Classic Records 200 gram vinyl problems - Page 3

I managed to play the last of the Classic Records 200g vinyl pressings that were in my queue. All of them were "lipped" records and two out of five had bad physical defects.

Also, I have gone through a bad run of Blue Note and OJC reissues on standard and 180 gram vinyl. I had an order of 10 records and so far I have a pile of 6 that need to go back with two left to play. I have a much higher rejection rate for 180 and 200 gram vinyl than I do for standard pressings, but I am even running into a lot of problems with standard pressings as well. I don't know who is pressing these reissues for Blue Note and OJC. Is it RTI?

The only audiophile labels I have not had repeated issues with is Speakers Corner and Simply Vinyl, and I have only been buying their pressings exclusively since I started this thread. Speakers Corner 180 gram vinyl pressings are about $5 more than Classic Records 200 gram vinyl, and it's worth it in my opinion.

I don't know if the problem is with RTI or its customers. But it seems to me that someone in the supply chain is trying to cut corners and shave costs (like using a set of stampers too many times, poor grade vinyl, etc.). As an audiophile I would far and away prefer to pay a few dollars more in exchange for assured quality of these records rather than current pricing with a near 50% rejection rate. I can also tell you that in the vast majority of cases the defects appear on the first and last tracks of a record. They are almost never in the middle.

The state of new vinyl pressings in today's market is abysmal and nothing for the vinylphile to be excited about.

--Jerome

I wish I had your good fortune. I really do because I would prefer to have the vinyl than a refund. But judging from what others have said here and on Vinyl Asylum it would seem that excellent pressings are the exception rather than the rule.

It wasn't always this way. I bought a few thousand $$ in new vinyl last year and if I had one bad record out of the entire bunch then that was a lot. But I have seen a steady decline in quality this year and it is getting to the point where I am afraid to buy new vinyl at all. I've already nixed plans to upgrade my turntable, tonearm, and cartridge. It is hard to justify that kind of expense in this quality challenged environment, and I really don't have the time to do the QA checking for the pressing plant or the record labels.

In short, I am scaling back my new vinyl buying considerably and will only buy Speakers Corner and Simply Vinyl pressings as long as the quality holds up.

I still would like to know who presses the Blue Note and OJC reissues if anyone out there has that information.

--Jerome

It isn't the source material. The new records I'm buying are mostly showing up with physical defects in the vinyl itself -- like recurring loud pops at 1-revolution intervals that run all the way through an entire track.

The majority of what I buy is jazz reissues...mostly on the Blue Note, Riverside, Columbia, and Verve labels.

--Jerome

I have been wondering whether or not audiophiles have been hanging on to defective pressings and living with the problem...or if it is just me with unreasonably high standards.

For $30 to $50 for an audiophile pressing I expect zero physical defects in the vinyl. Audiophiles are paying more money for 180 and 200 gram vinyl because they want better sound, not defective records. If I want bad sounding records I can get those for $3 on eBay.

I can be a little more forgiving with standard vinyl pressings since they cost much less. I can stand a pop or two on a $10 record. But when I order 20 records and 12 of them have loud pops then I am going to send the bunch of them back.

I have to cut back on my vinyl buying not because I can't afford it, but because I don't trust new vinyl enough to have acceptably low defect rates. Which means that I need to play test every single record I buy within the 30-day return window that most dealers give you. Since I am a very busy professional I don't always have the time for it.

I had a much better experience last year. I bought about 200 new records and I think two might have been bad. This year so far I have bought about 100 new records and at least 35 of them have been bad.

--Jerome

Yes they did. At first I thought maybe it was a problem with my Benz Micro Glider cartridge so I pulled it and checked it under a microscope. The stylus is fine. So I remounted the cart and aligned it. Same problem on the same records. Known good records sound fantastic.

As I said before, as general rule I don't run new albums through my VPI. I hit them with a carbon fibre brush before playing. I will only put them in the RCM if there are playback problems. Sometimes a cleaning will do the trick. But most of the time it is a problem with the record.

BTW, I have all of the Classic Records 200 gram Led Zeppelin albums and mine are all fine -- but those were all purchased early last year. The problems I am running into is on records I have bought this year.

--Jerome

I'm not trying to be a wise guy here, but do you seriously think the samples I posted in this thread are acceptable? If you ordered a dozen 200 gram albums and over half of them showed up like that would you be satisified? I very much doubt it. It's one thing for a product not to live up to insanely high expectations, and it's quite another for a product to fail to meet an acceptable standard of quality. Audiophile pressings filled with pops and clicks for $30 to $50 is indefensible from where I sit.

As memepool said, the mp3 clips I posted sound worse than most cheap records you can buy on eBay for a couple of bucks.

And since I have close to 750 vintage LPs in my library -- that I paid less than $10 each for -- that play without these sorts of showstopper problems I think it is fair to expect very expensive audiophile pressings to perform at least as well.

If it is truely routine for audiophile vinyl to be defective like this then what can possibly be the incentive to buy it, and what possible incentive can there be for the record label and pressing plant to improve the products if audiophiles accept bad records?

--Jerome