Vinyl pops and clicks: Can they be eliminated??

Jim emailed me off-list and described his record care practices, pretty much what he posted in response to Dan_Ed plus a few more details.

As I suspected, those practices are inadequate and may indeed have allowed this record to develop a skip. In addition to cautiously seconding Palasr's suggestion, I gave Jim additional information and several suggestions that may help solve the problem.

Like it or not, a record which begins skipping is evidence of inadequate care. This is particularly likely when a person's previous posts suggest little or no experience with effective care. Stating this fact and seeking further information is neither "slapping" them nor "imagining" anything nor "rampaging". It's called problem solving.

Comments that offer no useable content while criticizing others which do are gratuitous. Feel-good chat will not stop record skipping. Concrete technical suggestions like those I sent Jim may.

Well, you can disown the bristling tone of your posts in this thread if you wish but the poster felt unnecessarily chastised and at least two readers thought it was out of line. You're a knowledgeable guy and contribute a lot to this forum. Thank you. But that fact doesn't mean you shouldn't be called on it when you're unnecessarily harsh to someone who reaches out in good faith. Similarly, you should know that voices asking for politeness do indeed offer usable content to a conversation, though perhaps at a pitch occasionally outside of the range of your hearing.

Skipping on a record is not always because of inadequate care. There can be setup and alignment problems, incompatibilities between the cartridge and arm, floor and room resonance issues etc. Once a groove is damaged, it will repeat itself.

Why don't you just rip off his epaulets and break his tonearm across your knee! If that ain't enough we can always shoot his dog.

The guy asked a simple question which IMO deserved a simple answer, not a personal admonishment.

Are toothpicks really thin enough to correct groove defects?

Why don't some of you hand-wringers offer some advice of your own? This topic has been beaten to death many times in many ways on this forum. It does get old, especially when the question gets asked more than once in very general terms. Doug can speak for himself, these are my thoughts.

Matter of fact, the first time I read this post the thought that came to mind was this will either turn into another assault on vinyl by digit-heads (they ALWAYS start with the pops and clicks), or simply a way to tout some new material for ceedees. I'm thinking "ok, this guy has obviously mishandled this lp so what is the real point of this?"

Had the original question been something like "I have this lp that just started skipping badly, I know I probably caused it, but can I fix it somehow?" the tone of this thread would be much different.

I just thought I would offer this advice since we're schooling each other on what should or shouldn't be done in posts.

Zargon, agreed. However the OP says this just happened suddenly and he's not offering if other LPs are showing signs of new noises. Any way you slice it, the answer is stop mishandling your LPs.