What is the first thing you do when you unwrap a new vinyl record?


That is, apart from kiss the person who gave it to you!

You might play it, catalog it, archive it, clean it or simply store it.  I am sure there are many other things you do!

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New records can be so dirty! The crap stiff paper sleeves are horrible! 

Usually, unwrap, give it a good cleaning, use a good inner and outer sleeve. 

Clean records always sounds better!! Plus a clean record doesn't have static. The needle doesn't need as much cleaning. 

All my old records have a small round sticker with a red letter "P" stuck on the side 1 label.  I can remember that it was an anti-static treatment - maybe "Parastat" or similar - but I can't remember how I applied it or anything else about it!

Anybody else remember something like this?

I carefully cut plastic wrap at the access side and tape plastic wrap over the edges to inner side of the album jacket, so album will stay in its original wrapping but the disc is actually reachable. It’s actually helps to preserve album jacket for long time and keep nice fresh look of the album over the years. 

Clean it (Degritter Mk II, DW only), give it a fresh inner sleeve and a 5mil outer sleeve (for single/gatefold LPs), then I play it, and within a few days I catalog it.

Provisional answer to my own follow-up question - I think the P sticker might come from Cecil E Watts manual record cleaning system, the Manual Parastat.  It would have been all I could afford at the time.  There's a manual on vinylengine but I am not a member and new memberships are disabled ...