Another tread about scratched new vinyl records

Never seen this before on a new record. There is something called spindle lines which is an indicator for a record having been played a lot by automatic record changers back in the day but if you bought this new I guess it was created at the factory indeed.
When a record is pressed it usually is sent down to a very tall spindle for it to rest ontop other records, it can look something like this:



So my best guess is that this copy might have fallen a little far off and someone had to go and manually put it through the spindle and draging it across the metal in the process. Either that or it indeed was your doing, but if yours is soft you have to press pretty hard to do something like this I imagine.

 

What is the record? I had one recently that had A and B 'scratched' on the labels but they aren't clearly marked otherwise. It could be a mark on the stamper that represents 'Alpha' that came through the label in manufacture.

 

It's Iron Maiden's Brave New World. I'm going to guess that it's the later reissue and it was pressed by Optimal Media GmbH.

Looking at the photo by @Johan Bos, they're spindle marks, probably caused by a goof during the manufacturing process.

 

To me it's a letter scratched on the lacquer which would manifest itself as a slight ridge on the stamper and indent the label. Otherwise a piece of trimmings temporarily embedded itself but that would be more random. That looks like some deliberate identifying mark.

 

It's quite plausible that it's an identifying mark. Never thought about that, actually.

 

A few years ago, I heard some Loreena McKennit music on Irish Radio and went off and ordered this one Loreena McKennitt - A Midwinter Night's Dream .
I ordered it from jpc in Germany and noted before I purchased it, that it was a Record Industry Netherlands' pressing so all should be good, quality wise. When I got it, I found it quite noisy on the first two tracks. It wasn't 'non fill' or anything like that, just a lot of pops and ticks, even after a full wet cleaning followed by ultrasonic cleaning. That put me off buying anything by the artist afterwards. For some reason, I didn't return the record either, must get rid of it actually. It's not as though the artist scrimped and picked a bad pressing facility? Something is obviously lacking with the service that Record Industry is giving to Ms. McKennit's recorded works? I am not minded to buy any further music from her as a result and that is a shame. We should contact the artist via her website or Facebook page to bring this to her attention? Yes, I think I will!

 

No, sure you have! Most records I see are 'off centre' in some respect. The good news that the majority of these are very minor and quite easily fixed, seamlessly, with a minimum of intervention. It takes just the slightest deviation in positioning the spindle hole to produce an eccentric pressing. It takes a bit of experience to competently fix the issue though. Everybody I mention this to, some inveterate collectors, know nothing about the problem. Oftentimes, I think it is probably better to stay quiet about it as it can be 'upsetting'. You may not have seen any 'wildly' off centre vinyl but in my 50 years' experience, a 100% correctly centred spindle hole on both sides is fairly rare. But, as I said, in nearly all cases it can be fixed without making an unholy mess of the spindle hole. I regularly fix spindle holes on my new purchases. I think things have improved though in the past year. Anything I bought that was pressed by RTI in recent times has been spot on so I'm glad to see that they seem to have 'nailed' that problem. RTI vinyl was always centred on one side and 'off' on the other side, in my experience but not now it seems.

 

I recently purchased Marshall Crenshaw's 'Miracle of Science' reissue, the record comes with a bonus 7' picture sleeve, the geniuses at the record factory put the 7' inside the inner sleeve of the main album, guess what happened....i now have a limited edition engraved side 1

 

Non audible scratch...return or keep?. My common sense is saying the former. But it’s so disappointing to get a scratch on a new record.