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My hobbies and interests wax and wane, as I burn out on one and take up another... and recently I've started spinning those 12" vinyl discs again while I work.
Love the experience and the sound, and knowing that with some tweaking I can make it even better.
Learning little tricks to make the experience either better or easier is always fun, and educational too.
Here's my latest: we always talk about the importance of keeping your records and stylus clean. Don't forget the platter (and the mat) too. You place a record on the platter, run a cleaning brush over the side you're about to play, and play it, and guess what happens to the other side: it picks up all the dust and crud that's on the mat, making it dirty. Then you flip the disc to play the other side, and repeat the process... and now the clean side you just played is picking up more dust from the mat... then what do most of us do when we're finished? We put it back in the sleeve, dust and all.
So I carefully vacuumed the platter and my cork mat, which helped some... there's still some dust. Cork mats are tricky to clean since it's hard to see the dust on them. I'm going to keep the vacuum near the TT for a while and just clean that mat a few more times when I use the turntable, and hopefully it will mean my records pick up less dust from the platter/mat.
Another annoyance: returning records to the sleeves. I use the Mo-Fi original master plastic sleeves, which are very thin. Getting records into these sleeves is hard to do since I need 3 hands: two to hold the record correctly at the edges and another to hold the sleeve open. My latest trick: I take a small piece of Scotch tape and tape the sleeve to the edge of a table so it hangs off the edge of the table, open end up (I use a plastic Walmart table that the tape sticks well to). I take the record and simply slide it in, being careful not to drop it in too hard and have the tape come unstuck. Then I remove the tape and I'm done. If anyone else has any better ways to do this, I'm all ears/eyes.
Anyone else with any cool tricks for playing/cleaning your vinyl?
Love the experience and the sound, and knowing that with some tweaking I can make it even better.
Learning little tricks to make the experience either better or easier is always fun, and educational too.
Here's my latest: we always talk about the importance of keeping your records and stylus clean. Don't forget the platter (and the mat) too. You place a record on the platter, run a cleaning brush over the side you're about to play, and play it, and guess what happens to the other side: it picks up all the dust and crud that's on the mat, making it dirty. Then you flip the disc to play the other side, and repeat the process... and now the clean side you just played is picking up more dust from the mat... then what do most of us do when we're finished? We put it back in the sleeve, dust and all.
So I carefully vacuumed the platter and my cork mat, which helped some... there's still some dust. Cork mats are tricky to clean since it's hard to see the dust on them. I'm going to keep the vacuum near the TT for a while and just clean that mat a few more times when I use the turntable, and hopefully it will mean my records pick up less dust from the platter/mat.
Another annoyance: returning records to the sleeves. I use the Mo-Fi original master plastic sleeves, which are very thin. Getting records into these sleeves is hard to do since I need 3 hands: two to hold the record correctly at the edges and another to hold the sleeve open. My latest trick: I take a small piece of Scotch tape and tape the sleeve to the edge of a table so it hangs off the edge of the table, open end up (I use a plastic Walmart table that the tape sticks well to). I take the record and simply slide it in, being careful not to drop it in too hard and have the tape come unstuck. Then I remove the tape and I'm done. If anyone else has any better ways to do this, I'm all ears/eyes.
Anyone else with any cool tricks for playing/cleaning your vinyl?
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