Is it just me or is vinyl QC getting a lot better?

Didn’t like that reply?

 

I was a big Elvis Costello fan having first bought Accidents Will Happen in 1979. In 1984 I purchased Goodbye Cruel World at the record store in the Sandusky Mall. Huge warp on one end of the disk. My cartridge on my Lab-440 turntable would bounce off the record. For some reason I never took the album back. About 25 years later I see Goodbye Cruel World on LP at the Goodwill in Hemet, California. Great! I can finally own this record and play it after all these years!
I pulled the record out of the sleeve and it had a warp also!

But I think that was the only time between 1976 and 1988 that I bought a defective LP brand new. I maybe bought 100-150 albums. They were sort of expensive back then. Albums were not perfect but they were the established medium with huge economies of scale pressed in factories long established with standard quality control procedures.

 

Bought the new Blue Note reissue of Monk Quartete at Carnegie Hall and side two is pressed off center causing extreme pitch variations. Very sad to have 25% of the album basically unlistenable.

I’ve had lots of bad luck with Blue Note 75s and thought this may be better. No more American pressed Blue Note albums for me. Have also had bad luck with recent impulse LPs as well. Other than Jazz LPs no other recent pressing issues.

 

Either they have forgotten or just do not remember
I remember it being a somewhat common issue, back in the day, and unless one downplays what an actual "Warp" is, I would say it was maybe one out of 15-20 records maybe.

Try asking a guy that worked in an actual record store that literally sold hundreds of records a day, and see how many boxes of warped records they had in the back room...or the dreaded "for Store Play only" area behind the counter.

 

I've bought thousands of new releases since 1974. Exactly two of them, ever, have been damaged enough to return, one in 1986 and one in 2017. So not all of us have been getting warped records even during the current renaissance.

It seems to me like the people who are consistently having problems with new LPs are people who are buying reissues and represses, not new albums by current artists. I never buy reissues of records I already own, so that may be why I have fewer problems.

 

There is a heat factor involved also.

 

Apologies, my reaction was a little strong. I of course don't have a problem with people reporting experiences contrary to mine (that's the point of a forum), I only took issue with the generalization that it's "just me." But I guess I asked for it with the way I phrased the thread title.

 

No worries

 

Probably more label based than merely being a reissue - for instance my experience has been very low chance of problems with reissues by Analogue Productions or Mofi vs one done by Columbia, WB, RTI, etc.

As I stated earlier, without context and people saying what labels they are buying, how many albums they buy, all the vague answers are anecdotal and hard to make any conclusions as to the dichotomy of experiences stated here.

My primary response has been the bad QC and horrible returns on the modern labels in the $20 to $30 range. I don't think my experience is unique, there is very low probability that I am the only one seeing this, especially since I verified the same issues with buying the same release in different stores, reviews online, etc. The Monk / Davis LP and the Black Sabbath Paranoid LP had exactly the same problem from two totally different sources, coming from different states!

It is more about price point and label IMHO.

 

I have just had 4 faulty discs in a row which have / had to be exchanged. So far too many copies have annoying faults while generally clean sounding pressings. I'm afraid the situation is similar to 40 years ago.

 

With all due respect, you are very lucky or don't buy much vinyl (though ten in December is a nice load)! I probably average five new titles a month. I felt like you five or six years ago. It ranges from incredible to terrible for me. But the incredible makes up for the hassles of the not so good. The whole Carpenters reissue campaign has been a disaster and luckily UMg is acknowledging it was and is replacing them. My Taylor Swift is a mess. I think it used to be better three years ago than it is now. True, I rarely get anything warped but that was never really an issue with my, and I have a clamp so no problem.

 

I definitely encountered more warp issues back in the 70's and 80's, but the 180g think may be why we are seeing it less. My assumption, and that's all it is, is that it's harder to warp a thicker record. Most records back then were thin. That's the only benefit sonically to 180g vinyl, however. Overall, my thin albums seem to sound better overall.

 

"Pimples" have been an issue forever. Especially Motown records, in my personal experience. And I've seen them on recent albums too, but not too much.

 

Ever heard of the 1970's?

 

All my Carpenters Horizon reissues have been off centered...probably the worst album to listen to that way! They are supposed to repress the entire catalogue as the whole thing was a mess, so hopefully we'll see something better soon. Whoever pressed that box set needs to stop pressing records. They are consistently bad if this reissue is any indication. How do you mess up almost every pressing in a box set with around 13 albums and not know it?

 

I see but not so much here in Europe. In fact I don’t think I have ever seen a European pressed record with multiple ‘pimples’. You would see occasional ‘pits’, however.

 

Just regarding how things used to be back in the “golden era” ... I managed a couple different record stores back in the 1990s and had hundreds of thousands of used LPs pass through my hands.

1) Non-fill existed prior to the ‘90s. Rare because it seems to affect heavyweight pressings more than standard weight, but it existed. It’s not new.

2) “Pimples” or “bubbles” and “pits” were far more common than they are now.

3) Visible foreign debris (like tiny pieces of paper) pressed into the vinyl was far more common than it is now.

4) Certain albums were well-known for simply being crackly or defective even when they were new (e.g., Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Zappa’s One Size Fits All - which infamously has a skip pressed into “Inca Roads” on the very first pressing).

It’s never been a perfect medium.

 

Just like today, I agree that you can't make generalities, it STILL comes down to pressing quality, materials, skill at cutting, etc. There are many 70's releases that aren't great either - the same holds true - for example a London Phase 4 (UK) typically sound better than the London releases pressed later in the US for instance - it is because of the quality of vinyl and the care that went into making the LP. There is a reason people seek out particular pressings, made in a particular plant, even down to a particular run or batch, cut on a certain lathe! But it's a fact that certain labels, pressings have a better chance of quality than others.... (can you say 1980's MCA?? )... that is hard to argue, and resale value is your best indicator.

No different today. Again, label based, who made it, etc. To support, today, my experience has been if you pay up for an Analogue Productions reissue your odds for quality are better than a $20 Columbia reissue. No shocker there, like anything the expectation that paying up for quality will get.... well, more quality.

We can't put this into general / blanket statements and apply it across the entire domain. (which the premise of the post, and many of the replies are doing).

 

I think that the prices here in the UK especially are pretty outrageous at the moment. If I’m having to return records that aren’t pressed with any care for that price, I’m going to lose patience a lot quicker...

 

If the title of this thread was "Are many finding the QC of modern LP's varies by label, price point?" I think the discussion would be an entirely different one.

Today is no different than any other era, no different than anything else where "you get what you pay for" and / or "some products are better than others".

There are still some sore spots in LP manufacturing, we should be sending the message there is always room for improvement, raising the bar for some of the lower priced offerings to get better QC.... sending a blanket message that the entire state of the LP manufacturing QC is hunky dory is the wrong message.

This is why there are so many diverse responses - we don't know what labels, price points, how many buys the replies are resulting from - the context of the purchase is more telling to have a conclusive discussion. Like anything in life, it depends.

 

Mmm. I dunno. I buy a LOT of new vinyl, and certainly the defect rate of what I purchase has been dropping over the seven years since I got back into the hobby. I realize this is anecdotal because I can only report my own experiences, but overall I’m currently feeling far more comfortable buying a new LP. QC overall seems to be far better, like the thread title asks.

That being said ... there’s always room for improvement.

 

Well, in 2017, I bought 86 new releases on vinyl. Because of my musical taste, these were primarily released on indie labels ranging from fairly large concerns (members of the Beggars group, for example) to self-released discs sold through Bandcamp. List price for single-disc LPs was almost entirely in the $14-$22 range because I have a personal rule that if the vinyl costs over $10 more than the CD, I buy the CD. Of those 86, I returned one, a copy of Alvvays' Antisocialites that had a serious pressing deformity on the outer edge that rendered the disc unplayable.

 

That's outstanding!!! Good for you, I am taking you to Vegas next time I go.... you definitely defied any odds I have ever seen!

 

Then I duuno either!

Not my experience, but respect your experience and opinion.... if we all thought alike and had the same experiences, what a boring world this would be.

I am going to stick with the premise it is label based, some are better than others, with some you have to pay up for better quality. To me that is a sound premise in any endeavor, and my findings here too.

 

I just bought 3 new Classic Records pressings from AP. All 3 where scratched 2 where Lee morgan Vol 3and John Jenkins/Kenny Burrell. Waiting the the replacement disc but its ashame that all 3 had bad scratches with debris inside the inner sleeve.