Warped record cures

Any way to correct warping?

I have tried record between two plates of glass under sun and in oven (!) on low heat with little success. Also tried leaving a record on wood floor under a huge pile of Artforums for a month. Gravity apparently no good either.

Variation on the plates of glass trick: place records between said plates, place thinnish piece of fabric over glass, then iron. Works, honest - heat and pressure. Just keep testing the temp of the glass to make sure its not heating up too much - too hot to touch is too much!

ok I'll give it a try on Led Zep III

Tried this once, and, well, it's too painful to talk about.

do these things work?

not the center clamps, i meant the outer ones

I tried to fixed a horribly warped record recently. I was told ironing the record on a really low heat between a bunch of paper might work. Now I've got a record with imprints from an iron.

adam, did you try this with an iron? results? i don't really have access to much of the sun's heat in the uk at the moment

In college we did the sun thing only with the radiator in the dorm. It worked!

*obv only works in cold weather.

I was given a copy of Miles Davis' "In A Silent Way" years ago with a large iron imprint on side two, which prevents you listening to most of that side.

I listened to side 1 enough to go out and buy a new copy...

jesus, I haven't even had it a year

(Flamin' Groovies' Still Shakin')

Any other suggestions? I have some more warped records, and I don't think I have any plates of glass.

I think I am going to try the glass plates oven thing on a copy of mj's bad for starters.

But I have a question! How do you deal with scratchy records? Do any of you use a nice graphic equalizer to tone down the scratchy frequency? Do you put your amp to mono (I used to have a nice nad I did this with, and it worked, but my current amp is a bit low end). Do any of you use cleaning solutions or vacuums? Plain old brushes? Soft cloths? Water?

Actually, I'm more concerned with stereo solutions, like an equalizer set up, for records that are just damaged and not dirty. Is there a stereo component out there that works kind of like the CEDAR software, that digitally takes out the noise? That would be cool, even if there were a processing delay.

What's the scratchiest record you still play? I am almost like a masochistic record listener, and I'll put on a record I'm less likely to enjoy as if I feel it's been neglected, or will be for the rest of its life.

An insomniac's guide to abused record care. . .

In my experience, I've found the heat method may even out warps, but does more harm than good in the long run by melting grooves together (this causes a lot of surface noise that is not removable and louder than your average dust-caused surface noise).

For dirty records that have a lot of surface noise, mix two to one water to 90% rubbing alcohol in a pump spray bottle (I use my old bottle that I got from the optometrist for glasses cleaner) and spray as needed. Wipe clean with micro-fiber paper towels. Do not ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, use any sort of cloth wipe on your records, ever. For particularly messy records, I spray while the needle is playing because this forces the alcohol down deeper into the grooves. Course, you will need a stylus cleaning kit to take care of the subsequent mess that that causes.

I want to say there was a recipe for deep cleaning record spray in Wax Poetics many years ago that called for a drop of dish soap (bubbles, you see). Wherever I heard that from, the problem I've found that that causes is too much oil, even for the smallest drop of dish soap. And that just causes more problems.

For repairing scratches, a lightly applied clean pencil eraser will work. Unless, of course, it doesn't. You don't want that scratch running across your stylus anyway.

You can’t beat PVA glue for removing gunk really grotty records.

I've never tried the glue method, only because it seems so counter-intuitive to "cleaning" the record.

with all due respect, I would never do any of those things to any record I own. I use a Spin-Clean with its own lint free cloth wipes, they work great. paper towels sound horrifying. pencil erasers? no thanks. I might consider the PVA glue thing in an emergency.

Regular paper towels? No way.

And I just have a thing against cloth —of any type— on records. It just doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

And the eraser thing is in absolute desperation. But it does work.

If you haven’t tried it and are a bit afraid, try it on a dirty record you wouldn't mind losing first, not that you will - it really is quite incredible how much it cleans a record.