Still Annoyed By Shitty New Vinyl

Hello, it’s me bitching about quality assurance, or lack thereof, with vinyl these days.

As I have noted a few times by now, I got back into vinyl about 15 months ago, and have been trying to build a collection of albums that I have not owned before (mostly on CD) as I don’t need to recreate my 900+ CD collection. That would be dumb.

During the holiday buying season I grabbed Information Society Information Society because I don’t know that I ever owned it. I am sure I had a tape of it somewhere, but the clear vinyl version went on sale, so I grabbed it.

It’s been busy over the holidays, so today, two weeks after I received it, I finally put it on my turntable and within seconds of the album starting it skipped, not because it was dirty, but because the grooves of the pressing are warped, almost exactly the same as Beauty and the Beat from back in May, where my swingarm weaved back and forth like a snake.

Just to be sure, I cleaned the vinyl a couple of times, but cleaning it won’t fix a warped groove. I’m upset, but more so, annoyed, again, at the lack of quality assurance when it comes to vinyl. Again, I get it, people and machines are not infallible, but I honestly think because of the increased demand for vinyl that some companies are just fucking lazy and kicking out product as fast as they can to make a buck.

I understand that my dollar helps smaller shops more than Amazon, but one of the reasons I buy from Amazon is because I know I can return shitty vinyl when I receive it. Because this one, yeah, it’s going back. I can only assume that the replacement I receive will be equally warped, but we’ll see. I’ll update once I get it.

Udiscovemusic.com is currently in the middle of a 50% off sale (I get no commission), so I bought a bunch of vinyl from them, including what is now my third copy of Beauty and the Beat. The two previous copies were garbage, so after experiencing the warped grooves from the Information Society album I had to know if I had another album to send back. I put the album on its second side to see if this copy was warped like the last two. Ironically, it was not. It plays great.

Once again, it’s not my turntable, it’s that some batches of records have not been properly vetted before they’re shipped out.

That pisses me off.

Again, I get that there are much more horrific things going on in our world and that my issue is definitely a first world problem, but when I buy a product I expect it to work.

Rant over.