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

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/

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.

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.