Fair Warning instead of, say, Sgt. Pepper’s or Houses Of The Holy or Close To The Edge was considered totally reasonable.

That’s not a knock on VH; those first six albums are gold, party rock defined, and although Fair Warning isn’t the best of them, it has a mean streak that defies the rest of the band’s catalog and therefore makes it interesting. There are two reviews on the Vault of this album already that sum up its appeal nicely; I have nothing further to add about it. And yes, the remaster sounds great; a very small contingent of people will eagerly buy this, notice the slight differences between it and the previous remaster, and be happy.

But all the gimmicks on this product can’t disguise that it is simply a high-quality remaster of an album that didn’t really need it, and an album with two songs per side of vinyl gets pretty annoying quickly. Great for the hardcore VH fan or severe audiophile with too much money, but not really necessary for anyone else.

ALBUM RATING: B-
REMASTER RATING: C-

Rating: C-

User Rating: Not Yet Rated

Comments