Vinyl Lovers

@ghdprentice They must do something different is the US as my complaint in Canada is the ridiculous waste in over packaging.  First, they put the LP in a special cardboard enclosure, made specifically for LPs and that should be sufficient to protect the package in most cases.  Hey, stuff happens.  But then they take this prepackaged LP and put it in a box, often with some bubble wrap.  I have never had an LP from Amazon arrive damaged.  But I still have a high return rate due to Vinyl quality that is unacceptable at today prices.  I can't see that changing no matter where the LP is shipped from.  But I can see the returns being a bigger problem.  To be clear, I am not a shill for Amazon.  They just work for me.  Cheers.

I have been buying primarily through eBay for a couple of decades now. Maybe 90%. My 2nd source is discogs. I rarely buy at a brick and mortar store: the selections are far too limited.

I look for NM pressings from close to the release date.
I find that they are superior to reissues/remastered reissues 95% of the time.

I suspect the reasons are:

- master tapes degrade over time, so someone promoting an LP as “remastered from the master tapes” is hoping you will be bamboozled by the word “master”.
- add to this problem, some remastering is done digitally. ADA is inferior to AAA, and the difference can be heard. For example, I stopped buying MFSL pressings at a certain point because they somehow were no longer sounding as good as my old somewhat worn pressings. I then later learned - as did everyone else - about how they introduced a digital step into their process without making that clear to everyone.

OP;

back to your opening statement, you’ve gone through a marathon session of cleaning. I too have about 500 more to clean. I got fed up around the 15th album.

The process of allowing them to ir dry takes a tone of stand up space and time. I don’t have a demagnetizer so ambient dust started collecting on newly cleaned albums. I knew because soon as I thought they were dry I put them back in sleeves  and album covers. Few days later when I went to play them I used a felt brush and sure enough wherever I lift the brush there a line of dust. Also, after playing A and B side of an album my Shure V15 with the little dust sweeper was clogged with dust.

Check out Sweet Vinyl.....they make a noise suppressor (aka tick and pop remover) that really works....even if you can't remove the last traces of dust/gunk, etc their noise filtering system works marvels and makes old noisy records sound like new. Just go on their website and read the accolades. I've bought mine when they first came out and several of my vinyl friends followed suit and were amazed how flawlessly it works

jackster, In my experience felt causes static electric charge buldup on vinyl.  So I would not use a felt brush or pad to keep dust away.  Also, to ameliorate the static charge, you do not want a demagnetizer.  You want a positive ion generator, as the charge on an LP is negative, and positive ions sprayed toward the LP surface will neutralize the net charge.  Zerostat actually works. So do other more expensive devices that do the same thing.  Magnetism and static electricity are two different phenomena, even though both result in an attractive or repulsive force between two objects.