Inspecting used vinyl: What to look for. (self.

vinyl)
submitted 1 year ago* by IHeartThe80s
Ive found you can get great LPs on a budget if youre meticulous about inspecting th
em. Heres how I go about it.
Pull LPs without inspecting them. Flip and pull, flip and pull. Inspecting qualit
y while youre digging is strictly amateursville; it means others cant flip the bin
while youre peeping at wax. Youll inspect your finds later and do a much better j
ob. Plus if the bins are popular youll get through them quicker and grab the good
stuff before others do. It just looks badass to pull a big stack of cool titles
after barely looking at them. (Downside: if youre at a record store people may t
hink you work there.)
If there are multiple copies of a title you want, be sure to grab all of them! E
ach one you grab raises the likelihood that you'll get a good one.
Set up shop. Look up and find the brightest, most intense light you can find, th
en plop down right under it and go through your stack. If all the lights the same
, look for a quiet part of the store and do your inspection there. If youre at a
swap or yard sale, plop down on the ground crosslegged with your stack in front
of you. Relax, this will take a few minutes.
Unsleeve the record. Pay attention to orientation and condition of the innerslee
ve. If the mouth of the innersleeve is facing out, same direction as the jackets
mouth, thats common but not ideal (means the records been pulled in and out a lot,
both by owners and shoppers). If the mouth is up, locking the record in the sleev
e, thats better, suggesting the last owner was conscientious. If there are no sea
m rips on the innersleeve in the common 3, 6, and 9 oclock positions, the record
has probably not been played much, which is great. If the innersleeve clings to
the record slightly as you pull it out, that indicates the record hasnt been pull
ed out much and is fairly dust-free.
If there is no innersleeve, thats unfortunate; the record has likely been abused
by the lack of protection. Still you can find records in fine shape even without
innersleeves maybe 5% of the time. Not sure how this is possible but it is. (Co
nsider borrowing a generic innersleeve from another record in the bins to protec
t your find.)
First impressions. Even before you look for scratches, pay attention to the lust
er of the record: does it look beautiful, with the iridescence of the grooves gi
ving a sense of depth, kind of like space tape laser-etched foil? If so, this is v
ery promising, and could mean a M- album. (A worn album will look flat, dead, or g
reyish.) Even better is to see a record with tiny paper hairs clinging to it, by-p
roducts of manufacturing the innersleeve. These are only present the first few t
imes a records removed from a sleeve and are soon dusted off or blown away. This
is rare, but thrilling when it happens. Little hairs, woo-hoo!
Dirty records. The first thing youll usually see before scratches is dust or dirt
clinging to the record. Assuming you have a good cleaner such as a Spin Clean o
r VPI, this shouldnt be a problem. But note that some dirty patches can conceal m
icro-scratches beneath. Also, what look like dirt spots can sometimes be little
scratch zones, where grit has rubbed against the same small area, creating nasty
squiggles. If in doubt about whether a record can be cleaned, put a few drops o
f water from your water bottle onto a fingertip and rub the record, drying it wi
th the hem of your shirt. (Some desperate souls might use saliva, but not me. Ha
rdly ever.)
Gimme a disc with hair. Sometimes what appear to be scratches can be hairs, usua
lly pet but also human I guess. Im always happy to find these hairy albums, becau
se the hairs can fool record buyers into thinking the disc is thrashed when it m
ay be in great shape, and they'll price it cheaply.
Look for scratches. The nasty, noisy deal-breaker gouges will be obvious at first
glance. (But dont discard the LP yet, some may be scuffs; see below.) Less obviou
s will be the myriad mini- or micro-scratches present on most used records. Orie
nt your record so the bright light source above you is blocked out by the label,
and all scratches will become blindingly apparent. In ambient lighting conditio
ns (most common), just keep shifting the records orientation until you see some s
cratches. (Redditor e-cow suggests using a mini Maglite flashlight at a 45-degre
e angle to highlight worn groove surfaces; light from directly above can tend to
illuminate the untouched groove bottoms rather than the angled play surfaces.)
Keep a cynical frame of mind; I always tend to think, Look how clean this is! and
have to force myself to be critical by saying, Look how scratchy this is!" Someti
mes out loud. I get weird looks. Whatever.
Check the edges. Since that's where the stylus hits first, a lot of damage to LP
's can happen in the first half-minute of a side. Pull the record ALL the way ou
t of the sleeve, not just 90% of the way, and check the perimeter carefully. Too
often do I put the needle on what I thought was a "perfect" copy to hear some c
onfounded clicking.
Touch me, baby. The old record collectors axiom if you feel it, youll hear it is pre
tty reliable (but not quite foolproof). Run your finger across any questionable
gouges. If your fingertip doesnt feel it, your stylus may not either. (It may tak
e a few trials to calibrate your fingertip vs. stylus sensitivity, though.)
Crossing the rubicon. Does a scratch cross the banding between tracks? This is h
elpful. Does the scratch actually cut into the dead wax, or does it disappear an
d pick up where the music grooves resume? If the latter, the scratch may not be
deep enough to cause problems.
Scratches that skip. By far the worst scratches are the ones that run diagonally
, almost parallel to the grooves. These camouflaged gouges are the ones most lik
ely to make your needle skip ahead or play the same few notes over and over. The
se lateral nasties are the black ice of used vinyl, hard to see and deadly when yo
u hit em. Keep your eyes peeled.
Scratches or scuffs? Not all marks on records are audible (in everyday listening
on average equipment). If you see a mark thats wider than the point of a pin, yo
u may be in luck; it could be a very shallow scuff instead of a scratch. Scuffs
can be anywhere from 1/16 to 1/2 . Scuffs may look awful but are seldom as problem
atic as scratches. (I bought a cheap copy of Thriller in apparently great shape
and was horrified to find what looked like a screwdriver gouge across one track.
But I couldnt hear it in playback. Lucky!)
Im always happy to find scuffed records in the cheapo bins, figuring buyers thoug
ht these were unplayable and discarded them.
When to be a bitch about scratches. Know your music. Music with sustained tones
or quiet dynamics, such as acoustic folk, ambient, or classical, will sound terr
ible with even minor scratches in them, so be picky. Conversely, the volume and
percussion of a loud rock or funk album will mask the scratches better. Also, co
nsider the album side duration. Longer sides over 22 minutes (such as K-Tel comp
ilations) will be microgrooved and cut pretty shallow, so almost any visible scr
atch will be audible. Conversely, short LP sides, especially those from the 1960s
, will be cut very deep, so visible scratches might not be heard. (I have a thra
shed copy of More of the Monkees on Colgems that looks awful but sounds just fin
e.)
Look for warps. I should do this with every record I buy, but few turn out to be
warped, so I dont. Sometimes the records will just feel wrong or look distorted,
so check em out if they do. To inspect, hold the record at eye level and look la
terally across the surface, from the near edge to the spindle hole. If the far e
dge waves above or below the surface, youve probably got a warp. Rotate the record
90 and try again. (Note that some very thin vinyl pressings, such as RCA Dynaflex
from the 1970s, will droop a bit while being inspected, so dont be too hasty with
these.)
Check for heat damage. Some records that have been exposed to heat will exhibit
damage, usually just along one edge. This is not merely cosmetic; it will cause
a nasty whooshing sound when playing, so avoid. Look for a foamy or pockmarked textu
re along one edge and extending an inch or two towards the middle. Usually this
will be accompanied by minor warping or fluting along that edge. This isnt too co
mmon but its definitely out there, so be vigilant.
If possible, give it a spin. Though this is a guide on visual evaluation, theres
no substitute for dropping the needle on suspect vinyl. If you go to swaps or ya
rd sales a lot, bring your portable, battery-operated turntable or consider buyi
ng one. Dont forget the headphones! If youre in a good used record store, theyll ha
ve listening stations with turntables for you to use, so definitely take advanta
ge. Note problematic areasend of track 2 and middle of track 5and listen to those in
particular. Always listen to every record youre considering buying. Some that lo
ok scratch-free may have still been played to death.
About covers. Cover grading is its own art and one I tend to ignore; as long as
theres a jacket Im happy. Be aware that torn or split jackets can be nicely repair
ed with acid-free tape. I wouldnt do this with any high-value records, but for do
llar-bin beater albums, why not.
Throw the bad ones back. It can be heartbreaking to put a beloved album thats not
up to snuff back in the bins, but it has to be done. (Still smarting over that
thrashed dollar copy of Pink Floyds A Nice Pair.) I usually say something like, This
great album deserves better, and then bid the title adieu: Well meet again, my fri
end, on some other day.