It takes zero effort to properly handle a record

I've been handling records for 34 years and they just don't get scratched, except the one time I let one slip while flipping it over while being a little drunk. It's not like you have to be ocd or take extra time. It almost seems harder to mishandle them.

I was at a friend's house recently and he was playing Revolver. It sounded like gravel. I thought it must have been an old, beat up copy. Nope, a 2012 reissue. I would have to put some serious effort into making a brand new record sound that bad in 5 years time.

Anybody else perplexed by people mishandling records?

Apparently Hendrix was really bad about taking care of records, which is why I don't listen to him anymore.

 

about to drop a butt onto his 401...

 

Why is it that spastic me can handle records and manual tonearms sans cueing without worry even drunk, and many of you have issues? My spasticity is from Cerebral Palsy and spinal issues. I am curious. Yes, once proper record handling is learned, and often practiced, it is automatic. I've handled manual tonearms professionally for over 43 years as a matter of course.

 

I get a kick out of seeing MFSL or MOFI audiophile records that are trashed. Beat. Go figure.

 

You baws should have discussed a little pressing plant called Rainbo, that's all I have to say!

 

Lots of folks can't take care of optical media any better. Perhaps worse if they also do time in a car. My 1987 discs look like my 2017 discs.

 

Crosley TT?

 

My first real album was in 1964 (Song, Pictures, Stories ) by 1966 I was very careful with my albums. I was 11 yrs old.

 

Maybe some people who are buying now just don't know better. Im 33 and lucky that my dad has always had LP's and showed/told me at any early age how to handle them, not everyone will have had that simple lesson given to them, and more wont be reading websites in an effort to learn it either.

Its theur records of course, I suppose they can handle them how they want, ignorant to what it might be doing to the LP's.

 

Even when I didn't even know what a record was or had a record player, when my parents let me look at their old albums, I was always careful with them. I was 10-12 at the time. I knew they were fragile, and could visually grade them... with "dirty, playable (I guess), and destroyed."

 

My visits to Redbox tell me disc media is difficult to handle in any format.

 

Jimi's got an Ortofon SPU and the matching Ortofon arm...what number is that arm?

Sweet!

 

Most of the time I use the cue lever the stylus doesn't go where I planned.
Every time I use my thumb it's dead on.

Anyways, it takes longer to do the "line up and lower" than just placing the stylus with whatever appendage you use.

 

"Effort" isn't the issue. "Giving a $hit" is.

 

Drives me crazy how many used records I see in the shops with big, smudgy fingerprints.

 

Not as bad as ladies fingernails....some still have the nail paint in the scratches

 

What's even worse: smudgy fingerprints on new, sealed records.

 

no what takes 0 effort is to pull a record off the platter and and stack it on the other records that you were playing before. Putting a record back into its sleeve and cover and filing back on a shelf actually takes a good bit of wanting to do it and effort.

 

Those lp punishers will certainly call us OCD

I'm perplexed at people who handle ANYTHING properly

 

Most common audiophile errors (whom we expect to handle a record the right way) "pinch the edge" method of extracting the record from the sleeve, and the "slide" method that scuffs the surface.
Here is one of very few correct you tube demonstrations, a little rough returning the record/inner to its jacket. Using the correct two middle fingers on label method, and hand inside the sleeve (for air space between it and the record) the sleeve slips on better by angling the record up, and let gravity assist in letting the sleeve "fall" on the record.

 

haha! while in college, made the mistake of loaning a record to a beautiful lady, meticulous nails of course... the record was never the same!

 

To think I applied ALL of the above intuitively since I bought my first record, plus keeping them clean, and I'm no genious

 

Both of my hands have gradually become more deformed over the years by rheumatoid arthritis until they reached a stage where I could no longer handle a record without getting greasy fingerprints all over it. Cure was to buy some white cotton gloves. I only need to use the left glove, would have been my right normally, but I've had to revert to my left as my right hand is more deformed than the left making it far more difficult to handle the actual vinyl.
Playing records is an ucomfortable process for me. I'm keeping my fingers crossed (metaphorically speaking of course) that my hands don't get any worse or I'll have the dreaded task of having to train my wife, something she nor I particularly look forward to. With any luck things won't reach that stage though as the deterioration in both hands seems to have at least slowed, or hopefully stopped over the last year or so.