r/vinyltoday

Am I the only one guilty of this? You finally get home from work, sit down to relax, and throw on a new record you’ve been dying to play… and it sounds absolutely horrible.

So naturally, you pull the record off, make sure it’s clean, check all your connections, put it back on… still horrible.

At this point, obviously the turntable RPM must be off, right? So out comes the trusty flathead screwdriver and I start tweaking the speed because there’s no way the record player isn’t the problem.

After getting it pretty much dialed in with only a tiny adjustment needed, I throw the record back on… and it STILL sounds awful.

Then it hits me: “Wait a second… did I even check if this was a 45?”

Yep. I’d been playing it too slow the entire time. The second I switched the player to 45 RPM, it sounded perfect.

So now I’m extremely happy I don’t need to buy a new turntable, while also feeling incredibly stupid. But honestly, that’s part of the game with records sometimes — and at least now I’ve got a funny story to tell…. Right? Hahaha

I was at a record store today and ended up trading in a record toward a few I wanted to buy. They priced my trade by checking Discogs, which totally makes sense.

What I found interesting, though, is that the records I bought—brand new, still sealed, and the exact same pressings—were actually priced lower in the shop than what they’re currently going for on Discogs.

So now I’m wondering: is that just part of the fun of crate digging and occasionally finding a good deal, or is there more to it? It’s happened to me before. When you sell to a shop, they’re careful to check market value, which would make you think their prices would always match or exceed Discogs—but that’s not always what I’m seeing.

Do shops sometimes get records at wholesale or price things differently to move inventory? Or am I just getting lucky here and there?

Just thinking out loud, but it made me curious how that balance works between trade-in value, market pricing, and what ends up on the shelf.

I’m curious, do y’all have any records in your collection that are scratched to hell and sound horrible when you play them? What do you usually do with them?

I’ve got a few older beat-up records that I don’t even listen to anymore. I just kind of keep them tucked in the back of the collection. Curious what everyone else does with their rough-condition records.