Abstract | Pulse-like records are well recognized for their potential to impose higher demands on structures when compared to ordinary non-pulsive records. This increased building response to pulsive records is often associated with their particular spectral shape, and specifically the spectral increment around the pulse period. Still, others have argued in favor of the time-domain effect of the pulse itself, without focusing on the shape of the spectrum per se. Such issues become important when selecting records, where current catalogue limitations deny us the capability of perfectly satisfying many objectives at the same time. Herein, we provide a fresh outlook on this subject via the use of spectrally equivalent pulse-like and ordinary records. These allow us to distinguish the effect of pulse period from spectral shape and research the degree to which each needs to be satisfied to achieve a hazard-compatible record set. The comparison shows that there are characteristics of structural response to pulse-like records that cannot be predicted by the spectral shape of the input ground motions. Furthermore, the average spectra acceleration over a period range, AvgSA, is shown to be an adequate proxy for spectral shape, and together with Tp/T1 form an efficient and sufficient IM for response prediction to pulse-like ground motions.