"buffing" CDs -- classic or dud?

i was at a record store today. one of those places where they keep the actual CDs behind the counter. brought up a case. employee showed me the CD. beat to hell. i said forget it. he offered to "buff" the CD for me on a machine. i said OK. he proceeds to buff, and returns the CD to me, shiny and scratch-free. BUT -- the CD seemed to weigh like half as much as it did before the buffing. basically the machine "buffed" off half of the thickness of the CD. this cannot be good.

what do you folks know about all this?

as long as it doesn't touch the pressed layer with the digital info it should be ok. obviously, your not gonna be able to buff it again and any scratch will ruin it.

I had one of these "scratch removers" during middle school. Huge dud.

http://www.shoplet.com/office/limages/EJ042607.jpg

I used mine once but then someone proceeded to loose the cloth or the cleaning fluid, and it was never to be used again. Dud.

Did the guy behind the counter proceed to take out a green marker and mark up the outer and inner edge of the disc?

Never heard of this, how strange.

They do this in a shitty pawn shop cd store I occasionally used to go to. I've no idea whether it's classic or dud. Depends how desperately you want the CD probably.

i used to work at a record store in la. the boss could tell that i was turning into one of those terrible, terrible asshole record store employees and asked if i'd like to move up a bit and work in the headquarters. one of the things i had to do was buff cds with a machine that was similar to one of those electric shoe buffers. i had to wear goggles and a rave mask. for super scratched cds, we'd buy them off the customer for like a quarter and then sell the back "unscratched" at full used price (like 8.99). pretty amazing margin.

the best was when a customer could only find the cd they were looking for used, but they wanted to give it as a gift, so we'd go in the back and re-shrink wrap it.

I used to work at a store that did this. It totally works! Basically you can fix anything except for scratches that are so deep you can see light through them. I can't remember all the details, but I'm pretty sure it shouldn't take too much of the mass of the disc away. The guy probably wasn't using enough water or was using too coarse a buffing disc.

The handheld ones you can buy yourself are worthless, though.

I took my Tortoise TNT cd into a 2nd hand shop that had one of these machines once - and it worked a treat.

The guy charged me for the pleasure though.

Isn't that always the way.

the best was when a customer could only find the cd they were looking for used, but they wanted to give it as a gift, so we'd go in the back and re-shrink wrap it.

― jaxon, Monday, November 9, 2009 11:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

loooooooooool

^^ Amazing.

The best is when a customer wants to give as gift a cd he ALREADY owns and asks for a new wrap.
It happened a couple of times here.

The secondhand place I worked at had a beastly disc buffer. The thing was mostly DUD. The goo for the buffing pads smelled really awful, the machine got super hot after a few discs, and it was filthy with ground-down bits of buffing pads and probably very tiny flecks of CD surfaces. And the store owner had a habit of bringing in boxes of half-buffed CDs he somehow felt were ready to be sold, even though they were usually still covered with cleaning goo. I spent a lot of time having to finish his poor buffing jobs (DUDDUDDUD).

We did a cleaning service for customers for $1-3, which was kind of classic cos it was basically pocket money for staff -- really easy way to make a few extra dollars. Sometimes we'd get guys bringing in stacks of CD-Rs, insisting we clean them even though it'd be cheaper and less stupid to just re-burn them. I remember one time getting around $20 to clean some dude's stack of CD-Rs... easiest $20 ever.

Anyway, when used properly, the thing did a pretty good job of cleaning even fairly heavy scratches and making discs playable again. I think though, sometimes it's not the scratches that make a disc unreadable, it's the small 'pinholes' in the surface. They're not as readily noticeable as scratches but they're generally more damaging and can't be removed.

digital media is killing the CD buffing industry

will detail yr ipod for $10