Good Information for the DJ on What to Look for When Buying Old Vinyl

0:01 A generalisation video or general video here

Right guys, in this video I'm going to run through some latest vinyl I've bought and also the pros and cons, what to look for when buying vinyl, why you should buy it, what you should buy and so on. So a generalisation video or general video here. Okay, now, first and foremost, please buy vinyl that you like. It is getting very expensive now, so try not to go out and just buy 20 LPs, 12-inch singles and hope for the best. You know, do some research first. That to me is just pure logic, okay? You know, unless of course, let's say a mate's selling a job lot of vinyl for a decent amount, then of course, by all means, if you've got the money, buy it. You can cherry pick and then sell the rest. You never know, you could get your money back. Alternatively, you could go on eBay, sell them on eBay.

I don't know, but really this video is about what to look for when buying specific vinyl. Now, I like to get the old school street sounds here. The street sounds label epitomises really early 80s dance music and electro. They did electro, crucial electro. They also did a dance series as well. I believe, quote me if I'm wrong, the first track from Street Sounds ever released, track one, side eight, Mary Jane Girls All Night Long. And I've got the cassettes and the LPs of those as well. Anyway, okay, so here we go. Street Sounds 88.2 full length, 12-inch extended or remix tracks. Now, the first thing to look for, of course, it's eye candy, all right? If it looks good, but again, of course, you should know your track anyway.

But what I mean when it looks good, look at the cover. Okay, now firstly, what you may find is that it might not be the original cover. And if it isn't the original cover, you know, there's a different vinyl inside there. That starts chucking alarm bells at me because it could mean that that piece of vinyl was used by a DJ, knackered the cover, which means the vinyl's probably cut knackered as well. Try and get it. As original as possible. Everything. There should be three bits, all original. Sometimes four depends if you've got a sheet with information on it. But generally, dust cover, cover and your vinyl as well. The first thing I look for is where the opening is. Also, you've got stem at the back there.

2:36 It's still straight as though it's just been cut yesterday

Just check that, but I'll tell you about that in a bit. Make sure where the vinyl comes out. If you notice here along this side, it's really nice and clean. It's still straight as though it's just been cut yesterday. It's not knackered in any way, shape or form. You know, the cardboard isn't torn or ripped. There's no fingerprints on it. So straight away, this tells me that this was not used by a prolific DJ who was having the vinyl in and out all the time. Maybe they did. If they did, they were damn careful with this vinyl. I'm more thinking this was a collector or someone just bought it, stuck it in the front room and played it once a month. Okay. Stem at the back. Again, very nice condition, smooth because you see what happens over time is you put the, you know, you throw the vinyl in or you push it in.

And of course, the vinyl, which is plastic, hits the back. So that starts to wear away. Also, the top is pretty good condition. The bottom and also if we turn it over, what we've got here is basically a piece of cardboard painted, a long piece of cardboard. The flap, see the side folded over and glued. So again, what I'm looking for now is the side here. The glue has not come away. So if I just move that there, hopefully you should be able to see how the piece of cardboard comes down and there's a slight lip there. And that's where it's glued on to the back. Now, again, check the back. It's in good condition. The corners are good. This was eight quid, but I got a deal. Okay, so there's that one. Now here, Silver Connection, Golden Girls, one of their best tracks, Get Up and Boogie.

4:57 Sorry, I do apologize

And again, I bought this because I love the band. This is really old school disco strings, loads of real instruments in this. I mean, and I bought this as well. Apart from liking the band, I just the cover. This is pure art, ladies and gentlemen, it's really I mean, I could put that on the wall and be happy looking at that because it's just absolute. It's a work of art. Oh, yeah, actually, I forgot my street sounds. Sorry. Yeah, let's have a look at the vinyl. Sorry, I do apologize. Really do profound apologies there. Open it up. The dust cover. There you go. Now I'm looking at this dust cover. It's slightly yellowed, which tells me it is going to be the original again. A few creases here. Which again tells me it hasn't been abused by some mad DJ and, of course, the ultimate the vinyl itself.

Now one good way of telling if it's in good condition. If you just move it up and down in the light, you should see that sheen. You can see it move as you turn it and that looks in damn good condition also as well. The center sticker, there's no scratches, nothing like that. And also something to look at. Look for this is for the keen eye and you know, if a DJ has been using the vinyl a lot, there'll be loads of marks around the center. And believe it or not, that's where the vinyl accidentally hits the spindle just before it slides into the center. But again, you'd probably know that it's been well used prior to even looking there from what I told you earlier on about the dust cover, etc. So I do apologize about not showing you the vinyl there it is.

I'm going to put that back. Lastly, before I do, the dust cover is called a dust cover for a reason. Now you'll notice there's the opening and loads of people, including myself, used to put it in that way because it just meant it was easy to get the vinyl out. But the whole idea of the dust cover is to stop the dust getting to the vinyl. So there's the opening for the vinyl in the dust cover. I'm going to turn that 90 degrees. Don't turn it 180 degrees. I will explain. And then I'm going to place that in the cover. There you go. Why don't you turn it 180? Well, if you do that, then the vinyl is on this side and it's more likely to damage the back of the vinyl because there's nothing stopping the vinyl from hitting the back.

Whereas if the vinyl now is up in that direction, it won't hit the back. And you're probably thinking, well, it can damage the top. No. Because when the vinyl is set correctly on the floor upwards, should I say, then of course the pressure is on the bottom. So there's a cover there. There's a cover there stopping the dust getting in. There's a cover there stopping you hit the top or the back. Sorry. And at the top, there's no need because the vinyl should be nowhere near that anyway. Pure logic. Right. Okay. So let's go back to Silver Connection. Get up and boogie one of my favourite tracks. Now again, let's have a look at the dust cover. Even more yellow, because again, this is a lot older. So all right, it's been folded over there, but nevertheless, it's still in very good condition.

7:55 Same with this one, the centre in very good condition

Again, check that out. Look at it again. Same with this one, the centre in very good condition. So someone has taken a lot of care with these two pieces of wax so far. All right. So let me just put that over there. Okay. Gino Latino. Welcome. Now, I love this on Fuffa Rrrr. This is from 1990 and this epitomises sort of original, really slow. The beginnings are sort of almost breakbeat, but a great kind of underground mellow rave tune. It wasn't a full on banging rave tune. Definitely was really sort of mellow and chilled out. Nice kind of harmonies as well. You can go and check it out on YouTube. So Gino Latino. Welcome. Land of Oz Excursion Mix. Okay, so let's have a look at this. This is FXR126. Now again, look at that.

This is from 1990. All right. Now no fingerprints. Okay. Absolutely no fingerprints on this at all. I wouldn't have thought a DJ would have been messing around with this at all. And again, if we look at the centre, there's no marks telling me that this has been hammered on a set of Technics for all of its life. In fact, I would say this has probably been bought, played once and left, which is great for me. Okay, last but not least, one of the all time classic dancey stroke commercial rave tunes. Now, this is Little Louis French Kiss. Now, if you can get a vinyl like this in this condition, you're doing really well. Thank you, Jonathan. This is FX117. One five again on and what can I say about this? I mean, this track, I believe late 80s.

10:34 Slightly around, you can't see any

And this just revolutionised dance culture. I mean, look at that. This pretty much looks as it was the day it came out of the printing press. It's in absolute immaculate condition. I don't think I even want to play this. I think. I'm just going to keep it. But again, what I was looking for is the condition of the cover. And as you can see, it's in immaculate condition. The condition. Hold on. It's trying to open this now without putting things down. Okay. The condition of the cover, as you can see. All right. The back, the sides, everything is in perfect condition. Now, if you wanted to be really anal, what you could do. Is you could get a dust cover, put it in a dust cover. So again, it's more secure, let's say from the environment.

But what a lovely condition. Now, again, if you just move the cover slightly around, you can't see any fingerprints. There's no marks. There's no pencil marks. You know, some dodgy DJ hasn't put the BPM at the top, anything like that. So what have we got here? I've got two original vinyls from back in the day. You know, Little Louie French Kiss from the late 80s. Gino Latino sort of 90s. Then we have Silver Connection from the 70s. And then we have Street Sounds from the 80s. All in exceedingly good condition for their age. All right. So what I'd like you to do post some comments. Let me know about your what we call crate digs. You know, have you been out there into shops and you found certain tracks? And you thought, wow.

This is great. This is amazing. And also what I'd like you to do, okay? And this is actually great fun is set yourself a budget, okay? And then what you do with that budget is you set a small percentage, say 10% of that budget and you buy something that you don't know. But what you do, though, is you work along the premise of it's going to be dance. So it's going to be in the dance section. It's going to be an LP. So you're going to get maybe an LP and it's going to be sort of from the 70s. Now what you'll find if people who know vinyl and collect vinyl and have had vinyl for years, when you see an LP cover, even if you don't know the artist, you've never seen it before, you automatically know the year or decade

It was made because it's like music. You know, they go through phases of artistic styles, so you'll be able to determine. Yeah, that's from the 70s. That's from the 80s. So why don't you just take a wild guess and just get something that looks good and feels good to you? Take it home. It could be a pile of rubbish. Then again, it could be an absolute gem that you never knew existed. All right. Thank you very much for watching. There will be more videos on vinyl, more DJ demos on vinyl practice and enjoy. Thank you. Bye.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.