We are obviously all a little crazy. On a couple occasions I went as far as using a thin threading needle to get rid of a skip. It worked on one album but also destroyed a song on an original very expensive NIN The fragile triple album. Ended up buying a new remastered copy. If you play a lot of albums, it's not if but when s**t will happen. Once while brushing a mint US original of The Wall, I dropped the old style wooden brush and the corner of the wooden part struck the vinyl, badly scratching the entire first song of side 2. Had to fork out big bucks to find a NM replacement for this one. Another time while lifting up Hawkwind's Levitation album (the one with Ginger Baker), the record got caught in the screw groove of the VPI classic spindle and came back down violently on the spindle badly scratching the end of side one. I found a great replacement copy while vacationing in Switzerland. All that to say life is too short to worry about a couple of vinyl accidents. I now rather think of them as nice anecdotes in my collection. Do yourself a favor, buy a new copy, the odds of fixing a scratched record completely are close to nil and it's a lot cheaper than getting a new wife.
Vinyl Repair?
Last night my wife was putting on our near mint condition original Tusk pressing and proceeded to drop it. In the process of catching it, she put a pretty good gouge into the first 2 songs, resulting in healthy pops I'd like to eliminate if possible. I’ve checked out a couple of YouTube vids on how to fix, but figured I’d trust people here to truly know. Seems like my options are 1) Put weight on needle and hope that somehow regrooves it (also seems like no one here is going to advocate for using your stylus in this manner) 2) the toothpick trick which seems to get good reviews and 3) some sort of 1500 grit sandpaper which seems insane.
Any advice pre divorce?