Tips For Buying Used Records And General Grousing About New Vinyl

I buy lots of vinyl from used record stores, thrift shops, and antiques stores.  In theory that's great, because I have a chance to check the condition of the cover and examine the vinyl to see if there are scratches or other issues.  But sometimes even that isn't good enough.

Some months ago I went to a record fair in a town near me with about 25 dealers offering used vinyl.  Over the course of an hour or so of browsing, I found a number of interesting titles at several different tables.  In each case, I checked the vinyl carefully before buying, and ended up with ten albums that looked pretty clean.  Unfortunately, the hall where the fair was held was dim, making it hard to really see the vinyl.  When I got the LPs home, I discovered to my horror that nearly all of them had scratches and scuffs that I had missed.  Still, I was hopeful that after a good cleaning they might sound OK.

Long story short, four of the albums are so noisy that I will never play them.  A couple that looked pretty iffy actually ended up playing fine because they are mono.  The rest were fine.  Since the albums had not been graded by the dealers, I had no one to blame but myself (and the dim lighting).  Luckily I didn't pay all that much for any of the titles.  But it serves as a cautionary tale: Even someone like me, who has been collecting LPs for more than 40 years, can have trouble judging the condition of a record just by looking at the vinyl.

Which, of course, is the problem when buying albums online, where nearly all the used albums for sale are visually graded.  And the fact is, even an experienced dealer can't reliably grade records just by looking at them.  I don't fault the dealer; he's hustling to add titles to his online site.  He can't possibly listen to all of them to assign a true "play" grade.  Instead, he grabs a stack of albums, spends 10-15 seconds looking at the condition of the vinyl under a strong light, and then makes a decision.  If it's nice and shiny and there are no obvious scratches, it's NM.  If it's shiny but has a couple of light hairline scratches or scuffs, it's VG+. If it has some more serious scratches but still looks pretty decent, it's VG.  If it's worse than than, I hope he throws it away.

On the other hand, I have dozens if not hundreds of LPs that look as shiny and new as the day they were pressed, but sound awful.  They may look great, but have ticks, pops, or other surface noise that detracts from the listening experience.  Sometimes it's a bad pressing, sometimes it's groove wear from a cheap turntable, sometimes there is a barely noticeable warp, or the LP is pressed off-center.  An album with any of these problems, no matter how shiny and new, is not NM.  But if I only looked at those records and didn't listen to them, I'd probably agree that they appear NM.

So how do you protect yourself when buying at a used record store or record fair?  Your best defense is to find the strongest light source available and really take some time to check for scratches or other possible defects.  (The flashlight function on your cell phone works pretty well - just ignore the strange looks from other browsers.)  Of course, it's easy to miss a small scratch or scuff, particularly in a dark store or when you're digging in the boxes under the regular bins.  So always check the amount of wear around the spindle hole as well.  It can be a good indicator of how often the record was played and how it was handled.  If you find small scratches on the vinyl surface, lightly feel them with your fingertips.  It's almost always true that if you can't feel the scratch, you probably won't be able to hear it.  With mono disks, even if you can feel the scratch it still might play well.  I have mono albums that look terrible but still play VG+ or better.  

Sometimes used record stores will have a record player or two attached to headphones so that customers can check the condition of the vinyl.  But, really, unless I'm looking at an album that costs upwards of $25 or so, I'm not going to take the time to listen to it in the store.  And just checking a few short sections at random isn't much use.  For that reason, I don't buy copies of popular albums that you can find for $10 or less just about anywhere, unless they look immaculate.  The exception being the stuff in the $1 bins.  For those, as long as the jacket is in reasonable shape, I usually don't even look at the vinyl.  For a buck, I'll take my chances.  Our local PTA thrift store gets all the ones that I don't keep and can resell them for a dollar.  It's the circle of life.

How about ordering online?  Obviously you can't inspect the vinyl.  So my simple rule is to assume that the LP will be one grade below the listed grade.  If it's listed as NM, it'll probably have a few ticks or other light noise that makes it an actual VG+.  I'm OK with that.  What I don't want is an album that is graded VG+ because it looks pretty nice, but in reality has 20 seconds of ticks from a minor scratch or some crackle or other groove noise that would have earned it a VG if the dealer had actually listened to it.  If the NM albums I order turn out to be genuine NMs, then I'm ahead of the game.  But if they're really VG+ with a couple of ticks or some other very minor surface noise, I'm still a happy buyer.

The other reason I seldom order albums unless they are graded NM, is that we can argue all day long about how much noise is allowed for a record to be graded VG+.  But if a record is advertised and sold as NM, then there is not much room for discussion: A record sold as NM should play with virtually no surface noise.

If I receive an album graded NM that has significant surface noise, I let the dealer know and politely propose what I think is a fair partial or full refund. To date, having bought hundreds of albums online, I've found that dealers are almost always willing to make it right.  

I have broken my rule about only ordering NM vinyl on occasion.  I once found an online dealer with a terrific selection of vintage jazz at very reasonable prices, nearly all graded VG+.  I found about 25 titles that I wanted, and then sent an email to the dealer with the list.  I told him that I only wanted the disks if they were really, really, really VG+, including my definition of the grade.  He agreed to pull the order and then recheck the disks.  In the end he found that three or four were iffy, so we deleted those from the order.  All the rest were at least VG+.  If you're ordering enough to make it worth the dealer's while, it's a good strategy.  And you can be sure I'll be ordering from that dealer again.

United Record Pressing, Nashville

Finally, a word about brand new albums that sound terrible.  I mean, a brand new album should sound great, right?  Apparently not.  I buy dozens of new albums every year.  For mainstream new releases or reprints made in the US, I find that about a third of the albums have issues, usually random ticks and pops that no amount of cleaning will get rid of, but also a number with groove noise, warps, or off-center spindle holes.  (In my experience, current European pressings are much better than their US counterparts overall.  When I have a choice, I often order the EU version of an album from Amazon UK or a dealer in Europe.)  Look, I understand that making records is a complicated process.  I'm frankly amazed that you can squeeze a microscopic groove into a chunk of molten plastic and then use a diamond-tipped stylus to play back phenomenal-sounding music.  And I also understand that the vinyl industry just about ceased to exist in the 90s.  The great pressing plants run by Columbia, Capitol, Allied, Presswell, RCA, Specialty Records, and the like, are all gone.  New plants are springing up, but they are being staffed by a whole new generation of operators.  The guys with 30 or 40 years experience making records are long gone.

Maybe because of the increasing demand for vinyl, I think things are slowly getting a better.  A few years ago I swore off buying any album pressed by United Record Pressing in Nashville after getting three or four really noisy Blue Note reissues that were pressed there.  However, I've recently gotten a couple of albums made by United that sound pretty good, so maybe they're finally addressing their QC issues.  And there are other US plants, like QRP and RTI, that are making high-quality records.  However, at least for the moment, I have to say that the overall level of quality for new vinyl releases is nowhere near the level of albums made in the 50s, 60s, or 70s.  I have thousands of albums from those decades, and only a handful have the kinds of problems that are common with modern releases.

On the other hand, I have had good luck with US audiophile labels.  Albums by Analogue Productions, Mobile Fidelity, Impex, Classic Records, Music Matters -- just to name a few -- generally sound superb.  But not always.  I was delighted to see that MoFi had released a remastered version of Ry Cooder's classic album "Paradise And Lunch."  It's one of my all time favorite records with great songs and inspired performances.  I have two copies of the original Warner Brothers pressing from 1974 that are a touch above VG+.  But I was anxious to hear what Kurt Wonderlich at Mobile Fidelity could do with the original tapes and ordered the new version.

First the good news: The sound is extraordinary.  The original albums sound very good, but this is a whole new level of texture and detail. The only problem is that my copy has a skip between tracks A2 and A3.  (Yes, it's actually between the tracks, so it doesn't affect the music, but I still have to get up and move the stylus.) I have dozens of MoFi recordings (most, like this one, pressed by Record Technology Incorporated in Camarillo, CA), and have hardly ever heard so much as a random tick on any of their disks.  I cleaned the new album twice.  I used my digital usb microscope to inspect the groove and see what the heck was going on.  I couldn't see anything that would cause a skip.  I tried it on my backup turntable -- it still skipped.  Grrr.  Now I have to go the trouble of getting a return authorization, sending it back, and waiting a week or two for a replacement.  And of course, if it turns out to be a pressing defect, there is no guarantee that the replacement won't have the exact same skip. 

Another new album I bought recently, a repressing of Astrud Gilberto's Now, had the worst warp I've even encountered.  The needle goes up and down like the skiers' knees in the mogul competition in the winter Olympics.  Once again, I had to go to the trouble of requesting a return authorization.  In this case, the dealer said that if I'd send him a short video clip to show the warp, he wouldn't ask me to send the disk back, which I thought was a great idea.  He was suitably impressed by the video and immediately agreed to send a new copy.  I had a similar experience with a Discogs dealer who sold me three LPs advertised as NM, that turned out to be more like G+. He was incredulous that he had could have been so badly mistaken about the disks, so I offered to send him brief audio clips from each album. After he heard them, he blamed one of his staff for the mis-grading, but agreed to refund the price without making me send them back. Below is actual footage of my needle in the record groove.

The bottom line is, unless you are spending hundreds or thousands of dollars for a first edition Blue Note online (when you want to be absolutely sure that the album has been meticulously evaluated and correctly graded), you should assume that the condition of any record you buy will be one grade below whatever is listed.  That way, as long as the price is reasonable, you're still going to be pretty happy with the listening experience.  It's also fairer to the dealers, who I think on the whole try to be accurate in their grading.  I recently read a rant of a review by a buyer who was incensed that an album labeled "very good" wasn't very good at all.  Well, duh.  The dealer's response was measured:  He suggested that the buyer spend some time reading the guidelines for record grades.  Just like the grades for stamps, coins, and other collectibles, very good isn't very good at all.

If you're buying used LPs from a store or at a record fair, do your best to carefully inspect the vinyl in a good, strong light.  But also just accept the fact that sometimes even a record that looks great will still have some issues.  You can always upgrade when you find a better copy later.  It's part of the fun of looking for LPs and the joy of listening to records in the first place.

Enjoy the music!