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Brand new vinyl - skips?

I'm new into modern vinyl, so new, in fact, that I set up my TT yesterday and played vinyl for the first time in nearly 20 years. Anyway, I played several albums, from different sources. I played a couple of used albums, and they seemed to play fine and sound excellent.

Then I played three premium, brand-new albums. Two of the three skipped badly and repeatedly. Up until skipping badly, the albums sounded absolutely wonderful. So, I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong that I can correct, or if I need to contact the retailer and ask for an exchange. I don't have a record cleaner, either machine or manual, yet so I played the records straight out of the package.

Given my newness, I could imagine a simple cleaning, an adjustment to some part of the setup, or something else could correct the problem. Any insight would be most appreciated.
kthomas
5 responses Add your response
mcdonald43
52 posts
 
If you are using the JMW9 series unipivot arm I would remove the anti-skating from the arm altogether. I tried it on my Scoutmaster and found it to do more harm than good. I have had no problems with skipping either way however. According to some the JMW9 was designed to use the twist in the cable from the arm to the interconnect box to provide the anti-skating. Some felt it was not enough so VPI produced that add on anti-skating as a solution.
FWIW
sbank's avatar
sbank
3,378 posts
 
Call VPI & ask for Mike. He'll talk you through proper setup. Cheers,
Spencer
kthomas OP
911 posts
 
When I played some more vinyl last night and it skipped a third time, I looked more closely at what was going on and it appears the anti-skating mechnism on my VPI is causing it. I believe I have it set up correctly, but it is obviously causing the problem, so I just disabled it until I can spend more time on figuring it out. Disabled, everything played perfectly.
xiekitchen
821 posts
 
That sounds REALLY weird that your brand new audiophile quality records skip... did you hit something on the tone arm and now the antiskating force is set extremely high (causing the arm to not want to move inward??) I would check your tonearm settings or check on a test disc.
avguygeorge
2,300 posts
 
Might be tracking force?? Further,you might look at these albums at the cut where the skip occurs.As an example; song 3 1/2 way in-- Usually you can see a tiny lump that might be causing the skip.--(I have seen these lumps on several occasions) What I have done is take my finger nail and pop the offending lump--then the record plays fine)
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