The great 180 gram vinyl rock n roll swindle

coltrane2

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Music plays an enormous part in my life and I'm sure for all of you reading this or, well, you wouldn't participate in this forum.

I currently feed said fixation via a mix of the highest quality downloads I can lay my hands on (ALAC or FLAC where possible) and lately have gone back to vinyl, thanks to rescuing my Rega Planer 2 deck from the loft, some TLC and a much needed service and new cartridge.

Great stuff and my vinyl collection has already swelled to decent proportions via a mix of fab Saturday's spent in a great local record shop (hats off Swordfish Records), record fairs and online mail orders.

I regret to report however that the much heralded and hyped 180g vinyl product is nought but a vacuous marketing tool. It's not that these heavy weight products are inferior, but they're invariably not superior. It's not a straight line of course: Love's Rhino reissue of Forever Changes for example is superbly rendered, but that's an outcome of the care taken to pull the sound from original source tapes in the mastering process rather than the weight of the wax.

I say this whilst listening to a £5 mint second hand copy of Valerie Carter's 2nd LP Wild Child, purchased from the good burghers at Vinyl Tap UK- it's a wafer thin late 70's CBS vinyl LP and the sound quality is outstanding.

It'd be good to hear your views guys, but that's been my experience.

Ps avoid like the plague anything on the 4 Men With Beards label: 180 gram vinyl pulled from CD sources and poorly mastered!
 
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recgord27

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^^ Totally agree with your assessment. Unless the recording has been remastered, I have found that the sound is sometimes not even as good as the original lp recordings. In my experience, I'd rather buy a (remastered if possible) cd at half the cost or try get the original recording second hand in a reasonable condition than buy these overpriced pieces of vinyl.
 

coltrane2

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^^ Totally agree with your assessment. Unless the recording has been remastered, I have found that the sound is sometimes not even as good as the original lp recordings. In my experience, I'd rather buy a (remastered if possible) cd at half the cost or try get the original recording second hand in a reasonable condition than buy these overpriced pieces of vinyl.

Yeah, CD has now of course been deemed "not cool" but when record companies began to get the reissue programme right (after around 1995) some of the mastering quality was excellent. Led Zeppelin's first Jimmy Page sanctioned re-masters in particular were like removing a gauze from the music.

Despite all the Jay-Z hype, the premium quality (£20/ $20) version of Tidal hifi is well worth it. Lossless streaming, care taken in the look and feel of the web player and the catalogue is huge. It's fast becoming my main source of music. Sound quality is outstanding when you use a decent Dac (mine is an Audioquest Dragonfly).
 

oscar gamble

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Vinyl has become a viable niche market again, thus all of the $30 vanity pressings. This includes thicker vinyl, limited quantities, colored vinyl, etc. A label like Norton releases new vinyl LP's for $12, if that tells you anything about how pumped up the price has gotten on this other stuff.
 

70sProgFan

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I have a lot of new 180g vinyl albums and, in the main, I am very pleased with the sound and everything about them.
However...

Is it just me, or are these heavier records more susceptible to static?
I have to use my Zerostat Milty 3 gun on a regular basis before and after playing them.
I even use it inside the polythene anti-static bags just to try to cut it, usually to no avail.
I don't have this problem with any of my original, older vinyl, just the modern releases.

And, while I'm here, who in their right mind thought it a great idea to put vinyl records in shiny card inner sleeves?
Have they seen the amount of static that is created trying to draw the record out?
And the scratches that trapped bits thereby put on the surface?
Crazy!
 

recgord27

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For me the cost of the 180g albums are prohibitive. I only have a few that I got as gifts so I can't really comment on the static. Could the plastic vinyl that they use not have have a different makeup to the albums of yesteryear that is causing the static?
 

70sProgFan

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For me the cost of the 180g albums are prohibitive. I only have a few that I got as gifts so I can't really comment on the static. Could the plastic vinyl that they use not have have a different makeup to the albums of yesteryear that is causing the static?
You may well be right.
I'm sure that we'll never know for sure.

I also take your point about the prohibitive cost of these vinyls.
I tend to shop around for bargains.
I've had a couple from the HMV shop in Lincoln at crazy cheap prices, and ordered a couple of belters through Amazon last Sunday... Two Italian albums, each almost certainly wrongly priced. In fact the Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso I bought last Sunday for £16.63 is now £26.69! I was staggered to see that both LPs were actually shipped from Italy at no cost, so Jeff Bezos is well out of pocket thanks to me!
Well, a little bit anyway...
 

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