analog newbie question/vinyl weight

Mine are all 12" across, plus or minus a twidge. ;-)

Rushton, wonderful post. I actually have some 104g (Telefunken) records that sound surprisingly good. Yesterday I played a new Cyprien Katsaris/Liszt LP and was worried the record would be too thin. Yet the piano tone was decent and the dynamics were certainly uncompressed. Elizabeth was right, choice of mastering techniques and other variables matter more than the weight of the vinyl. OTOH I'm reasonably sure I heard some intervinyl resonances that might have been better damped by a thicker record.

Luke,

Be aware that using the weight/thickness of an LP to estimate arm height is only valid when comparing LPs on the same record label (and from the same pressing plant and era). Different plants and engineers used different gear and adjusted it differently. Therefore, cutting stylus SRA's vary widely between similar weight LPs on different labels. A 180g Decca/London will not want the same arm height as a 180g RCA or Mercury or MFSL reissue. Not even close.

We use weight (as a proxy for thickness) just as you're planning to, but only within the context of a single record label. We have a baseline setting for a typical weight on each label, then adjust for different weights from there.

That's still just an estimate of course. Fine tuning for each LP is by ear.