What do you do when you get a bad vinyl record pressing?

Every once in a while it happens. It is particularly sad when it is a prized album from the past. I toss them in the trash.

"I had my latest disappointment with The Cult. I remember the album, which I had on CD, from my college days and recalled there were some pretty cool songs on the album. In fact I recall liking the whole album. I wondered how it would sound on my rig now?"

If you think about it, your system when you were young and in love with that music, was probably far inferior to what you have now. Plus, nostalgia is a pair of rose-colored glasses.  I would guess that the recording never was very good from a pure audiophile point of view (not criticizing the music per se).  So now you have had a dose of reality.  I had this happen decades ago when Classic or one of the other premium reissuers put out a Buddy Holly album full of great oldies.  I had never heard that music on anything but a cheap 45 rpm juke box or a car radio.  Guess what. The SQ does not hold up. You can hear all the warts.  Even Bernie Grundman cannot make chicken salad out of chicken s##t.

Wall art??

that album ( Love ) was pruduced by Steve Brown , I sugest you get the next one Electric and have a listen it was made by Rick Rubin and its wery well made !! in my op

When it comes to Vinyl, there is reasonably cheap purchases that can prove to be not so valuable as a purchase when experienced in use.

Alternatively, there are Purchases that are much more expensive that can prove to be not so valuable as a purchase when experienced in use.

I would assume said Album has been acquired for approx’ $40 CAD, No Matter how you feel, it remains a $40 Album as condition is assessed on Visual and not ones thoughts on the recording quality.

I spent £750 on MC Cart’ that did not deliver to the level I believed it was capable of. I tried to eke the better from it and Jacked in early in the life of the Cart’.

I would assume I lost £300ish the first time I used it due to depreciation in value and the same Cart’ is today stored or offer out as a loaner Cart’ to individuals with a Temporary need for a Cart’.

Sometimes the best outcome is not to materialise, acceptance and moving on is a great freedom to give oneself. 

I have had my worst New Purchase of Vinyl Experiences through using Amazon, some Albums supplied are pure Cacca. Amazon returns Policy Helps massively, but multiple returns can have to happen until the ideal pressing is found.

How does that happen, are Amazon in possession of Pressings from multiple pressing plants, and some Plants or Shifts at a Plant are not as in control of quality as another?

Is today’s Pressing Plants producing a Large Volume of Pressings Specifically for Amazon and Low Quality Pressings are not pulled from the Batches produced?

Buying direct from an Artist as a Merch Purchase or as a Crowd Funded Group Buy, as my experiences have been, does not of yet, have records received that are not wanted to be kept. Quality issues are non existent.    

There are a lot of poorly made records, and many poor recordings in every music format. Truly great recordings are exceptional. It's always been that way.

+1 @lewm 

ever listen to a Phil Spector girl group song on your best rig?  That whole walk of sound thing sounds like cheesecloth.

  A lot of popular music was mixed with the notion that people would be listening on a jukebox or AM car radio.  Not meant to be played on a system that cost more than your parents house.

in 2021 i bought a 3000 pressing classical collection off ebay. i was already a classical enthusiast if not very knowledgeable and owned about 2000 classical pressings. this collection had been owned by a Gramophone reviewer and was very good for performances, but not necessarily the spendy rare pressings. lots of early music. it sat upstairs for 3 years and finally after i had retired for a year and some shelving arrived i needed to make the logistics work i began the process of cleaning and organizing. which included listening briefly to each pressing.

it took me 7-8 weeks to complete the project last summer. being retired i could stay on it. the first thing i did was to pull out all the digitally sourced pressings, which came to 400-450. these i took to a second hand store and sold them for $200. next i isolated the mono pressings as best i could. about 250. i love mono and have a separate mono arm and cartridge, but i was going to be particular about which mono’s i would clean and sample.

also; another few hundred were box sets, and these i decided not to clean. box set classical is usually un-played and already clean and mostly dust free. if/when i play them i will clean as necessary.

this left me 1800-1900 pressings to clean and sample. the collection was remarkably pristine and appeared mostly to be un played. but as i went along i did encounter a few bad pressings; maybe a skip or noise issue. they went in the garbage as i was not going to waste a record sleave or plastic cover. maybe 25 out of 1800 were in some way or another throw away’s.

cleaning and sampling this collection was the most profoundly enjoyable hifi thing i have ever done. reading the covers and listening was a huge education and time machine as i learned about how early music evolved into modern classical. i would google each composer and artist and learn as i went along. turns out that early music recordings are very simple and pure. mostly live recordings, and little of the over processed type sound. and lovingly mastered and pressed. so the sonics were very fine.

and it was painful to throw away records. but i wanted to end up with a clean and curated classical collection. 

each record had to earn it’s way onto my shelf. and they most certainly did do that. here is a thread about this on WBF.

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/stuff-of-dreams-3000-classical-records-inbound.33887/

That recording/ mastering on CD is also pretty light on bass. Not sure your vinyl experience is unique. And agree w above that maybe when you were listening in the past the playback system had a “loudness” feature that helped :-)

Unwanted records and avoiding the bin/trash final destiny.

A LOGICAL OFFERED UP SOLUTION…… “Vinyl Turnover Delight”

RECIPE

Preheat oven to 180 degrees

Undress (not you) the record

Place on middle shelf with a cardboard base

Allow to cook/heat (door open) for one minute

Remove from oven and evenly bend up the sides

Form vinyl into a nice round rippled bowl

Stand for one minute (the vinyl, not you)

End result is a nice round crinkled plant pot

The pot also has the requisite hole in the bottom

No crackles, pops or bad recording ever again

Serve on a suitable saucer.

“A splendid time is guaranteed for all”

If you can’t live with a sub standard recording or pressing, don’t punish yourself ever again.

Disclaimer….. The above solution is obviously a one way trip.

@slaw use cover for “Wall art??”

@cleeds 

"There are a lot of poorly made records, and many poor recordings in every music format. Truly great recordings are exceptional. It's always been that way."

Agreed, although the percentage of bad vs. good has gotten bigger and bigger since the late 80s.

@vuch 

That Cult album may have sounded terrible all along, you just didn't care so much back in college! lol.

"So I did the research and got a NM Canadian pressing"

CANADIAN?!! 

Sure, if you want Rush

https://www.discogs.com/release/3358925-Rush-Rush

You need the British press 

https://www.discogs.com/release/378990-The-Cult-Love

I have this, debut and Electric in British press. 

No shortage of bass. It's not on the level of a Robert Ludwig Led Zeppelin II  but to my ears it's a 1980's recording. This is digital/CD era stuff, so no surprises.

80's/90's Rock era seems more inconsistent than with the already inconsistent recording quality than previous decades.

In the Late 70’s - Early 80’s a lot of listening to Vinyl LP’s was done in a Friends Home, where a small group with Beers would have a evening of Music.

The Friends Room had a Foam Ceiling Tile, which had become the record storage area. My Friend had developed the skill to Spin Throw the LP and embed the LP’s into the ceiling tile.

Follow Up replays were fine, even from LP’s subjected to the storage method on a multitude of occasions.

A very sketchy recollection suggest the concerns for the LP’s was more to do with an individual falling over and landing on the Record Player 

Years ago my wife started indiscriminately using some of my albums to make christmas gifts.  I wasn’t sure for a while if I married the right woman.

@curiousjim,  where's the body buried? 

Easy. Turn into a frisbee and see how far you can throw it. You may only get one shot at it.

doctor it in various ways unless I can get a better copy somewhere. so many used discs were mistracked on crappy equipment, the majority in fact in my experience.

"so many used discs were mistracked on crappy equipment"  After high school the wanna be in me audiophile purchased a Garrard Zero 100 turntable.  I think there were a pile of lathe chips on the floor after an LP was played.  

Only album I ever Frisbee'd was Ummagumma by Pink Floyd,  A well deserved toss.

@jsd52756 “l think there were a pile of lathe chips on the floor after an LP was played”

l love exaggeration if it makes a scenario more funny.
Are you really being serious, or did  you use something like a scalpel or a safety pin as a stylus with your Zero 100?

Perhaps being young you made a mistake and had the cartridge tracking at 2 ounces instead of 2 grams?*
 

* means l am exaggerating.

I simply do not torture myself by listening to it.

We didn't notice bad pressings as much in the '80's and '90's because we all had processors. We prided ourselves on getting the music to sound as good as we could make it sound with all of the levers on the equalizer. I also had a dbx 3bx III which totally helped the sonics. 

Then the industry said there was too much noise from those processors and the most pure way to listen was to have no processors or tone controls or balance controls...  

@tablejockey +1. I'll take a chance on the UK. Generally I've been very satisfied with the UK presses. 

Not quite lathe chips but that turntable was deplorable. It ruined a lot of LP's. It seemed like it would grind the inside tracks. I used AudioTechnica cartridges and a Concord cartridge.  I really liked the Concord cartridge.  I wish I had one now to listen to some 50 years later.  Played through a Sansui 8080 which was a sweet amp.  -John

Yeah, I hate that. I typically listen to it for a while to set if it grows in me and then I sell it if it doesn't. 

@mikelavigne 

the first thing i did was to pull out all the digitally sourced pressings, which came to 400-450. these i took to a second hand store and sold them for $200

I wish you could have thrown them my way.

Especially now we have found out just how many 'analogue' disks were secretly digitally mastered 

@jsd52756 “Not quite lathe chips, but that turntable (Garrard Zero 100) was deplorable”

My scalpel joking aside, l know the Garrard Zero 100 very well. I did only know of one owner who loved it, a girl. I think she just liked the “bling l👀k” with all that see through plastic arm pivot mechanism.

The idea was sound mathematics but the resulting sound was never great. Too much horizontal friction in the engineering to make the null point “zero” all through the record.  The cartridge angle movement while playing was a novelty selling point.

As l say, on paper correct tracking was a good idea but there was just too much to overcome with the engineering. Also you could not use the lightest tracking cartridges with so much leveraging to move the cartridge.

In the 70s 1.25 grams was the preferred tracking weight for Shure V15’s and the Goldring G900 series for examples. With the Zero 100 not a good idea… think of doubling that with over 2 and up to 3 grams to stay in the groove. It could never track any of the so called Shure “trackability” test records.

Garrard tried and failed, but they did sell a lot. For the serious hi-fi enthusiast it was only ever considered a gimmick at best.

I wish you could have thrown them my way.

Especially now we have found out just how many ’analogue’ disks were secretly digitally mastered 

@richardbrand 

i did think about who might want them.

so i considered taking them to my local audio club and offering them for free. so i would have had to wait for the next meeting. but the Dear Wife over ruled me and insisted i sell them. and logistically after sitting on all these records for three years, finally getting my shelving delivered to allow me to be able to process them, i just wanted to move on from the one’s i was not going to keep. and once i loaded them in my car, which was a pain in itself, i decided if the second hand store did not want them, they would go to the land fill, i was not going to unload them and load them again. i was in a removal mind set and wanted to move on.

if i would have known someone locally who actually wanted digitally sourced classical records i would have called them to pick them up. but for sure i was not going to ship them. the cost would have been triple the value. and a serious effort to pack and ship. so not worth it.

and yes out of my 12,000 records i do have some digitally sourced pressings; it’s less than 7% closer to 5%. and as much as people want to make a big deal about it......it’s not really. some digitally sourced pressings sound good, some don’t.....but none sound great compared to all analog. but some have great music which overrides the digital part. the recording process and music are bigger overall than the all analog or not. i’m not anti digitally sourced. but it’s not nothing either. and i have a top digital source so i do realize how they compare (mostly prefer the streaming file to the pressing). i do have a dozen or so of the MFSL digital step pressings which i don’t care for really. preferred my other all analog pressings to those before the big reveal. but never knew about the digital step until it came out. it was enlightening to realize why i did not care for them as a few were some favorite music in 45 rpm. live and learn.

the reason i wanted to get rid of these digitally sourced classical pressings was more about space and time to clean, and the cost of a liner and jacket. they were not worth more shelving and such......to me. i wanted to know my efforts for each pressing would be worth it.

@mikelavigne, I concur with your digitally sourced pressings paragraph. I don't seek them out but in several cases I've crossed that line in search for the best sounding. The last two I recall are Steven Wilson remixes of Aqualung and Songs From The Big Chair. I like my original green label Aqualung and it doesn't fall into the bad pressing category but after I heard the Wilson remix I had to have it.

I do like the classical genre and have maybe 20 albums in the discography. I find that I don't listen to them very much. I didn't grow up listening to the genre. I suspect that if I did or truly loved the genre when I first heard it, I would have a stronger emotional bond that would help me to reach for the albums. I prefer listening to classical on NPR because of the DJ's information and I don't have to flip the record.

I concur with your digitally sourced pressings paragraph. I don’t seek them out but in several cases I’ve crossed that line in search for the best sounding. The last two I recall are Steven Wilson remixes of Aqualung and Songs From The Big Chair. I like my original green label Aqualung and it doesn’t fall into the bad pressing category but after I heard the Wilson remix I had to have it.

@vuch 

agree!

there are plenty of examples of great music which is digitally sourced, some of which was mastered to analog tape. and others pure digital files but still make great records. we have ’Brothers In Arms’, ’Famous Blue Raincoat’, ’Cafe Blue’.....and lots of others. these are great records. i have a 2 reel master dub of Cafe Blue. great sound. so it’s possible. are these in the league of my best all analog pressings? no, they are not. but musically they are wonderful in their own right. and they have nothing to apologize for. the music rises above any other concerns.

I do like the classical genre and have maybe 20 albums in the discography. I find that I don’t listen to them very much. I didn’t grow up listening to the genre. I suspect that if I did or truly loved the genre when I first heard it, I would have a stronger emotional bond that would help me to reach for the albums. I prefer listening to classical on NPR because of the DJ’s information and I don’t have to flip the record.

as far as a taste for classical, for me it was learned late in life. when i became a serious audiophile 30 years ago in 1994 (i was 43), i had no idea about classical. i was a 60’s rock guy purely. but as i started my system building process little by little i read the hifi magazines (before the internet) and they talked about classical and jazz so i started buying classical and jazz and learning. as my system got better, classical and jazz sounded better and better. and honestly my 60’s and 70’s rock little by little got somewhat exposed as not always sounding that great n direct compare.

so i learned slowly and got into the low hanging fruit of classical and jazz, the stuff that was easy to digest. and it turned out that i loved it. so as i got deeper first into jazz, then later into classical, and as my system got better, i gravitated to more and more adventurous jazz and classical. 

now 30 years later i listen to 70% classical. both digital and analog. i still love my 60’s and 70’s rock, but it’s now less than 10% of my listening. 

and i listen to whole classical albums streaming. there is so much out there. my system is designed to do great large scale classical. i love string quartets. and lately i’ve been listening to lots of large choral pieces. there is so much ground to cover.

so just be open and follow your ears and where ever the music leads.

as far as learning about classical; i don’t know that much. but i do read jacket covers of my collection, and when i stream there is lots of information, and then there is google to fill in the gaps. it there for the digesting whichever way you hear the music.

whenever i get a bad Vinyl pressing, i just trade it back at a local Vinyl store

+1 @joeycastillo - donate to a vinyl store ASAP to get disappointment off my mind

@lewn, @tablejockey, @kennyc +1

Yes! donating a record gives you a great feeling. Seeing the enjoyment on a person’s face is priceless when they find out you are giving them the album and don’t want anything for it. Donating to a vinyl store is also very cool, awesome suggestion!

I had the chance to test my hypothesis. Would the Cult Love Canadian pressing sound better on a vintage rig than on my high end rig? 

I hooked my newly refurbished Harman Kardon 930 Twin Powered receiver to a buddy’s Technics SL-2100 / Audio-Technica cartridge and his bookshelf speakers of which I forget the brand. It was a generic brand sounding name. They had a tweeter, 5" grey shinny plastic woofer and were front ported.

We were both really blown away with the sonics! All of the tone controls were set to neutral. The bass was there! Heavy, appropriate, what I remember the album sounding like. The only questionable thing I noticed was that the volume knob was at 50%. It was a nice listening level, not too loud. Sure enough, my buddy confirmed my suspicion that his speakers were 4 ohm.

Tomorrow night I’ll finally have the chance to put the new HK930 in my vintage rig! I also have an Audio-Techica cartridge on the AKAI linear tracking tt. I suspect I’ll get a little more volume from the Infinity RS4b speakers since they’re rated 8 to 4 ohms in the specs.

I did pull the trigger on a UK pressing that tablejocky recommended. It would be nice to get a pressing that sounds KILLER on the main rig. We’ll see when it arrives? Worst case scenario is a shoot out of Canadian vs UK on the vintage rig. 

The bass was there!

Why it's missing on your main rig is a mystery? My 1st inclination is the cartridge/setup. If other LP's are fine, then never mind.

The album Electric is especially punchy as it was produced by Rick Rubin.

The Cult – Electric – Vinyl (First pressing, Gatefold, LP, Album, Stereo), 1987 [r861424] | Discogs

A little closer to epic 70's recordings like a debut Montrose or debut Van Halen by Ted Templeman.

@tablejockey, your inclination also occurred to me as well. Other records do sound great but there's no harm in checking tonearm/cartridge set up again. I'll do that when I get back to the main rig. Right now I'm just in heaven with the vintage rig! Listening to Love again as I type this. The latest thing I've done this morning is adding the Bellari phono stage in the chain to compare to the HK internal phono stage. 

If I run into a bad vinyl I always ultrasonically clean it twice then retry it.

Sometimes it has revived the record, if not I trash it.   

Frisbee

It happens for sure. With CD's as well. And, sometimes your VERY pleasantly surprised with some thin vinyl reissue of something that sounds great. Most of us that collect records I think read the forums on "best sounding pressings". But sometimes you just don't know what is what! Example, I was reading up on the Beatles German pressings after acquiring the sought after "magical mystery tour stereo" (lives up the hype), and folks were warning to stay away from the German Blue Odeon pressings. HOWEVER, I have a German Blue Odeon stereo pressing of Rubber Soul which is staggeringly good. Such is the hobby I suppose. Happy hunting!

frisbee