Martin Carthy's first LP

Subject: Martin Carthy's first LP
From: GUEST,Phil Edwards
Date: 06 Sep 24 - 12:47 PM

This is a bit niche, being not only about Mr C's first album (from 1965) but specifically about the quality of vinyl pressings of same.

I've been ripping (as I believe the term is) a few LPs to my computer, and was concerned to find that when I put the needle to Martin Carthy it skipped, quite a lot, and frequently clicked and popped when it wasn't skipping. Visual inspection revealed no scratches, surface marking or even dirt. I adjusted the tracking weight, which seemed to help a bit but not really enough.

I then went down a hifi rabbithole, discovered I hadn't in fact adjusted the tracking weight but the anti-skating weight, and that to properly adjust the tracking weight I would need to find and use the "tracking pressure gauge". Which in my case I have not got.

I adjusted the tracking weight to "a bit heavier" - not very precise, but come on, we used to stick 2p pieces to the tone arm with blu-tack - and again obtained some improvement but not enough.

Was it a worn stylus? I checked by playing Prince Heathen, which... was absolutely fine. So, even though the disc isn't actually scratched or dirty, it looks as if the problem is with that copy of Martin Carthy. The grooves do look pretty tiny, as grooves go, but the album overall is actually two minute shorter than Prince Heathen, so who knows.

Long shot question (perhaps slightly less long if you've had the patience to read this far!) - has anyone else had trouble with that LP, or 60s Fontana LPs in general, skipping/clicking/etc?

Subject: RE: Martin Carthy's first LP
From: DaveRo
Date: 07 Sep 24 - 04:20 AM

Did this LP always skip, or have you only recently acquired it? Pressings did vary. I took a few warped ones back to shops in the '60s.

I used to have a stylus weight gauge in the form of a little plastic balance - you put plastic gram and half-gram weights on the end. I see you can get electronic ones these days. The anti-skating device was a little weight on a string with positions for various down-forces.

I started transferring my LPs to mp3s and CDs over twenty years ago, and finished many years later. I didn't have trouble with undamaged records skipping apart from a few which had always skipped - often bought from secondhand shops and perhaps disposed of because they were faulty. But mine was a high-quality deck. Maybe your tone arm has too much rotational friction. Maybe your cartridge compliance doesn't match the arm - that was a subject much-debated by hifi buffs last century.

Surface noise - pops and crackes - varied from LP to LP. I don't remember any particular label being worse, and I don't remember having any Fontana ones. The weight and flatness of the LPs varied - they got thinner over the years and the thinner ones were often warped - even when new: Island LPs were often like that. But they still played once I got a good deck.

I treated the recordings with a (Linux) utility called Gramofile which removed pops and crackles to some extent. I'm sure there are Windows/Mac equivalents. But these noises don't bother me when I listen to them now; they would sound odd without the scratches and occasional jumps.

Where a record was damaged or extremely noisy I sometimes found mp3s on a filesharing services - I used xMule in those days. That only worked for common/popular records, which most weren't. I would have thought you could get a download of MC's 1st LP that way - after all, you already bought it.

Subject: RE: Martin Carthy's first LP
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 07 Sep 24 - 06:42 AM

Much depends on the size and condition of the stylus tip. One record which I thought I'd wrecked with a chipped and blunt stylus (see below) sounded better with a new stylus on a superior record deck, as the distortions were higher up the groove.

Beware of increasing the downward pressure: vinyl is an elastic medium, but even with the proper weighting, the pressure of the stylus as it's deflected from side to side can stress the vinyl beyond its elastic limit. That's why vinyl recordings slowly lose the higher-frequency elements with repeated playings.

I discovered the hard way that this is not just a theoretical risk. When I put the stylus of my first record machine under a microscope, I found that the tip was chipped; that explained why the vocals on some of my more often-played records sounded distorted.

Hope this helps.

Subject: RE: Martin Carthy's first LP
From: GUEST,Phil Edwards
Date: 08 Sep 24 - 10:32 AM

Thanks both!

The reason I initially thought the problem might be my setup, and not the album, was that I had had similar problems previously with a (non-folk) album. That album was quite loud and grungy; the impression I got was that the additional vibration from the loudness of the guitars was making the sound distort, and in a couple of places kicking the needle right out of the groove and making it skip. (I don't know if either of these things can actually happen.)

Anyway, I didn't think any more of it until I played the Carthy album, and had similar problems on much quieter tracks. I'm wondering now whether the problem is with my stylus - although unfortunately I don't have a microscope to hand!

Now thinking of buying a weight gauge and doing the tone-arm weight thing properly - and a new stylus to be on the safe side.

Subject: RE: Martin Carthy's first LP
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 08 Sep 24 - 04:51 PM

You can buy an mp3 via Amazon or perhaps Topic or Proper Music.
Derek

Subject: RE: Martin Carthy's first LP
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 09 Sep 24 - 04:08 AM

I must dig my copy of that album out, and give it a spin, just to check.

Subject: RE: Martin Carthy's first LP
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 10 Sep 24 - 06:14 AM

Update: a new stylus worked wonders (although the condition of the vinyl does seem to be less than perfect!).

Subject: RE: Martin Carthy's first LP
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 10 Sep 24 - 01:25 PM

I believe the album has been re-released on vinyl. Not sure but I did hear that somewhere.

Subject: RE: Martin Carthy's first LP
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 10 Sep 24 - 01:30 PM

Martin Carthy re-issue

Subject: RE: Martin Carthy's first LP
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 11 Sep 24 - 10:33 AM

Update: having fitted a new stylus, re-balanced my tone arm and listened to the first half of side 1 of the LP with no problems, I played the rest of the album... and found it mostly unplayable.

The vinyl looks fine: no surface dirt, no scratches or other marks. But there are a lot of loud clicks and other noise - for several entire tracks it sounds like someone was frying chips in front of the microphone - and in many places the needle skips. I guess it just is a duff pressing.

One odd thing is that in some (although not all) cases the noise subsided if I played the track a second time. This made me wonder about static. The turntable has an earth wire, but it's currently only connected to my audio interface, which doesn't really take it to the ground... if that matters? (IANAElectrician)

Overall it looks like I've laid out on new kit to prove I didn't need it! A new stylus and a pressure gauge aren't a bad investment, though.

Subject: RE: Martin Carthy's first LP
From: GUEST,John from Kemsing
Date: 11 Sep 24 - 10:45 AM

I have a first issue copy and both sides play very well on my 1970`s "Fidelity" music centre.

Subject: Tech: Turntable woes (was RE: M Carthy's first LP)
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 11 Sep 24 - 11:30 AM

OK, I'm going slightly mad here.

A couple of weeks ago I ripped an LP which sounded unusually 'noisy' and jumped in a couple of places. I then tried ripping the Martin Carthy LP and found it unplayable.

One pressure gauge, readjusted tone-arm and new stylus later... what I can hear of the Carthy LP sounds a lot better (the new stylus was worth getting) but it's still crackling and skipping a lot, despite the vinyl appearing to be in good nick.

I've just tried the 'noisy' album, and found it even worse than it was with the old stylus / unadjusted tone-arm. The sound has improved (new stylus), but the needle's regularly skipping & even skating. And this is after setting the tracking weight!

I have tried increasing the anti-skating weight (although it was already on the recommended value); it helped a bit but not enough.

What on earth is going on?

Subject: RE: Martin Carthy's first LP
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 11 Sep 24 - 12:20 PM

.... Hm, "Skating": Have you checked that the pickup cartridge clears the record? I once had problems with a record from the college library: it was slightly warped, enough so that the back of the cartridge did a belly-flop on the record's surface and the stylus ski-jumped clear out of the groove. Most embarrassing.

Subject: RE: Martin Carthy's first LP
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 12 Sep 24 - 06:36 AM

Update: I've re-(re-re-)calibrated the tone arm weight & it seems to play without a hitch, thank goodness - it even plays my copy of Martin Carthy's first LP, which it turns out is in really dreadful condition. No visible marks - visually I would have graded it near mint (and indeed probably did when I bought it) - but lots of noise. I've ripped it & edited out the worst of the scratches (which are highly audible even if they aren't visible!). I can only imagine that the original owner of this album really liked it and played it a whole lot, probably with a stylus that wasn't in the first flush of youth.

Subject: RE: Martin Carthy's first LP
From: DaveRo
Date: 12 Sep 24 - 11:10 AM

Is it stereo? If not (or even if it is) try recording it in mono - assuming your amplifier has a mono button.