Vinyl Production Quality – What Happened?

Image Credit: Total Sonic Media

A Personal Rant.

What has/is happening to the quality control and pressing quality of todays vinyl albums? Several of my recent vinyl album purchases have been returned several times to get one that is acceptable….. with no luck! Note that I said acceptable, not perfect. I have recently had to return three albums several times and NONE are even close to perfect.

Elusive Disc

• Dire Straits  – On Every Street – Audiophile 180 gram double album – GZ Vinyl

All these albums showed zero surface damage but had EXACTLY the same track repeating clicks indicating that the batch stamper was probably damaged. Plus the vinyl was covered in paper dust and the surface noise on all copies was mediocre which cleaning did not help.

Acoustic Sounds

• Gil Evans – Out Of The Cool – Audiophile 180 gram – QRP – Damaged jacket, very severe clicks, then repetitive clicks plus slightly warped. No surface damage could be seen and cleaning did not help.
• The Ultimate Analog Test LP – 200 gram – QRP – No significant clicks, but none of my copies were acceptably flat; a real problem for a test disc.

Also many of my recent albums, even if not damaged, arrive looking like they had been left lying around in the open. They are often covered in dust and paper particles, which I assume are from the sleeve manufacturing process, requiring that they are first cleaned using my Nitty Gritty and then placed in a new dust free MO-FI Original Master sleeve.

I have been collecting vinyl albums since 1966 and it has only been very recently that I have had to return albums due to warps and severe clicks. I purchased all of the Sheffield Lab series starting with their first available UK release, Sheffield Lab S9 in 1971. These are all “mass” produced pressings on lightweight vinyl, and guess what? Not only are they all warp and mostly click free, but are also some of the most technically amazing recordings with outstanding dynamics, frequency range and stereo imaging. Not to mention that the vinyl noise is barely anymore intrusive than many of todays 180/200 gram “audiophile” pressings.

So what am I missing here? If the late Doug Sax and his esteemed engineering team at Sheffield Lab (now closed) and the associated pressing companies using 50 year old technologies could create excellent vinyl pressings, what has happened during those intervening 50 years, QRP and GZ? I am not saying that all recent vinyl is bad, far from it. However, there certainly seems to be a recent lack of care and quality control. Returning album, upon album, upon album is time consuming and costly for the seller, and no matter how good the sellers customer service is, it all becomes very frustrating for the customer. I eventually gave up returning the above albums as all that became available to me was a refund, when what I wanted was the album in “good” condition.

Despite my above concerns, and maybe I was just unlucky, as Rick Astley put it, I’m “Never Gonna Give You Up” vinyl.

Have you had a bad experience with your latest vinyl purchase….let others know?