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New vinyl quality....

Recently I have purchased quite a bit of new vinyl. I am shocked at the poor quality control and inconsistency that I am getting. Anyone else?
Chris Stapleton Traveller 2LP: LP1 is flawless. LP2 is so beyond warped and is not even close to round!! Oh, and this is after I returned the 1st copy as there was an audible flaw through most of the first 2 songs of disc 2, side 1. Wish I had that copy back! 
Stones' new release, Honk: LP1 is so bad the center is damaged and won't even fit over the spindle! Additionally, there are visual marks all over it - looks like smudges. LP2 is fine.
I am seeing this a lot. Probably 30-40% of the new (sealed) vinyl I'm buying has some kind of an issue. Not even talking about SQ here - it's physical issues that I am seeing. 
What are you all experiencing? 
denjer1
whostolethebatmobile
290 posts
 
To millercarbon - possibly a third way is to use a vinyl demagnetizer. I recently bought the Furutech demag alpha. Every record I play gets the treatment. If I could describe the effect it would be "more relaxed" sounding after treatment. But there is also more detail and less distortion. I also use the Furutech SK-Filter for static. It’s also extremely good. It removes glare and harshness while the disc spins. You can hear the effect immediately after you swing the SK-Filter arm over the record.
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
Right. And I have no idea why this works, but I've been using the Radio Shack Bulk Tape Eraser (a great big demagnetizer) on my records just before playing and it does make for a more detailed yet smoother more grain-free sound. Not huge but definitely noticeable. Does not last. Need to do it every time. Which makes me think its static not truly magnetic. Whatever. How something works matters a lot less to me than does it work. 

The Furutech gizmo looks like carbon fiber bristles hang down very near to but not touching the record. Carbon fiber is conductive. Is it grounded? I don't see any ground wire. Is the base purely for mass to balance the thing, or is there a battery or something inside? Looks pretty easy to DIY.
whostolethebatmobile
290 posts
 
It’s not grounded. The base is purely a weight for balance and convenience. It’s overpriced considering you can buy the brush itself for quite cheap and mount it on your own arm. But I’m not sure if the cheap brush is actually the same (Thunderon) material or not. The ads say it is.

The brush needs to be mounted on a swinging arm while the record plays because the record picks up static very quickly as it spins. I’ve tested this and the static comes back in less than a minute if you remove the arm. It needs to be positioned precisely 1-2 mm above the vinyl surface to work correctly. Although it’s expensive, the SK-Filter set-up works and it’s quite sturdy. Now that I’ve got it, I wouldn’t want to be without it.
jameswei
883 posts
 
I recently bought a 45 rpm jazz album with pretty bad pops and clicks. I bought another copy and it also had pops and clicks but in different parts of the record, so the noise appears to be a problem at the press, not the master.

One of the early attractions of CDs was the absence of such noise. I do my best with keeping my vinyl clean and dust-free, and when I succeed the sound is better than CD. I hate noise embedded in the tracks. Pops and clicks make me want to fall back to CDs.
whostolethebatmobile
290 posts
 
Re new vinyl - apart from the pressing quality control considerations, I find it fundamentally problematic that most new vinyl is pressed from digital masters. Even considering the expense, I much prefer to buy original pressings from the late '50s until the very early '70s. Early-to-mid '60s is my favourite era, when the art of mastering and pressing records was at its peak, and most of the recording  and mastering equipment in use was still tube based. 
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