Chances are, however, that at least one of these LPs will transport you to the quasi-psychedelic glory land of vinyl at its best. Whether you dig the music or not, spinning any of these LPs will give you a good idea of what your stereo rig is capable of. The good news is that more than a few labels are doing it, and some are even forging new analog techniques.īelow are ten albums that have miraculously made it past all of the production pitfalls to stand proudly as some of the very best sounding 12-inch vinyl LPs currently available. If dust hasn’t found a way in and the vinyl releases cleanly from the metal stampers, we may have an excellent sounding vinyl LP on our hands.Īs one who has overseen vinyl production from microphone to final packaging, I can attest to the Sisyphean nature of making a high-quality LP. A pressing machine operator installs the stamper onto a huge machine that drops goobers of (what we hope is properly formulated) vinyl onto the metal plates and then squeezes them together just like you’d make waffles. The plating engineer packs the metal stampers into another odd looking packaging device and delivers it for pressing. Pressing: Let’s assume plating produced clean stampers.Lacquers are often destroyed in failed attempts to create stampers, and must be cut again. Excellent, now the cutter screws the lacquer into a what looks like a medieval torture device and ships it off to an electroplating plant where another engineer sprays the lacquer with silver, dips it in a nickel bath, zaps it, and eventually ends up with two metal plates called stampers. Plating: Let’s assume the cutting engineer produced a near-perfect lacquer. I recently bought a nice clean LP of The Statler Brothers Sing Golden Gospel Favorites for a buck at a local thrift store, not realizing it was the same album as O Happy Day that I already owned, repackaged by Reader’s Digest with a different title and cover.Environmental restrictions on certain chemicals have made modern lacquer production fussier than it used to be. Producing the blank lacquer disc: In 2013 a bad batch went out from Japan and screwed up cutting sessions around the world.If the cutting engineer is not the dude at the plant who just pounded three beers on his Friday lunch break, but rather a sober and experienced cutting engineer working in a sterile environment on a well maintained lathe, there is hope of a properly cut lacquer. Cutting a lacquer disc: The cutting engineer plays the stereo tracks and uses a lathe to cut grooves into a blank lacquer disc.It’s best to cut an LP from specially prepared masters or from the unmastered mixes. Even many top-notch mastering engineers optimize tracks for digital media, and not for cutting an LP. Mastering the stereo tracks: Mastering is the final polishing of the mixes for commercial delivery.Plus the demands of mixing for digital streaming have left a generation of mixing engineers bereft of techniques best suited to making analog LPs. Recording: With today’s shrinking budgets, home studios and self-taught engineers, the probability of an exceptional recording using exceptional equipment is lower than ever.We’ve separated each of the steps below, each a potential pitfall on the long journey of delivering a high-quality LP. Producing an LP is a multi-stepped process. One such site is owned by 2nd Markets Corporation of Chattanooga, (full disclosure, 2nd Markets owns this site).SHOP NOW The Complex Process of Producing an LP If you do not wish to do the work of selling them yourself, there are many companies that will sell them on eBay for you on consignment. Want to suggest a Price Update? Help us keep up-to-date, click the FEEDBACK button at the very top center of each page. The Prices shown on our Price Guide Detail Pages are reviewed and updated by our Board of Advisors. We strive to reflect actual selling prices rather than Internet "asking" prices, which are often inflated. Our search engine will find matching pages based on keywords you type into the Search Box. The database is updated constantly.īrowse the Price Guide Listings (click here)Įnter keywords (example: ELVIS PRESLEY or BOB DENVER and always include the words 33-1/3 RECORD ALBUM) into the searchbox at the top of this page, then click the WHAT'S IT WORTH button. Includes current market values in ten different grades. The searchable database consists ofĭetailed reports in an ever-growing database of items in this category. Whose price guide books have been the authority on collectibles values since 1985. Online RECORD ALBUM Price Guide.The price guide is maintained by Jon R. Welcome to the iGuide RECORD ALBUMS Price Guide TOP RARE RECORD DEALER - GET HELP FROM AN EXPERT (click here)
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