Vinyl Junkies …

Not tried it but with some models of Pro-ject turntable its possible to fit a 78rpm belt and stylus:

https://www.henleyaudio.co.uk/ProJect-78rpm

Numark tt100 direct drive have a 78 speed setting can probably get cheap on eBay as not Technics

the difference between black vinyl and non-black vinyl

Discussed here:

https://vinylmoon.co/blogs/the-vinyl-moon-blog/how-records-are-made-part-2

Actually have found an informative article on the subject of black vs. colour vinyl now -

http://www.rpmrecords.dk/blog/sound-quality-and-vinyl-colour/

[edit] - ah, beat me to it - thanks @rhb !

My genesis tt does 78 rpm by pressing both 33 and 45 simultaneiusly.
33+45=78
How brilliant is that!

Thanks very much for all the useful replies guys, greatly appreciated.

That's how the Numark 78 setting works too. It's very clever.

Black vinyl is coloured, it's just that the colour black was chosen partly because it improved the quality of the pressing.

I'm not sure whether it's just been a case of coloured pressings not getting the same time taken over them in the past or there is a chemical reason, the pigments cause surface noise maybe.

It's a really big subject and I'm not going to do it justice in a few posts. One thing I have discovered with vinyl is experience teaches you a lot. Handle a lot of records and you can start to get an idea where it might be pressed, whether it was done cheaply, all those kind of things. One thing you almost never see is an audiophile pressing in anything but black.

It's pretty clear looking at that there's not a lot of bass energy. The noise floor is likely to be an issue too so the mastering has to take into account the amount of music they want to fit on per side and how far they are willing to go toward the label. If you go too far you'll end up with inner groove distortion.

As that album is 1hr14mins long it must be on 2 disks or cut very quietly. It doesn't make any difference that he recorded it quietly. Listening to the digital version they have taken time to preserve the dynamic range though which you'd expect from a guy who spent 2 years building his studio.

Personally I'd buy a title like this on CD rather than vinyl because there's a good chance that anything less than a lucky pressing would suffer from surface noise. I do have loads of LP's on vinyl I should have bought on CD though :)

Thanks again for the elaborate response, appreciate it.

Yea the All Melody is both a 2LP and cut quietly. My side A is a little bit noisy but the others are really silent actually.
I heard the CD before getting the vinyl and neither is perfect of course but in the end I'm ok with a bit of noise floor if on the other hand I get the warmth and depth.

I'm waiting for a delivery today that has a copy of Mary Lattimore - Silver Ladders in it. I'm prepared for disappointment :) Sadly loads of my summertime pre-orders look like they will never be filled.

Weird that this came out on Ghostly, is that a direction they've been moving in recently?

Not sure, they're not a label I have a lot of experience of. Copies arrived and it's the black version not the sand colour dinked** limited edition. I don't know whether to be happy or sad :)

I only picked up on this album from the pre release lists but it quickly got into rotation at home. Can't really say why I like it so much, it has a very nice atmosphere.

**Dinked is a term for the centre being punched out to the larger jukebox size.

Isn't the step you describe just a sound (likely bass) with an interval very close to an integer multiple/fraction of 33 1/3 BPM?

i.e. the same bass note almost exactly every 0.45s, 0.90s, 1.80s or 3.60s

Oh yea, that actually could be it!
Now I realize there are several of those "steps" and they line up with a beat / sounds.
Have never seen it like that on a record, frankly.

Thank you!

Following up on a couple of thread themes. Couple of photos showing pretty normal damage from the seam of a inner sleeve on a brand new record. This one happens to be Mary Lattimore - Silver Ladders but there's an accountant somewhere who won't spend a couple of pence making sure that the pressing reaches you in the proper lined inner. /rant

The second picture is after a few spins on the record cleaner. Resulted in a little bit of noise but not too bad.

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Paper sleeves are one of my annoyances with new vinyl. The record is usually glued to the paper sleeve with static, and then gets scratched when pulling it out of the sleeve for the first time.

Surely poly lined sleeves don't add that much to the cost?

I've seen footage of a machine that folds the paper sleeve and then the record drops directly into it. I suppose that kind of machine can't handle a poly lined paper sleeve. Otherwise it can't be much to do it properly but the whole business seems to be about pennies. Over time it's out me off certain types of releases. The glossy sleeves that major labels like to use for big artists are horrible. I always add japanese type anti static liners to my records having cleaned them. Most of the dust on a record in a paper sleeve comes from the cutout hole edge.

Does the quality of the record make much difference with a poor quality needle and set up?

Depends how bad the quality is. It's like all engineering, £50 car that can drive from A->B is doing it's job, you get there. £50k car should be a nicer experience.

I've got fussy because I have lots of mint records that are clean and I don't get much surface noise so it can bother me if it's there. On the other hand, 45's that come from my Grans collection that have been played by my parents and aunts on a little setup with a dodgy needle are noisy but still nice to listen to.

I wouldn't play a £200 pressing with a crappy needle, it just doesn't make sense. I have played plenty of crappy records with a decent needle though.

One of the coloured disks I received this week. Weird one, quite unusual. Also a disk of breaks hence the weird patterns of the cut.

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Does the quality of the record make much difference with a poor quality needle and set up?

Define poor quality?

I can tell the difference between a good and a bad mastering or pressing with my modest set up (40 year old Rega Planar 2 with original Ortofon cart/third party stylus, Arcam Alpha 3 amp, Celestion 5 speakers). Probably about £350 all in with today's ebay prices. You don't need to spend thousands to get a set up where the recording is the limiting factor.

That setup is definitely not poor quality :)

I was imagining a Crosley with the supplied needle bent by your 10 year old and covered in wax and fluff.

I know people (even some on here) who love the Stanton 500's or similar on an SL1200 and I had that kind of setup for 10 years. Even the AT 95e is circa £40 and does a really decent job. You can hear the quality of the pressing with that kind of setup. I wouldn't call that kind of thing poor quality either.

Setup is hard to get perfect but it's easy to get about right.

As airhead said.

I'm discussing a very worn needle and/or no name worn out needle with a steepletone record player. Or the bush record player that I am selling that took four hours of messing about to get the original needle right so that it played stereo.

Not sure this will be of interest to anyone but I'll soon have an incomplete Rega P3 for sell as well as a complete P1.
I've also got a few 12" EPs I'd like to part with or exchange. Can't wait for all the charity shops to reopen!!!