My brief experience with a very clean, shiny, new looking record, and frustration after dropping my Dynavector stylus into the groove.
I was puzzled, not shocked (since it happens once in a while), that I was hearing crackling and a loud hiss from beginning to end!
I removed the record, looked at it closely with my bare (not bear) eyes, and dang if I didn't see pristine, clean grooves from the outer edge to the inner.
Note that I paid a premium for this Robert Johnson LP- maybe ten bucks.
Anyway, one day I was on call, so I decided to take the LP with me to the operating room. We use high powered Leica microscopes for neuro and spinal surgery. I slapped a 400 lens on the scope, placed the LP in position and what I saw took my back 40 years.* Throughout the entire LP, along the sides of the grooves, were straight, vertical lines. At that magnification it looked like they were one sixteenth apart. Looking closer, I could see that each line looked like a clean chisel mark, carved deep into the sidewall. Contrasting against the black, clean vinyl, the marks looked white/gray. Very uniform and consistent in size.
*The only way this could have happened, I think (unless Michael Angelo shrunk himself and his chisel, and hates me and/or Robert Johnson) is by a bad stylus. A broken stylus with a sharp broken edge, most likely 2 broken sharp edges riding inside the groove and cutting into the sidewalls at 33.3 rpms and 26 tons (really?) of pressure, hot stamping and cutting that sumbitch- all because some teenager kid decided to place a nickel (please add 5 more tons) on top the Olympus head shell (we had an Olympus television with a record player on the side inside a drawer) so that the needle wouldn't skip and jump when he was listening to his brothers James Brown at The Apollo doing Please, Please, Please! when his brother wasn't home, of course.
So, sometimes, cleaning your record 3,4,5 times with a VPI or Ultra, Out of this Galaxy cleaning machine, just won't help.
But, I do strongly recommend cleaning your LPs and cleaning your stylus. And don't let your brother or sister mess with your stereo.
I was puzzled, not shocked (since it happens once in a while), that I was hearing crackling and a loud hiss from beginning to end!
I removed the record, looked at it closely with my bare (not bear) eyes, and dang if I didn't see pristine, clean grooves from the outer edge to the inner.
Note that I paid a premium for this Robert Johnson LP- maybe ten bucks.
Anyway, one day I was on call, so I decided to take the LP with me to the operating room. We use high powered Leica microscopes for neuro and spinal surgery. I slapped a 400 lens on the scope, placed the LP in position and what I saw took my back 40 years.* Throughout the entire LP, along the sides of the grooves, were straight, vertical lines. At that magnification it looked like they were one sixteenth apart. Looking closer, I could see that each line looked like a clean chisel mark, carved deep into the sidewall. Contrasting against the black, clean vinyl, the marks looked white/gray. Very uniform and consistent in size.
*The only way this could have happened, I think (unless Michael Angelo shrunk himself and his chisel, and hates me and/or Robert Johnson) is by a bad stylus. A broken stylus with a sharp broken edge, most likely 2 broken sharp edges riding inside the groove and cutting into the sidewalls at 33.3 rpms and 26 tons (really?) of pressure, hot stamping and cutting that sumbitch- all because some teenager kid decided to place a nickel (please add 5 more tons) on top the Olympus head shell (we had an Olympus television with a record player on the side inside a drawer) so that the needle wouldn't skip and jump when he was listening to his brothers James Brown at The Apollo doing Please, Please, Please! when his brother wasn't home, of course.
So, sometimes, cleaning your record 3,4,5 times with a VPI or Ultra, Out of this Galaxy cleaning machine, just won't help.
But, I do strongly recommend cleaning your LPs and cleaning your stylus. And don't let your brother or sister mess with your stereo.
