Trollheart

Vinyl is tougher than you think. The old 78s, the ancient, dinosaur records, they shattered if dropped. My vinyl bounces if dropped. Not of course a practice I ever engaged in or would recommend, but when once or twice an album slipped out of my hand and hit the floor it did not break.

The main trouble with vinyl I found was keeping it clean and dust free. Once you got a scratch, it was there pretty much forever, to the extent that there are still some songs I relate to by the point at which they skipped or stuck; almost became an endearing quality. But not for long.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Geekoid

Cool. What I mean is that it's so much easier to damage vinyl than to scratch a CD, and vinyl is a dust magnet for sure. I'd never be able to put in the time to keep the dust off of them. It would be pretty upsetting/ annoying if one of your favorites got scratched!

I was never allowed to touch my dad's records under any circumstances. In fact, I don't think I've ever even held one. I guess the vinyl generation precedes me by a few years.

jvwhite12

As far as I know there are some restoration process needed to keep a vinyl disc's quality. Any tips how your dad restore his vinyl CD's?

Howard the Duck

the reflective lining on the CD usually doesn't last long

but that also depends on the country of origin and the quality of it

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Malaise is THE dominant human predilection.

Trollheart

It's quite odd really. You have to hold them in a certain way. You NEVER touch the flat surface if you can possibly avoid it, and if for some reason you have to, you just use the smallest surface area of your finger, like maybe the tip of the nail or the back of the thumbjoint. You hold an album thusly: hands on either side, like one of those fishermen relating how big the fish was that got away. You grip the album side on, with the middle of your palms, almost like you're going to compact it up, but you have to be very gentle.

Like this:

or this

NEVER like this!

or this

You can hold it this way when cleaning it
but your hand on the underside should be cupped, ie don't rest it on your flat hand but allow again the least surface area to be touched. Clean with an antistatic cloth (whaaa?) never your finger or any solution.

See how easy it was for us? One of the reasons I won't be ever going back to vinyl...

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Stephen

Before they came up with auto lifting stylus arms you had to carefully lower the stylus onto the record and carefully lift it off again once it finished. I remember a few times accidentally nudging the stylus so it went skating across the record leaving a scratch. And god forbid the records caught a bit of sun on the way home from the record store. You would put them on the turntable only to see it had warped.

Geekoid

Love the how-to guide for handling records Antistatic cloth??? haha.

I really have no idea. I know he keeps them in a dry place in a wooden box with no front or back (instead of a closed box where dust can collect), but other than that, I know nothing.

True! Sometimes I'm wary of purchasing old used CD's because of this. But so far I haven't been disappointed. It was mostly old PC games that got worn out for me.

Trollheart

Ah yes, the old "Cowboy hats" syndrome! We don't miss THAT!

Though in fairness, a warped record COULD still play. I remember watching one or two of my albums going around and feeling like I was on a ship, geetin seasick watching the vinyl undulate around the turntable, waiting for the needle to jump but it never did.

You remember that some albums didn't allow the arm to return automatically? The needle would just stick in the last groove and you'd hear "click. click. click." until you manually lifted it? As for skating: oh yeah, did that more than a few times! Door slams, needle skids, Trollheart fumes...

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

CDs aren't vinyl...

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

someonecompletelyrandom

Not if you like digging up old vinyl records from thrift shops. Sure you could visit rare music blogs where they've converted them to mp3 format, but there's nothing quite like finding something that nobody has given a single fuck about for 30 or 40 years and it actually being good stuff.