So this OT is dedicated to those of us who like to collect vinyl. Living in Bangkok there are a few pretty good vinyl stores. I have recently gotten an order from Amazon.com Japan. However, what was delivered was not the old fashioned made in Japan with the paper band on the cover with Japanese writing. IN fact the albums were made by Fridaymusic. Which is release 180 gram vinyl editions.

So for you collectors: are there Japanese pressings of albums being currently made in Japan, or is that day done? I know a lot of Japanese love collecting vinyl. If so where do you get high end pressings (if not from Japan)? I find US pressings to be so wildly variable in quality. some good, rarely excellent, and often sub par. German pressings?

Lets discuss collecting vinyl.

old fashioned made in Japan with the paper band on the cover with Japanese writing

obi strip



ROCKMAN

yeah I know it is a obi strip, but how about where you like to collect high quality vinyl Rockman?

The two albums I got from Friday are Robin Trower Bridge of Sighs and David Bowie Outside 1. Excerpts from Outside. Both sound top notch. The Bowie especially sounding amazing. I will be getting more Friday releases for sure. And relatively cheap from Amazon.com.jp

FridayMusic Records are made in America. I have 2 titles, both are excellent. To my knowledge records are not pressed in Japan anymore, unless maybe privately of course. They made great product, probably why they're so collectable. That's cool you have place to buy records over there. Here in Germany one of the long time stores finally closed down. A sign of the times.

Hey frankotero. Yeah I was very surprised by finding some excellent vinyl stores. A bit pricey but good. And some good used as well. I love the Japanese imports from the 80s. Far superior to anything coming out of the US. I have all The Beatles, lots of Kinks, all of Bowie, The Who, and odds and ends from other groups in Japanese pressings. Mostly bought 30 plus years ago and they still sound mint! Granted I was a bit OCD when I was a teen, constantly cleaning them and making sure I never touched them... it paid off though.

Yeah I went to Friday's site and most stuff you can oder on their site. Says wishlist. Which is weird.

I remember in the 80ies when we could buy japan-made Beatles vinyl that were told was made from the Mastertapes. And they had no stripe and looked like this:



Is it them you are looking for? They sounded great.

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You can find on eBay some trustful sellers from Japan. I've bought a lot of japanese releases (Lou Reed, Ronnie Wood, The Band, etc.) from one seller and I had no problem with it. The records were all VG+ or NM quality, and sometimes I had the good luck of winning some auctions on which I've paid $5 or something apiece (excluding S&H, of course).

Hey ComeOn, I have the same record. These OMR's are supreme pressings. Mine remain in the same condition as I bought them in the late 1970s. Mostly because I rarely play them, but also I take good care of my records. Don't know what's up with FridayMusic other than they make great pressings. If I'm not mistaken they're also a little hard to find after initial release. I found Alice Cooper's Schools Out in a record store at regular cost, woo-hoo!

I just got a new record player and have started diving back into vinyl. Was doing some reading online about how vinyl sales have really taken off in the last couple years, but the problem now is there's virtually no manufacturers or good equipment around anymore. In the US, one company supplies the raw vinyl for basically all the presses, and there's only a handful of places that are even capable of producing LPs here. They can't keep up with the amount of product even now that is demanded of them. The equipment is 40 years old and all the techs are older than that. Says the big money investors still want to be convinced that it can go bigger than niche before they dive back in with a sizable cash outlay to modernize and try again.

Interesting stuff folks! Thanks. The Beatles Mobile Fidelity are great! I don't have them and have looked at a few of the used boxes for about 900 US. I have been buying a lot of Mobile Fidelity. There is a store here with quite a few in stock. I got Dylan's New Morning, and Santana's first two albums on MF, and they sound superb.

A big score a few months ago was Tom Waits Orphans collection in a 12 vinyl box set. Amazing! A beautifully done project in a nice box with a beautiful book of lyrics.

Jack White's new one with the first side playing from the inner label out is nice looking but sounds like shit. Very low mix and poor quality vinyl.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2015-01-22 18:33 by whitem8.

There are some clunkers out there. For instance my pressing of Alice Cooper Killer has quite a bit of noise for a brand new record. Really too bad as it's my favorite album by him. On a brighter note I really like the all analog pressings of Jimi Hendrix. Especially happy to have the first two records in mono. There's a lot of things to be done with vinyl if big companies wanted to. But of course there has to be a demand.

Yeah, with how good the Bowie Outside Excerpts sounds, the Robin Trower from Fridaymusic has issues and I am sending back for a replacement. That is the good thing about Amazon...they take back stuff with no questions asked. And then ship a new one.

If you are doing vinyl, try and find an old tube powered hi-fi console at an antique mall, store or similar. I have an old tube powered Magnavox hi-fi console I use that sounds so good, whether playing albums or the radio, that I can only sigh at the idea of listening afterwards to music through speakers attached to my computer or car stereo. I jacked a Sony Walkman mp3 player with my own song mix into the hi-fi console and the sound, though not as deep or warm as my old records or the radio, is so much better than solid state playback. I still have packed away a Marantz and Hitachi stereo receiver, a JVC and BSR (if I remember the initials right) turntable, along with some hand made speakers that could fill and blow away Shea Stadium, to use an old, now possibly nonistent, venue's name. I also have an old Sony TC-280 reel to reel tape recorder/player and tapes for the same. Going back to this thread, if you wanna do vinyl, look for still good old playback products, especially those that are tube powered.

The equipment is the biggest problem, like dmay wrote.

The hardest thing is to get speakers that are NOT produced for the playback of digital sources.

Mine are hand made as well, built by my brother-in-law back in the 70s and I still use them because of the excellent sound (mind you, records, they aren't made for CDs).

Now my son jumped on the vinyl-train as well and he was able to pick up a great turn-table but he/we still don't have any idea, which speakers could fit. We've already listened to quite a few but all you can do in stores like Media Markt or Saturn is listen to digital music. One can only guess how the would sound at home with analog sources.

Have you guys ever seen this? [www.elpj.com]

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StonesCat
I just got a new record player and have started diving back into vinyl. Was doing some reading online about how vinyl sales have really taken off in the last couple years, but the problem now is there's virtually no manufacturers or good equipment around anymore. In the US, one company supplies the raw vinyl for basically all the presses, and there's only a handful of places that are even capable of producing LPs here. They can't keep up with the amount of product even now that is demanded of them. The equipment is 40 years old and all the techs are older than that. Says the big money investors still want to be convinced that it can go bigger than niche before they dive back in with a sizable cash outlay to modernize and try again.

I just wrote a piece on music sales for the newspaper where I work.

In my country, the vinyl sales have tripled every year for the last three years. The CD sales have the excact same decline. Download sales are increasing as much as vinyl does.

This development has forced (nearly) all record stores to offer vinyl. All catalogues are expanding heavily, and some of the record stores are even selling turntables and accessories.

I interviewed the manager of one of Oslo's leading stores. He told me that he sells several turntables every day now. That says a lot about the development, in a country with 5 million inhabitants.

That laser turntable looks crazy! And it is crazy expensive! My god! Talk about mid life crisis purchase. 16,000 US dollars? Well I will just live with my Thorens, happy with the sound it puts out.

Is it laser-needle that plays LPs? You avoid crackles then too?

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We just got rid of those laser-players, and now they're coming back on turntables??

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DandelionPowderman
We just got rid of those laser-players, and now they're coming back on turntables??

Not bad. You could even surgical removal of moles with this laser.

Europe's largest vinyl pressing plant, the Haarlem Record Industry "The Netherlands", brought her figures about 2014 out. They expressed this year as many as 5.4 million records, an explosive growth from 3.8 million units in 2013.

At concerts I see many bands with vinyls the last years and for myself it was never a problem getting the vinyls but more how much I wanna spend.

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DandelionPowderman

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StonesCat
I just got a new record player and have started diving back into vinyl. Was doing some reading online about how vinyl sales have really taken off in the last couple years, but the problem now is there's virtually no manufacturers or good equipment around anymore. In the US, one company supplies the raw vinyl for basically all the presses, and there's only a handful of places that are even capable of producing LPs here. They can't keep up with the amount of product even now that is demanded of them. The equipment is 40 years old and all the techs are older than that. Says the big money investors still want to be convinced that it can go bigger than niche before they dive back in with a sizable cash outlay to modernize and try again.

I just wrote a piece on music sales for the newspaper where I work.

In my country, the vinyl sales have tripled every year for the last three years. The CD sales have the excact same decline. Download sales are increasing as much as vinyl does.

This development has forced (nearly) all record stores to offer vinyl. All catalogues are expanding heavily, and some of the record stores are even selling turntables and accessories.

I interviewed the manager of one of Oslo's leading stores. He told me that he sells several turntables every day now. That says a lot about the development, in a country with 5 million inhabitants.

Here's something I just saw today that kind of dovetails off what I was saying, sounds like good news.

[ww2.kqed.org]

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StonesCat

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DandelionPowderman

Quote
StonesCat
I just got a new record player and have started diving back into vinyl. Was doing some reading online about how vinyl sales have really taken off in the last couple years, but the problem now is there's virtually no manufacturers or good equipment around anymore. In the US, one company supplies the raw vinyl for basically all the presses, and there's only a handful of places that are even capable of producing LPs here. They can't keep up with the amount of product even now that is demanded of them. The equipment is 40 years old and all the techs are older than that. Says the big money investors still want to be convinced that it can go bigger than niche before they dive back in with a sizable cash outlay to modernize and try again.

I just wrote a piece on music sales for the newspaper where I work.

In my country, the vinyl sales have tripled every year for the last three years. The CD sales have the excact same decline. Download sales are increasing as much as vinyl does.

This development has forced (nearly) all record stores to offer vinyl. All catalogues are expanding heavily, and some of the record stores are even selling turntables and accessories.

I interviewed the manager of one of Oslo's leading stores. He told me that he sells several turntables every day now. That says a lot about the development, in a country with 5 million inhabitants.

Here's something I just saw today that kind of dovetails off what I was saying, sounds like good news.

[ww2.kqed.org]

Good news indeed!

ROCKMAN

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silkcut1978_

The hardest
thing is to get speakers that are NOT produced for the playback of digital sources.

What? All signals are analog by the time they get to the speakers. Unless you have an AES (XLR) input on the speaker like some true digital speakers do, all speakers are analog. I have always laughed at speaker ads and labeling that say "digital ready".

As long as the frequency response is full range, say 22 Hz to 22 kHz I can't imagine the speakers not being suitable for your vinyl.

I'm not suggesting you are wrong or that the older cabinet box speakers didn't sound different but it's possible they were just providing some low and low mid coloring which wasn't really in the original source material.

The vinyl records were all originally mixed on systems with studio monitor speakers of various types and they are pretty easy to get ahold of and I've never even heard of monitors or speakers which are somehow made for digital (CD) sources.

If you have info I don't please share it. Thanks.

peace

Stonescat, that is a great article! Thanks for posting!

Ok, so some interesting stuff on ebay. Not as many Japanese pressings as I thought there might be, but some nice stuff. I like to see the prices for The Beatles and Stones stuff, most of which I have! Yay! some good stuff though.

So another topic here... I have to revise my opinion of the American pressings of the recent Beatles Stereo box set. Now after a close listen, my box at least, and it seems many others from reviews I have read on Amazon, have serious quality issues. I wish I could return it, as I really didn't have the opportunity to listen to it for quite some time after purchasing. A lot of distorted sound at beginnings of various albums and pronounced clicks as well. Pretty crappy, but the packaging at least is top notch.

So this time around I ordered from Canada, which I believe are German pressings, and the reviews sounded better. I am considering selling my stereo box set via ebay and see what I can get and re-buying the UK version or German version of said box.

I really wish I could afford the Mobile Fidelity box. One unopened going for 3 grand on ebay.

I was scared away from the Stones vinyl sets when I read reviews that the second box set was just digital transfers, and not analog, which defeats the purpose.

I did, though get the abcko clear vinyl pressings of Let it Bleed, Get yer Ya Ya's Out and a checkered vinyl of the Checkerboard Lounge release. But also, on ebay the Stones second vinyl box is asking high prices, but don't know if they are being bought.