here is Fall Out Boy's Believers Never Die Volume 2 on vinyl which was their second
greatest hits album released in 2019 featuring their big hits Centuries and
Uma Thurman at least those are the ones I remember hearing on the radio
if you want to buy this new it's about a thirty dollar record but I didn't pay that
much because I found this at the thrift store the sticker says $9.99 but they had a 25% off
sale so including tax I ended up paying around eight dollars for it and it's still
sealed never opened or played so that's a great deal compared to paying thirty dollars for it
but you may be asking what's the catch well here is the catch ouch that's about as straight as I
am what I think happened to this is it was shrink wrapped too tight at the factory as this has been
sitting sealed and never opened for three years now the record ended up caving in on itself
so that's what can happen if you leave your records completely sealed
especially these days when they're cranking these things out at maximum capacity at the
pressing plant and they're not really paying that much attention to quality control so
this may have been already a slightly warped record even before they shrink wrapped it and
once they put this shrink wrap on it and they made it too tight it just caved in on itself
this record may have also been exposed to heat or direct sunlight which would have caused any
existing warp to become much worse so I'm not sure if this thing is even going to be playable
once I open it it's probably going to end up looking like a potato chip and trying to put a
book on this or something to try to flatten it out isn't going to help at least if it's still sealed
because the shrink wrap is fighting against me no matter how much I try to push down on
it to flatten it out I can feel it pushing back at me so clearly that shrink wrap is too tight
this also often happens with vintage video games and computer software boxes serious collectors
want to keep them sealed because they're worth much more that way compared to open boxes but over
time the shrink wrap shrinks and slowly crushes and collapses the box contained within it so
eventually they'll have to weigh whether keeping it sealed is worth the risk of damaging the box
itself compared to opening the seal and preventing any further damage to the packaging from occurring
"some formulations of shrink film can continue to shrink over many years especially if stored
in warmer conditions this leads to something computer game collectors
call implosion where the shrink film has contracted so much that it has compressed
the box inwards you can see that the box inside the shrink wrap is no longer flat
removing shrink wrap from especially flimsy or hollow boxes can help prevent this"
so I'm going to cut this open and see if we can release that
pressure on the shrink wrap and see how warped the record actually is
okay shrink wrap is gone
it's still warped but at least now if I put a book on it or something it can actually flatten
itself out because it's not fighting against me anymore now let's take out the record and inspect
the damage well first we get the poster of the band on it that is unharmed now the record itself
yeah that's quite warped
at least it's not cracked it's in one piece but yeah look at that
that is probably the worst I've ever seen of I mean look at that that's that's terrible
if you try to flex it you get that nice oil can sound
I'm gonna try to play this on any of my good turntables so I brought up my
trusty AT-LP60X connected to a little battery-powered speaker
and yeah you can see the problem the center of it is barely even clearing the center spindle
so here we go
yep it's skipping
even with the tonearm raised it's still playing part of it
so you're probably saying just add a record weight that'll fix the problem well here is a record
weight and yeah that does not fix the problem but maybe it'll be good enough to play at least
hey it's not skipping
even though their music is so repetitive that you can barely tell the difference
it
doesn't sound like it has that much surface noise
so if this wasn't so badly warped it'd probably sound fine
if I raise it up it still touches
so it is playable now
but obviously far from ideal
now what about the other side that's going to be warped up like a bowl almost
see now it's flat in the middle but the sides are all going to be raised up
yikes
that is obviously a lot worse and the weight isn't going to fix that because
it's already flat in the middle so this side even with the weight on it it's not playable
yeah that I'm not going to dare trying to put the stylus down on
that again that this side is totally not playable this would be a good test for
one of those vintage Califone record players with the pivoted head shell
"but enough of Chinese opera"
so that's just your quick lesson not to keep your record sealed in the shrink
wrap for three years unless you want to have them end up looking like this
this also brings to mind a confounding problem some people have where they go
to play a record and one side of it sounds perfectly fine
but then they flip it over and try to play the other side and it either
plays sluggishly or sometimes it might not even play at all
that's caused by the record being dished or bowl warped and that's exactly what it sounds
like where one side of the record is warped up so that side plays fine but the other side is Warped
down at the edges and especially with a portable record player like this with a undersized platter
it's not going to make good contact with that platter and also with these kind of
record players if you don't have this lid open as far as it'll go like a lot of people leave this
propped up against the wall or something it'll rub against the edge of the record and that also
causes it to play slowly or if the record is especially warped it may not spin at all
and as I mentioned in my video about the Crosley Cruiser the solution to that is to use the platter
mat it came with or if your portable record player didn't come with a platter mat you
could buy these separately and also have the lid open as far as it will go not propped up against
a wall or something and now the record will play fine even on the side that's warped down
to flatten this record I'm not going to try any of the more risky techniques like
putting it between two sheets of glass and baking it in the oven I'm just going
to leave some heavy books stacked on it for a year or whenever I think of coming
back to it and see if that has helped it's the easiest and least risky solution but
obviously the slowest hopefully it won't take centuries to flatten out this record
yeah I think I'll leave the corny jokes to technology connections from now on