New Vinyl Defects


I'd like a little input from you vinylphiles out there.

My buying recently shifted back to almost exclusively vinyl rather than CD. I'm buying mostly "pre-owned", but recently purchased an armload of new and 180 gram pressings. A recent order of 4 LPs, 2 of them were defective. One is unplayable - it had label glue on the last track, and (this is the really odd part) the grooves were off-center, so much I could see the tonearm oscillating back and forth, and the sound was also oscillating. The other one wasn't so bad, or unusual, the first track had near-constant "scratching" sound for nearly the whole song. I recall this as being pretty common in "my before cd" days, but assumed with 180 gram LP's that the QC may be better.

Here's the questions:
1) is the above unusual? That is, is 50% defective - common, or anomaly?
2) What's the likelyhood that if I send back the second LP (Johnny Cash "American V: A Hundred Highways") for a replacement, that I'll get a good copy? I like it and will tolerate the first track if they're all bad.
bdgregory

Showing 1 response by hals_den

Vinyl is somewhat unpredictable. I have bought brand new vinyl with lots of loud pops that never went away and have found and bought records that looked like they had survived countless late night Ultimate games at Chico State that sounded surprisingly okay.
I recommend checking out Last Record Preservative. Last was the first to explain to me why records develope pops in the first place. Since I've been using it, I don't expect pops on new records any more.
And I'm not sold on the heavy vinyl. Generally my lighter vinyl sounds better than the heavier.