Tips on Buying Quiet Quality sounding LP's

Buy classical in multi-volume boxed sets. Many never got played even once.

Roughly half of our 3,000 LP's are these, nearly all bought off ebay. At least two thirds were never played before we received them.

Supply is often good, demand often thin, so prices can be low.

As always, it helps if your timing is good and you understand what you're looking at. People pay hundreds of dollars for Pierre Fournier's stunning performances of the Bach cello suites. I spotted them buried amongst an 11 volume, 120 LP Bach collection on pristine Archiv Production vinyl. Bought the whole collection, never played, for $.50 per LP.

Of course it helps to like music that lacks mass market appeal, and to have alot of shelf space!

Dev,

Effective cleaning before the LP's first play is indeed essential, both for best/quietest sound and for the longevity of the LP, whether new or used.

The stylus of a phono cartridge, depending on the model, may have a contact radius as small as 3-4 microns. As the groove spins along the stylus is deflected by obstacles too small to see without an electron microscope. The cartridge doesn't know whether any particular deflection was caused by a groove modulation ("music") or some speck of crud ("noise"), it generates a signal regardless. Quiet backgrounds require eliminating those specks of crud.

Non-solid contaminates like pressing mold release agents or lubricants like Gruv Glide also degrade the signal. They may make the background quieter by lubricating some of the microscopic specks, but it's a false quiet because that lubrication also prevents the stylus from seeing small groove modulations. Assuming a sufficiently resolving system, the sonic result is an attenuation of HF's (modulations of small wavelength) and low level details (modulations of small amplitude). Accurate reproduction of everything cut into the groove requires the removal of everything between stylus and vinyl before you play.

Regarding LP longevity, as Jaybo mentioned it takes an effort. Always remember that you're sliding a microscopic plastic groove beneath an extremely sharp diamond - under pressure. Any hard particulates will be scraped between plastic and diamond. Care to guess which surface loses? (Actually the answer is "both", but that's another topic.)

Play a dirty record even once and you've surely damaged it. The only question is, "How much damage and is my system good enough to detect it?"

Bummer.

I'm 55 and my ears still detect test tones to at least 15kHz. Paul's go significantly higher. Of course he hangs around by his toes and only flies out after dark.

Just how long do we have to wait before our records start sounding better, dammit?! LOL