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Is it worth starting to collect vinyl at 28?

Started by MoonDust, November 12, 2018, 06:41:33 PM

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Record collecting is a lot of fun if you don't become anal about the condition of the vinyl, because the prices drop exponentially.

manticore

The thing is, Ebay is a bit wild west while Discogs is a proper specialist site with a huge amount of sellers on there, only a very few of whom are rip-off merchants from my experience. It's pretty well organised and easy to search, the seller feedback system is quite reliable, and it pays me a reasonable fee to shill for it on the internet.

BlodwynPig


Absorb the anus burn

Yes.

It's a lovely thing to collect................ There's some good advice on this page.

magval

Agreed, valuable advice except for the statement made near the beginning that advising avoiding all new pressings of albums, which is bollocks that discounts the excellent work done by the likes of Chris Bellman and all new albums.

#35
Moondust, what sort of music do you want to buy?

I made my living selling second hand dance vinyl 1991-2010 (new vinyl 91-97 too). I programmed my own website from scratch late 90's then started on eBay 1999 and later Discogs and made a killing selling house/disco/techno/hip hop/hardcore/UK garage 12" singles 2000-2010 until mp3's meant that you could play old music without having to own the vinyl and the bottom dropped out of the market. I've still got 15,000 records in a basement that I haven't even looked at in 10 years. Most of these are landfill at the moment (maybe they'll go up on value again, I doubt it - they're the vinyl equivalent of indie landfill CDs from the 2000s).

Having said that I've never been pure about vinyl, if I was still DJing I'd defiantly use a laptop. I'm a massive fan of streaming and and I'm more than happy to use Spotify to listen to music, I'll listen to more obscure stuff on youTube all day, no problem. I DJed 1988-92 and the quality of 95% of the systems in clubs that I played in was no where near as good as Spotify.

If I was buying vinyl today it would be either.

1. In the spirit of someone like Head Gardener - with a broad taste trawling the boot sales/charity shops and picking up anything that looks interesting or fun for cheap.

or less likely (in my case)

2. Take the time and money to build a good system and buy used vinyl from Discogs and eBay (nothing less than very good+). I'd only do this if I had the time to sit down or potter around and REALLY appreciate the music.


Sebastian Cobb

I tend not to go below vg+ unless I'm buying in person really cheap. But I've found that generally scuffs and scratches add much less noise than muck, which generally a record in bad shape will likely have lots of too. I've been quite surprised how quiet some fairly scuffed up records have come out after a run through my cleaner.

NoSleep

Quote from: Delete Delete Delete on November 12, 2018, 08:20:36 PM
You don't have the change the needles if you don't want to. Only if your after the very best sound.

...and don't want to damage your precious irreplaceable s/h vinyl. If you watch the surface of a record as you play it with a damaged stylus, you can see it change colour as it each groove gets overturned like a ploughed field.

You can tell when the stylus needs replacing as it starts to get lower in the groove as it wears and things start to sound cracklier (playing the dust at the bottom of the groove). Not something you'll need to worry about more than once every 1-2 years, unless the stylus gets inadvertently damaged by some other means than ordinary use (like playing the bare turntable all night like I left mine to do all night once.

My deck is a Rega Planar and to change between 45rpm and 33rpm you need to lift the platter off to access the belt drive directly. Not a big issue at all, especially if all you do is buy albums.

Some new decks offer all three speeds (78, 45 & 33) but you need a different stylus if you want to play 78s (and playing 78s with a normal stylus will damage it).

Johnny Yesno

Quote from: NoSleep on November 13, 2018, 09:34:58 AM
My deck is a Rega Planar

Snap! Well, I have a Planar 2. The sound quality is great for the price and I've been really happy with it. It's worth mentioning here, Moondust, that the point of having to move the belt to change gear is so that the motor only ever has to run at one speed. How steady and precise the motor is affects the sound quality, and this is how Rega addressed the issue at an affordable price.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Johnny Yesno on November 13, 2018, 01:14:35 PM
Snap! Well, I have a Planar 2. The sound quality is great for the price and I've been really happy with it. It's worth mentioning here, Moondust, that the point of having to move the belt to change gear is so that the motor only ever has to run at one speed. How steady and precise the motor is affects the sound quality, and this is how Rega addressed the issue at an affordable price.
Lots of decks used to do this, they just had a also have a lever under the platter to move the belt up or down between the shafts.

My lenco does this with a conical shaft on the massive (straight to mains) motor and a movable idler wheel. It also means you can select any speed between 16rpm (briefly used for voice-only radio recordings) to 78. The platter weighs a ton.


purlieu

Quote from: MoonDust on November 12, 2018, 08:17:05 PM
This is all beginning to sound like massive hassle.
It is. You've gotta have a reason to have a vinyl collection, whether it's the aesthetic, the idea of having a physical collection, the sound of analogue gear, whatever. Because it'll probably do your head in if you don't love it!

A few years back, as the result of a bunch of mental health issues, mostly OCD, which I won't go into, I felt very disconnected from my CD collection so decided to replace it with vinyl, as an attempt to try and approach my music from a new perspective or something. It was lovely having all the records, but I eventually found the entire thing way, way too much hassle and went back to CDs again. I like having a physical copy, but when you're cleaning, farting around with your turntable, when you have to check whether that little bit of surface noise was a bit of muck, or a bad pressing, or your stylus needs replacing, or if it's horrible inner-groove distortion because a loud track's been put at the end of a side, it all stops being fun.

There are also plenty of albums that don't benefit from being split over sides (although it depends on what you're listening to - a lot of my favourite records are gapless, so the vinyl versions are terrible by nature), and an increasingly absurd tendency to put as little music as possible on a side (I routinely come across people who claim more than 35 minutes on a single LP and it becomes unlistenable, despite 50 minutes being pretty common until the mid '90s) means you're not going to get to sit down for long when listening. The album that broke me was Aphex Twin's Syro, which is a 60 minute album split over three records. There's something to be said for Aphex's sound design and wanting to really get the most of the bass on those tracks, but as a listening experience, you're getting up to flip sides every ten minutes. For some people, that's fine, but as someone who likes to be comfortable and listen to an album as a single experience, it just made it feel ludicrously disjointed (I didn't really get into the album until I got the CD version, where it finally sounded like a flowing album).

The bulk of old records are very thin, and the spines were often generic - just black sens-serif text on white - so browsing can be laborious. They're also very heavy and take up a lot of space once you get a collection going.

If I had the money and space, I'd probably have a mirror of my CD collection on vinyl, because I do think they're beautiful things, and putting one on can be a rewarding tactile experience, but for me, relying on them as my main source of music became too inefficient and just too much of a faff, to the extent that it began to get in the way of the music itself. So ask yourself why you fancy getting into vinyl: do you think it will genuinely enhance your listening experience? Lots of people do love it as a format, so it might well. But be careful before diving in and spending too much money!

Shit Good Nose

Quote
Some new decks offer all three speeds (78, 45 & 33) but you need a different stylus if you want to play 78s (and playing 78s with a normal stylus will damage it).

I've got some of my granddad's (very) old 16s boxed up in the loft.  And weren't there 8s as well?

manticore

Quote from: purlieu on November 21, 2018, 09:20:40 PM
It is. You've gotta have a reason to have a vinyl collection, whether it's the aesthetic, the idea of having a physical collection, the sound of analogue gear, whatever. Because it'll probably do your head in if you don't love it!

A few years back, as the result of a bunch of mental health issues, mostly OCD, which I won't go into, I felt very disconnected from my CD collection so decided to replace it with vinyl, as an attempt to try and approach my music from a new perspective or something. It was lovely having all the records, but I eventually found the entire thing way, way too much hassle and went back to CDs again. I like having a physical copy, but when you're cleaning, farting around with your turntable, when you have to check whether that little bit of surface noise was a bit of muck, or a bad pressing, or your stylus needs replacing, or if it's horrible inner-groove distortion because a loud track's been put at the end of a side, it all stops being fun.

I hear a lot of people say things like this, and maybe it's because I'm not really an audiophile, but I really don't experience these kinds of problems with maintaining records. I never wash my LPs and just occasionally give them a casual wipe with a record cloth, and am not that bothered by a bit of surface noise.

I still have LPs that are going on 40 years old and play fine to my ears, even though I haven't taken great pains to look after them. I've never had more than a mid-range set-up either, and compact speakers, and I'm quite happy with the sound I get.

QuoteThere are also plenty of albums that don't benefit from being split over sides (although it depends on what you're listening to - a lot of my favourite records are gapless, so the vinyl versions are terrible by nature), and an increasingly absurd tendency to put as little music as possible on a side (I routinely come across people who claim more than 35 minutes on a single LP and it becomes unlistenable, despite 50 minutes being pretty common until the mid '90s)

This is interesting! You have quite different taste to me, so I suppose LPs in your preferred genres may go to that length, but I can't think offhand of a single LP out of the hundreds I own that runs to 50 minutes except very cheap compilations. The nearest I can think of is Costello's 'Get Happy' which is an example of how 50 minute records are not a good idea, grooves too tight, loss of bass. Oh and 'Hex Enduction Hour' (though that sounds okay to me). And quite a few classical records used to get to ridiculous lengths, but that's the music of the C19th bourgoisie, so Moondust should really be foreswearing it.

QuoteThe bulk of old records are very thin, and the spines were often generic - just black sens-serif text on white - so browsing can be laborious. They're also very heavy and take up a lot of space once you get a collection going.

Definitely agree on the weight thing, which is a real pain when moving house, and the space too. Because of the problem with reading spines I have my LPs forward facing so I can just flip through them, but that does mean they have to sit on the floor, intruding well into the room. That isn't a problem for me living on my own, but would probably be objected to by anyone I shared a place with.

I dunno, I think there are a lot of hi-fidelity buffs on this forum, and I suppose their priorities are different. As long as I can feel the vibe, I'm not that fussed. I suppose it's down to Moondust's preferences.

purlieu

Quote from: manticore on November 22, 2018, 12:20:10 AM
I hear a lot of people say things like this, and maybe it's because I'm not really an audiophile, but I really don't experience these kinds of problems with maintaining records. I never wash my LPs and just occasionally give them a casual wipe with a record cloth, and am not that bothered by a bit of surface noise.
I'm not an audiophile in the slightest (I can't tell the difference between a 192 mp3 and FLAC), but upper range distortion that comes from a variety of reasons (inner groove distortion, dirt, bad stylus) really, really bugs me. I don't really like general pops and clicks either - they're not meant to be there - but as long as the music is loud enough they're ignorable.
Quote from: manticore on November 22, 2018, 12:20:10 AMThis is interesting! You have quite different taste to me, so I suppose LPs in your preferred genres may go to that length, but I can't think offhand of a single LP out of the hundreds I own that runs to 50 minutes except very cheap compilations.
A lot of jazz albums are that long. There are a lot of 'classic' records which are around that length (Abbey Road is 47, Tubular Bells is 49); most early Nurse With Wound albums are around 50 minutes, and Steven Stapleton is notoriously picky about his sound design. I've owned plenty more - FSOL, the Manics, some folk albums - and have never noticed a significant drop in audio quality. FSOL's Environments 2 is 58 minutes long and sounds fine.
Even without these more extreme examples, a friend of mine had an album released on vinyl a couple of years back, and the label proudly boasted that their mastering engineer went to great lengths to squeeze 18 minutes onto each side... which just struck me as absurd. Surely 36 minutes was considered an average album length for a while, and into the '70s and '80s was probably a little on the short side. And yet suddenly it's a notable feat that such an amount of music could fit onto one album. Another ludicrous example from my vinyl collecting days was The Coral's The Invisible Invasion, pressed as a double album at 39 minutes.
QuoteBecause of the problem with reading spines I have my LPs forward facing so I can just flip through them, but that does mean they have to sit on the floor, intruding well into the room. That isn't a problem for me living on my own, but would probably be objected to by anyone I shared a place with.
Yeah, it's a more sensible way of having them, but browsing that way also takes a fair amount of time. I like being able to cast my eye over my CD shelves and have an album or artist leap out at me - it can only take 30 seconds to look through the lot, usually with the right results.

NoSleep

Todd Rungren's single LP "Initiation" clocks in at 68 minutes.

manticore

The big reduction in quality I notice on longer LPs is a loss of bass on Get Happy and some of those old cheap compilations that used to be made. I have a couple of Motown compilations where it's noticeable.

Here's Stephen Street talking exactly this:

https://youtu.be/oGGXPa5otgs?t=1103

purlieu

Indeed, this is why on dance 12"s you'll find the most popular or sought-after track gets a side to itself, as it's the most likely to be played in a club. But your average listener is unlikely to notice much difference in bass between a 40 and 50 minute album, especially if it's a well cut record. The 58 minute FSOL album is probably their most ambient, which might be why it stands up well. Bizarrely, Huerco S.'s For Those of You Who Have Never is split over two discs, despite being only a notch over 50 minutes and being an intentionally lo-fi sounding ambient record. It's the last sort of album I can imagine warranting the extra boost wide grooves provide, and being a mood-setting album, flipping sides every 12-or-so minutes completely kills it.

NoSleep

Hip Hop albums are regularly split over 2 x 12" for a single CD.

Rich Uncle Skeleton

Discogs really is great. My first purchase there was a bit of a bummer though. Paid for the analogue remaster of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85-92 and got sent a battered copy of some random pressing. Emailed the guy saying I'd be returning it for a refund and got some really petulant, sarcastic response saying "sorry it's not up to your standards" etc. Took me a while to buy anything on there again...

NoSleep

Discogs is pretty damn good for buying stuff. There is a general tendency to exaggerate just how pristine a copy is, though. "NM" always has crackles in my experience.

Brundle-Fly

I do enjoy visiting Discogs but shamefully I get pissed off when I believed I owned a rare record (ie: - the 60s/70's LPs one paid over the odds for in the 1990s) and then see it listed with:

122 For Sale from £0.17

The young elitist in me pathetically punches the air if I have something not catalogued on there.

However, this does mean if you discover an old 'rare' LP going for £30 upwards in a second-hand record shop, more often than not, it will be vastly cheaper on Discogs (but it's always the P&P/ import that bumps up the price).

thugler

I think it's worth it. I've been casually collecting for about a decade, not with the intention to replace my digital collection; just to enjoy perusing racks and picking up stuff when is reasonably priced. This has resulted in quite a varied collection for not much cost. I've recently discovered discogs and feel it's feasible price wise to pick up loads of stuff I've been looking out for but rarely see in shops, so can definitely vouch for that place

Head Gardener



I am getting rid of lots of records (cheap = 2 x £5) this Sunday at The Craufurd pub in Wolverton, Milton Keynes on Sunday from 11am - it's even free to get in!

manticore

Quote from: purlieu on November 22, 2018, 09:27:10 PM
Indeed, this is why on dance 12"s you'll find the most popular or sought-after track gets a side to itself, as it's the most likely to be played in a club.

I'm going to sound like the audiophile I claimed I wasn't, but the sound of some of the 12" singles with their wide gooves and 45rpm speed is the best reproduction I've heard, especially thinking of some of the reggae 12"s of the late 70s and early 80s with their extended mixes. Wonderful bass and a feeling of immediacy, as if the music was inhabiting your body and spirit.

I had a teacher in the 70s who had a large collection of classical 78s in the classroom, and one would be played before each lesson. He was pretty evangelical about it, and looked on 33rpm LPs with a deep disdain for their weak and constricted sound.

NoSleep

78's do have a a certain quality to them, like the artist is jumping out at you from the record player. They are direct cut after all; the closest you could ever be to an artist in a recording chain from performance in the studio to listening in your home. And some of the later 78's are incredibly good fidelity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CO8_Ktro-w

kittens

how often should i be changing the stylus on my record player? had this one about a year. thanks lads

NoSleep

If everything starts sounding a bit dirtier and crackly then you need to change it.

Endicott


Brundle-Fly

Quote from: Head Gardener on November 23, 2018, 03:00:40 PM


I am getting rid of lots of records (cheap = 2 x £5) this Sunday at The Craufurd pub in Wolverton, Milton Keynes on Sunday from 11am - it's even free to get in!

Not that I'll be able to make it, but what sort of stuff is in those boxes? I suspect it might be a lot of Easy Listening/ faux Latin American/ Hammond Hits LPs that you bought purely on the strength of the kitsch cover art but the actual music is insipid dreck that one can't even enjoy in an ironic way?

Head Gardener

haha, yeah that's right, well you'll never know if you don't go - they are mostly 80's pop really with hardly a hammond album in there - honest!