Records Unlimited

Home | History of Audio Recording | 45 rpm records | 33 1/3 rpm Records | 78 rpm Records | 16 rpm records | Purchasing New Records | Taking Care of Records

Caring for Your Records

Making sure your records last

     When you have a record collection, you need to keep them in good condition. If you do a good job keeping them in good condition, they will virtually last forever. If you do not keep your colledtion in good condition, they will not last a long time and will start to sound awful and will more or less deteriorate, keeping in mind that the more you listen to a record, the poorer it will sound (a record that was listened to 5 times will sound much better than a record that was listened to 30 times). There are certain things that you can do to keep both the record, and record cover in good condition. These things are as follows: 

  1. Keep your collection in a cool, dark place, away from the sun and moisture. Even better in an airtight container. If you don't, the sleeve on the record may start go grow mold and will permenantely damage your record making it unplayable. Also, if a record is kept in the sun, it will warp. The ends will become wavy. If there is not too much damage the record may still be playable, but it may sound wavy.
  2. Make sure that not only is your record in the cardboard sleeve, but also in the softer paper sleeve as well.
  3. Try to always dust a record when you take it out of the sleeve before you play it. And dust it when you return it to the sleeve. A soft piece of material or cloth will be suitable for this.
  4. Try to always handle your record by the sides, not by holding it between your fingers. If you do you will be keeping yourself from smudging the records. It's just like compact discs, if you don't handle them by the sides you will smudge them causing them to skip.
  5. Try to be gentle with your records. Allthough it was the shellac records that would smash just because of the wrong drop, you still need to be careful to treat your records with care when putting them onto the player.
  6. Be careful with the needle on your record player. If you brush the needle up thee record, you may give the record a bad scratch which may cause the needle to get stuck into a locked-groove, which causes skipping (the same line repeated over and over again until the needle is reset on the record), and even bigger, you may damage the needle, causing replacement to be needed, causing about $40.00 in replacement costs. Needles aren't cheap.
  7. This is an important one NEVER lay anything on top of your record. This can cause severe damage to your record and may cause the record to lose its nice sound. I ended up scratching a record to pieces because of setting something on top of a record, and it sounded awful.
  8. When you store your records, do not stack them on top of each other. Stick them onto a shelf or somewhere that you can stand them on their edges upright. Place them beside eachother with the spine or labelled edge facing out. That is obviously because you can tell what record you have without having to take them out.
  9. Make sure that the stylus (needle) on the record player is clean. This can make a big difference in the sound quality of the record that you are playing. you need to remember though, you need to be extremely careful not to break the needle. Cleaning the needle most of the time, all it will take to clean the needle is just blowing on it.

     There are other little things that you can do to take care of your records that only take common sense to figure out. But you must remember: The more that a record is listened to, the poorer that it will sound. Another thing can be done to take care of your records, which is products. I don't buy products for my records, but they do make the records last longer. I do not know where to buy them, but I do know that they will have to be bought of off the internet or a record store of some kind.

     No matter what, you need to make sure that you take care of your records. If you do, your records will last virtually forever, and they will sound nicer for a lot longer.

For questions, comments, and ideas, please contact me at recordcollector@hotmail.com