In article , Iain Churches
wrote:
"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
FWIW I've recently been transferring and de-clicking some Ellington
'Radio Transcriptions' discs released on Decca London in the late
1970s. These are remarkably good compared with what you'd expect from
commercial 78s from the time (1946-7). Sadly, the shop only had
volumes 1-4 so I didn't get volume 5. But not bad for 3 quid a pop. :-)
You seem to have found an excellent source for interesting music at a
very reasonable price.
Alas, now gone. The shop only existed here on a month-by-month rental
whilst the property owner looked for a tenant willing to pay more for a
longer term. So the shop appeared, then vanished again at short notice less
than a year later. It was, I think, and offshoot from a Glasgow shop. But
it isn't practical for me to travel somewhere like that.
Do you clean the LP's before transfer?
In general I just use something like a parastat or preener. Then use a dust
bug. May use a zerostat if the weather is allowing static problems to
arise.
On occasion I have experimented with wet cleaning, but have tended to
conclude that if discs are that dirty from second-hand they'll have lots of
physical damage anyway.
Many shops that sell vinyl have a recording cleaning machine. My
favourite shop charges 1e (which includes a cup of coffee whiole you
wait)
No such shops in town. We are now back in the situation where the only
places to buy LPs is the charity shops that sell them second-hand in 'take
it or leave it' condition. They do advertise some in the window which they
think will be trendy and put a higher price on them. But I suspect this is
purely on the basis of what they see on the cover and have no idea about
condition, etc.
Some public libraries also offer the same service (but no coffee:-)
I might have to travel abroad for that! So far as I know, no local library
these days even offers Audio CDs, let alone any service for LP use! The
town library sold off their CDs a few years ago, and that was that.
The LPs I bought 'new' back in the day are all in good condition. The ones
I bought recently second-hand vary. But I decided that at 3 quid a go it
was simplest to accept some would be 'duds' and prove not worth the effort.
I looked in the shop for any obvious scratches, etc. Then took a punt on
ones that looked OK.
In practice I found that the results, statistically, varied with genre.
1) Pop LPs. Almost all very badly worn and scratched. Often ground-in dirt.
I stopped bothering after trying a few as the pattern was clear enough.
Death by Dansette. 8-]
2) Classical LPs. Much more varied. Some were 'as new' - i.e. as good as I
used to encounter when buying new. Others have lots of ticks and clicks
which are low-level but audible during quieter passages of music. They'd
have been masked on louder popular LPs, but showed up on during long quiet
passages. Experiments showed these were essentially marks in the vinyl. The
results can sound good. But may take a long time to fix most of the many,
many small audible clicks.
3) Jazz LPs. Again variable. But my impression is that either their owners
were more often more careful than 'pop' buyers, and/or the smaller ticks
and clicks weren't audible because the level of the music was higher than
on the classical LPs. (When using Audacity with such discs I can often see
ticks in the hf which I can't hear because the music is loud enough to
render them un-noticable. I may still remove some of them, but can decide
not to bother as I prefer.)
So after some initial expriments I focussed on buying 3 quid Jazz LPs.
Served the excellent purpose of letting me get a lot of Jazz I'd otherwise
never have decided to obtain. And made transcribing easier as the extent of
the noticable problems was lower than the other catagories.
How true any of that may be in general, I don't know. But it was what I
found from the LPs that were on offer here. Alas, no longer.
Given that now the big companies keep offerring box sets of old classical
recordings at about 2 quid a CD, I'm happy enough to buy Classical music
that way - depending on the choice on offer.
Maybe there are similar Jazz boxes. I have found out about a few - e.g. a
large Sidney Bichet box set I got a couple of years ago. The problem there
is finding out about them.
Jim
--
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CHLO-E
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