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Warped Vinyl


oldtimer

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Does anyone have any tips for taking the warp out of an lp? I just played my copy of Remain in Light by the Talking Heads and it is warped so much that the first 30 seconds or so do not track accurately. This is otherwise a very quiet lp, pretty amazing for a US pressing. It's a Sire records lp, and like I said very nice except for the warp, and I would love to save it. Thanks.

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I've tried to flatten warped records with varying success, as in "very little success to no success". The hot water method has been the best and worked to some degree. I use water just hot enough to bear on my hand, heat the vinyl by rotating record thru it without soaking the label, place record on flat surface with something flat and heavy on top. leave to cool off, all the while crossing fingers.

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oldtimer, bottom line here ..................... NO, I don't think it can be done, I tried many times, many ways, and to no avail ....... Warped records were very common near the end of the Big Boys Vinyl run, the big companies didn't care, Vinyl Quality was awful in the 80's, mass produced garbage, warps, skips, off-centered holes ............ I don't miss that crap at all.....tic,pop,tic........ ooops, Sorry Bud, I get carried away on records, on records, on records..[:$]

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While I am by no means an expert in this (as I have never found a perfectly reliable way to fix the problem...), one might be want to be concerned with ANY the 'heat treatment' methods.

Why? Think for a minute.

Records are warped due to a deformation inf the portion of the recod which exhibits the greatest mass. And in order to reshape them with heat it is necessary to heat this mass sufficiently that its eleastic characteristics are fundamentally altered.

So far, so good...Or is it?

If the body of the record is heated sufficiently such that its physical integrity can gbe altered, what does that say regarding the relatively tiny groves featuring even tinier modulations - you know, the squiggles that contain the encoded sound.

Now,if we heat the body sufficiently to cause gross deformation of the large body mass in a manner we find more acceptable, what do you think the modulated grooves are doing? And no, they are not magically retaining all integrity simply out of a sincere dedication to the ageless preservation of music.

I wish they did. But there just isn't a free lunch.

I suspect the closest you are going to get to solving this would be the use of a rigidly coupled record clamp that might help to flatten any warps which extend through the hub area of the recod. Granted, this will be effective in only a small percentage of records, but failing that, your best bet may be to keep an eye out on EBay.

And while I realize that it is too late for the already exisiting warped records, proper vertical storage is the easiest way to avoid this..

Best of luck.

Additional note: They DON'T like UV either!

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A method I heard of, but have not tried, was to put the record between two sheets of plate glass, in the sun, not letting it get over heated, letting the heat and weight of the glass force the LP back into a playable shape. Clear glass 1/4 inch thick is pretty cheap compared to a machine, so I suggest trying this with an LP you really don't care about and seeing if it works. Because the label area is slightly crowned, this cannot make the LP ruler flat, but may get it to a state where it is tolerable so you can record it and then put the LP on the shelf.

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At the time of manufacture the warpage will occurr if the pressed product is not thoroughly cooled, what this means is the supervisor gets chewed out because not enough product is going out the door so he then cranks up the cycle knob for faster operation to let the records cool in their jackets.

JJK

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repair a warp ?? NO !!!!!!!!!!!, make it playable ?? YES !!!!!!!!!!!! what do i mean????? well vpi supplys a concave washer with its higher end tables and the idea is to put that washer down under the lp then take your clamp and tighten it down..................does it work ???? yes it does i bought a copy of muddy waters live saturday (new) and to my dismay it is the worst album i have as far as warps go my usually excellent tracking graham actually skipped a couple times, so i went out and picked up a couple rubber washers at lowes, and a couple 1/4 "hole by 1 1/4 around steel washers placed 1 steel washer down and 1 rubber one on top of that tightened clamp and VIOLLA 95 percent of the ward was gone and album plays fine total cost 2.00, this actually creates a type vacuum that helps with all albums (i used to have the concave washer from vpi when i got my tnt 5, sold that, washer went with it, thats why i had to buy new washers)

good luck

Joe

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make it playable ?? YES !!!!!!!!!!!! what do i mean????? well vpi supplys a concave washer with its higher end tables and the idea is to put that washer down under the lp then take your clamp and tighten it down..................does it work ???? yes

The Basis clamp works the same way, other than an o-ring instead of a shaped washer. Very effective method.
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oldtimer, bottom line here ..................... NO, I don't think it can be done, I tried many times, many ways, and to no avail ....... Warped records were very common near the end of the Big Boys Vinyl run, the big companies didn't care, Vinyl Quality was awful in the 80's, mass produced garbage, warps, skips, off-centered holes ............ I don't miss that crap at all.....tic,pop,tic........ ooops, Sorry Bud, I get carried away on records, on records, on records..Embarrassed

LP's sucked in the 80s too. We all know that many CD's also sucked back then Did they do anything well in the 80s? I know, Piano ties.

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