Rhino Records' Vinyl Quality?

The genre never appealed to me.

 

I am with you on joni tommyboy .just dont get her at all

 

I've now gotten two copies of Blue, both pressings are very lousy. Hairline scratches all over and several small gashes in the vinyl that cause loud pops. My recently purchased copies of Astral Weeks and Remain In Light are flawless, though. What's going on at RTI?

 

Out of curiosity, would anyone with a copy of the Rhino reissue of Blue be willing to look at the deadwax on side two? If so, is there etching that's been scratched out? Part of me thinks the newest batch might be pressed at Rainbo, but stuck in old RTI packaging.

 

Just pulled my copy. The scratch-out on side 2 looks like either Steve or Kevin did it because they used the wrong catalog number at first. It looks like the old Reprise catalog number, with an MS prefix.

I just got my copy from Amazon within the past 3 months. This is not a Rainbo pressing. It has all the hallmarks of an RTI pressing: the loose baggy, the RTI sticker on the outside, the clear heavy inner sleeve, the RTI coding in the deadwax. If they are pressing it at Rainbo, then RTI is shipping them everything they need to put the package together. I seriously doubt that it is pressed anywhere other than RTI. There is NO Rainbo code number is the deadwax.

 

Thanks for checking. I know it seems highly unlikely. It's just very unusual for RTI pressings to be this horrid. (In my experience at least.)

 

I buy a lot of Rhino LPs and am not aware that they ever use Rainbo (perish the very thought!!) to press vinyl. My head did a 360 degrees rotation in its socket when I read your post. I have 2 copies of the original reissue and while they aren’t up to the best Optimal standards, they are still pretty good and quiet. In fact I am going to pull one of them out later and will give it a listen. My copies are RTI, of course. I would be devastated if Rhino were to sink to Rainbo’s level. It would undo a stellar reputation that has been well earned over the past 20 years or more by Warner/Rhino. By the same token however, they use Record Industry and MPO in Europe now also so anything is possible, I guess? Although it has to be said that RI and MPO are far superior outfits (usually anyway) to Rainbo and their equivalents.

 

I have Hotel California on Rhino and it is excellent.

 

I hate to burst your bubble, but Rhino uses Rainbo on occassion. Deep Purple's Machine Head came from Rainbo and has a bad pressing defect on at least 2 copies I've been through. Also, the 4 Ramones reissues are from Rainbo. There are others out there too.

 

I've yet to notice anything subpar on the handful of Rhino LP's I have. Then again, I hear all kinds of horror stories about vinyl reissues in general from many others, condition or pressing-wise, and never experience these same problems. So the bottom line is I'm probably of little use in offering my experiences in these matters.

 

For what it's worth, I got Rhino's Transparent Days West Coast Nuggets on vinyl a few months back and the quality was awesome.

 

Listening to Alice Cooper Love It To Death colored vinyl and sounds good to my ears

 

I had three copies of Blue on vinyl before I gave up and bought the DCC CD. Each time it had something different wrong with it. The third one was the worst.

I remember on my first copy, I was about to return it over the scratching noises in "This Flight Tonight." After figuring out those noises were on the tape, I ran back to the listening room to re-evaluate it, only for there to be a repeating noise in the last 30 seconds of the last f%$# song on the disc!

 

Agreed. Female hardcore speedmetal does nothing for me.

 

I bought In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. I think it sounds great. Nice and quiet. Better sound dynamics than my original.

 

The new Rhino reissues are a nice package as well checkout the ZZ Top reissues nice quality

 

I saw 2 of those tonight and did not pick up, must go back and get one.

 

Has the quality gotten better with Rhino as the years moved on or have they always been good

 

Manufacturing on the one's I own have been good. The sources can be questionable.
The Replacements-Tim is awful.

 

EAGLES - Desperado = EXCELLENT
BLACK SABBATH - ST = EXCELLENT
TALKING HEADS - Remain In Light = MOST EXCELLENT

Rhino is pretty reliable

 

I recently bought the Rhino of James Taylor's GH. It's garbage.

 

Depends where they’re pressed. Rhino is a record label not a pressing plant. They have used a number of plants. Check the release, see where it is pressed and base that on your experience of that plant.

 

I had good luck with them until my last purchase.

 

That was a bad one. I also bought Chicago IX at the same time and that was equally bad. I think these were pressed in some place in Cleveland. I quickly found some original pressings that were much better.

 

I have found the quality of Rhino's vinyl over the past decade or so to be pretty hit and miss. I think the main problem I've encountered with Rhino LPs would be off-center pressings. I went through a few copies of the Rhino Black Sabbath S/T that were off center before giving up. And the Smiths 2011 individual vinyl releases were problematic, with some being off center and others having other problems.

But a number of Rhino LPs have been good. The 2015 Joy Division LPs came out quite nicely, for example. Some of the recent David Bowie LPs, like The Man Who Sold the World, have been fine.

The Cure LPs were a mixed bag. Some were good, others were off center, and one LP had these sort of ripple warps where the LP itself is flat, but the playing surface has these ripples on it, making the tonearm bob up and down as on a warped LP.

It's kind of a case-by-case basis depending on where a particular LP was pressed. I suspect that most of the problematic pressings I've encountered were done at Rainbo. (I think those nice 2015 Joy Division LPs were done at Optimal, IIRC.)

I will say that Rhino's customer service is excellent. On two occasions I've written them about problematic/defective pressings and they sent out a replacement copy free of charge. When I got the Smiths' Queen Is Dead vinyl box set last fall, one of the LPs of the two-disc Live in Boston record was dish warped and badly off center. The rest of the LPs were fine, though, so I didn't want to exchange the whole box, so I wrote to Rhino and they sent out a new, non-warped, non-off-center Live in Boston. It took a few months, but they did come through.