Needledrop annoyances

[Zombie]

Why worry about it? Take care of your records instead...

[slartibartfast]

Why worry about it? Take care of your records instead...

Indeed. Tell that to the guy I bought it from 🤣

[RobbH]

Why worry about it? Take care of your records instead...

One of the main reasons I cannot claim to be an audiophile, and have no love of vinyl, is that my experience has been that whatever I do to take care of my records, it has never been quite good enough. I salute and envy those who are willing and able to deal with the demands of vinyl and get much satisfaction from their collection, but I am a failure in that regard.

[Zombie]

I havd records I bought in the 70s and well played over the years generally in good condition. After a few disappointments I stopped lending them to friends to tape them.

[RobbH]

I havd records I bought in the 70s and well played over the years generally in good condition. After a few disappointments I stopped lending them to friends to tape them.

Good point! I've always been reluctant to lend records, and my friends generally regarded me as someone obsessive about record care, but for all that mine are in poorer condition than I think they should be. That probably means I've been obsessively going about it the wrong way. Again, I don't want to hijack this thread. Kudos to Slarti, Zombie, Jim, and others who are still vinyl enthusiasts.

[slartibartfast]

Good point! I've always been reluctant to lend records, and my friends generally regarded me as someone obsessive about record care, but for all that mine are in poorer condition than I think they should be. That probably means I've been obsessively going about it the wrong way. Again, I don't want to hijack this thread. Kudos to Slarti, Zombie, Jim, and others who are still vinyl enthusiasts.

Don't worry about hijacking the thread 😀. I don't have any vinyl post 1987 🤣. It just seems sad that original vinyl does tend to sound better than countless remasters for CD, download and streaming. My CD version of Wind & Wuthering sounds a lot worse than my needledrop and that was an early CD before the loudness war. If you believe what you read on the Steve Hoffman forum the UK early vinyl pressings sound excessively bright but that is definitely not the case,

[Redrum]

To pile on the hijack. I have collected a fail amount of vinyl before 1978. At that time I started working part time (while in college) selling audio equipment is a place called "record theater" which was dubbed "the worlds largest record store. Great access to allot of vinyl and gear, along with great discounts led to a system upgrade including new turntable and cartridge, and a rapid growth of my collection.

But, I found all my pre 1978 vinyl sounded like crap on my new table/cart compared to the new stuff. I thought I had taken good care of my old vinyl, but played it excessively and on old gear. Maybe it was just "wore out" by old, misaligned, too much tracking weight, anti skate, etc. Maybe even playing them a bit dirty causes damage. I ended up getting rid of all bust some prized possessions, and restarted my collection.

I also made copies on cassettes, and played them to limit use of the vinyl. I still have a DBX 224 encode/decode noise reduction box (better than Dolby B or C) that is now obsolete. In fact DBX started licensing the technology to deck manufacturers that they put on a SOC. My box was $250 USD back in the day

My point? Ah, yes, you can take care of the vinyl, but the gear and number of plays seem important too.

Jim

[slartibartfast]

To pile on the hijack. I have collected a fail amount of vinyl before 1978. At that time I started working part time (while in college) selling audio equipment is a place called "record theater" which was dubbed "the worlds largest record store. Great access to allot of vinyl and gear, along with great discounts led to a system upgrade including new turntable and cartridge, and a rapid growth of my collection.

But, I found all my pre 1978 vinyl sounded like crap on my new table/cart compared to the new stuff. I thought I had taken good care of my old vinyl, but played it excessively and on old gear. Maybe it was just "wore out" by old, misaligned, too much tracking weight, anti skate, etc. Maybe even playing them a bit dirty causes damage. I ended up getting rid of all bust some prized possessions, and restarted my collection.

I also made copies on cassettes, and played them to limit use of the vinyl. I still have a DBX 224 encode/decode noise reduction box (better than Dolby B or C) that is now obsolete. In fact DBX started licensing the technology to deck manufacturers that they put on a SOC. My box was $250 USD back in the day

My point? Ah, yes, you can take care of the vinyl, but the gear and number of plays seem important too.

Jim

My first record player was a Music Centre with a built in BSR autochanger. I have no idea what the tracking weight was but records played on that still sound fine today.

[Redrum]

well, maybe I didn't take as good of care of them as I thought. But that was my experience. I started fresh. Maybe because I was getting a pretty good employee discount.

Jim

[slartibartfast]

well, maybe I didn't take as good of care of them as I thought. But that was my experience. I started fresh. Maybe because I was getting a pretty good employee discount.

Jim

In what way did they sound like crap? My theory is that better newer cartridges track deeper in the groove bypassing any possible wear. I've had records which always sounded like crap until I tried cleaning them 🤣

[d6jg]

My first record player was a Music Centre with a built in BSR autochanger. I have no idea what the tracking weight was but records played on that still sound fine today.

My first record player was an Ultra Stereo with autochanger and most of the albums that I played on it back in the day still sound pretty clean but actually I have a handful of albums that were played on the family record player which was an old turntable out of a Radiogram. My Grandfather re-housed it into a wooden plinth for us and it was connected to an old school wooden Bush Radio. The turntable had one of those cartridges where to play 78s you just reversed the stylus. I definitely played the first Roxy Music album amongst other things on it quite a few times and that original copy still sounds perfect. The only LP I can truly say I ruined was a copy of Best of Cream - it got ruined because I played it constantly.

[Redrum]

In what way did they sound like crap?

Geez Slarti, that was 45 years ago . Maybe it was a bit of everything - care, cleaning, played constantly (like Jim's cream album). I just remember that when I started working at the record store with a great discount (I think almost 50%, there was a good margin on Vinyl back then) and started buying albums like crazy, my old ones sounded noisy. I also started collecting the Mobile Fidelity and pther half speed masters, so my tastes changed as well. I just decided to restart my collection.

I also changed my habits. Many of the new ones have only been played once to record to cassette, some reel to reel.

The old ones that I am talking about albums like "Who's Next" which I bought when it first came out as a 13 year old. An example of the one that I saved is Jethro Tull's Living in the Past because it has/had a great multi page centerfold/book (whatever it's called). I could pull it out, who knows, maybe it sounds ok after a good cleaning and I was just a picky kid, or..my hearing has changed...both likely.

Jim

[Grumpy Bob]

My LPs seem to have survived pretty well since I started collecting in 1977, though some of the early purchases disappeared in the great punk/post-punk record cull, and in a burglary in the late 1980s, when most of my mainstream LPs were not recovered. They are all digitised, and pretty much all in good nick, probably because I never lent them out to friends!

Robert

[slartibartfast]

A new annoyance suddenly hit me. While processing my latest capture I had the feeling something was off. I checked my speed with an Android app and it was running about 3% slow. I checked the mains frequency and that was OK. I then found that it slowed down after 15-30 minutes and initially ran at the correct speed. Very strange. I ordered a replacement capacitor hoping that will fix it.

[slartibartfast]

A new annoyance suddenly hit me. While processing my latest capture I had the feeling something was off. I checked my speed with an Android app and it was running about 3% slow. I checked the mains frequency and that was OK. I then found that it slowed down after 15-30 minutes and initially ran at the correct speed. Very strange. I ordered a replacement capacitor hoping that will fix it.

Probably nobody is interested but a new capacitor fixed my speed issue. Still running at correct speed after an hour.
The motor phase voltages are better balanced and the phase angle between windings which ideally would be 90 degrees has been increased from 50 degrees to 104 degrees 😀