thanks for the encouragement. I will keep at it. I am willing to giving any used record a chance...for the right price. And your $3.33 sounds good. So you got two good ones! Keep the tips coming.

Yes, though truthfully I only do it so I can display the sleeves as wall-art. I've spent the past few years collecting the albums that made me fall in love with music. Once I am out of apartment dwelling I'll be hanging them up in vinyl display cases. I've often considered getting a LP player, but cost and space have deterred me.

In all honesty, coming from a surround sound rig set up, the vinyl set up is has the smallest footprint. Think about it. You need an integrated amp, player, and speakers. That's it. If anything ever received a glowing WAF (Wife Approval Factor), this is it.

Well, I posted a bit too soon, and seems I got the bad news first in my testing.

So far the vinyl is NM and sounds it for Neil Young, Rust Never Sleeps; Bruce Springsteen, Darkness on the Edge of Town; and Dire Straits. Those three were worth $30. Harvest has pop/scratch that recurs for about 45 seconds near the beginning of first side. Otherwise, it is very good. That pop may be residue of some paper that had dried on the record. More cleaning may eliminate it. Not a bad version to give my son.

A good scrubbing of Side B of Deep Purple got it sounding fine.

So no duds yet and four still not cleaned and tested, but which look G to VG.

I'm going to call it a score.

Tips: Search CL "all for sale" (or my saved search is electronics, general for sale, antiques, collectibles, cds, household items, garage and moving sales, and free stuff). Currently I search "record*", but you could also try "record*|lp|album". Find a search that works for you. As I said, this latest "score" was listed in antiques. I've never found any thing in "free stuff" but I have heard of it happening.

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

I had a nice score over the weekend. AND it made up for the stooge who rode the bus with his records. A local used musical instrument store (that also specializes in vinyl) is changing hands and the new owners don't want to mess with vinyl. It was a collection of about 1500 albums. Most in G or VG condition. Mostly R&R, prog rock, blues, etc.
Picked up 21 total records.

There you go. Awesome.

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

it was a nice set up. outside. plenty of light. hot, so very few customers. OH...and half off. I got the lot of 21 records for $55. And so far there are about 3-4 good $10 finds. A few EU and CN pressings.

I need a good DIY record cleaner suggestion. While there are few scratches, a few have the static sound. I think a GOOD cleaning might help.

My method is in post no. 4. You can search audiokarma.org and vinylengine.com for more techniques. You can spend weeks reading and write a book about all the various techniques and theories. Seriously it makes the aero and power discussions on the main page here seem like nothing.

I'm having second thoughts regarding using scrubbing bubbles. If not rinsed really well, it will leave a film. But I suppose that is true of most any detergent. Next step for me might be to investigate adding a rinse aid (there seems to be a consensus on AK for this, but I don't recall the chemical) to my distilled water rinse, or as additional rinse. But really, I haven't had any problems and I've managed to get bad sounding classical records to be silent. So far I've just decided to be more thorough with my sink sprayer rinse step.


Edit: you also need to clean your stylus. Quick and easy: Mr. Clean magic eraser pad, dry, just let stylus rest on the pad (I wiggle the pad slightly), don't brush with the pad. Inspect your stylus with THIS

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev