Heaver grade vinyl vs Standard

I find little correlation between the weight of the vinyl and the sonic quality, and wouldn't pay a premium for 180 gram pressing unless I thought it was a superior production and pressing to lower cost alternatives. One of my best sounding lps is a super flimsy lightweight pressing of Jennifer Warnes "Famous Blue Raincoat".

I don't think I've ever had a bad-sounding RCA Dynaflex, which weighs in at a whopping 80 grams!

I have a lot of fine-sounding 180g audiophile pressings from various sources. The 200g pressings, OTOH, are probably more trouble than they're worth. The extra thick lump of vinyl makes it very difficult to press uniformly and keep all that vinyl at the same temperature and softness. I have two Classics Records 200g pressings. One is very crackling and noisy in places, the other is great.

I also have a 150g red vinyl Classic Records pressing and it's fantastic.

It has more to do with vinyl quality, mastering, and QA during the pressing process. Using a record grip or clamp helps make the playback quality more uniform. If a 200g pressing sounds better to you than a 120g pressing, it probably has more to do with how the difference in thickness affects Stylus Rake Angle (SRA, aka VTA or vertical tracking angle) than the thickness of the pressing itself.

>>SRA, aka VTA or vertical tracking angle<<

This is incorrect and shows a lack of understanding.

VTA (Vertical Tracking Angle) is the angle between the record surface and the cantilever.

SRA (Stylus Rake Angle) also called Scanning Rake Angle is the angle between the centerline of the stylus and a plane that is perpendicular to the record surface.

In simpler terms, SRA describes the angle of the stylus and VTA describes the angle of the cantilever

I hope that helps.

The whole idea around 180&200 grams lp's has more to do with the thickness reducing the warp factor than anything else.
I agree with most of the other responses, in most cases they're not any better and alot of times worse than the original recordings.

180 & 200 gm vinyl must be the biggest marketing scam of all time originally started by Mobile Fidelity. Outside CD's of course :-)

I have 1000's of standard 120gm vinyl that sounds wonderful.

the weight or thickness of the vinyl has NOTHING to do with the sound quality of the record. That as most posters have said depends on the quality of the recording and what type of master they have used to press the record.