Home
Grading Info

  • Search All This Site 
 

All our records are WASHED and PLAY CHECKED both sides before listing. See below for our Grade, Warp & other definitions.

 

OUR AUDIO PLAY TESTING IS NOT JUST PLAY GRADING
We wash every record & then play at least a section of the start of both sides to see it sounds 'right' for the given Visual grade. On many records we have played the whole track & many you can hear yourself via our MP3 Soundfiles. The general music must sound pleasing and as expected for the grade. Based on what we buy as supposedly playing EX, you'll be delighted with how nice ours sound. Any record down to G should "Play" properly, ie the needle follows the groove without skipping from intro to outro, but what it SOUNDS like through quality hi-fi is what Play Testing should mean. MP3s of all Stock items show what the record plays like, some older stock items may need checking through for sound quality.

Our close scrutiny using an equivalent 100w lamp in a darkened room is the only way to grade, in a daylit room, direct daylight/sunlight or under a fluorescent light is useless for grading & why so many miss obvious marks & still grade it EX.

HIGH QUALITY PHOTOS
These show the label grade for what it really is. We've added No Centre, Label Writing, Label Tear etc to help you see what there is without clicking the photo. Record labels generally match the vinyl grade, but always check to see. Having to put "Label Writing" where only a tiny number is written needs noting so the buyer can look & see it's nothing much perhaps, so do look at what it means by seeing both photos. Buyers today paying premium prices only want unmarked labels & NM or better, and we've noticed these sort of buyers are increasing. A tiny pen initial or a marker pen name in big letters: it's all imperfection. Common records in high grade but with label marks are of bulk lot value only, ie Freddie Cannon 'Way Down Yonder' might sell eventually for £5 in Mint, but one with an initial or tidy name it sadly goes in the 25p bulk lots as not a collectable now. It's that harsh.

The photo style was deliberately done on the darker labels to highlight spindle marks that show when you look at the 45. Some M or NM will look barely played, but the big hits esp Beatles, Cliff & Elvis got more played at the time & finding high grade labels attracts a premium which we'll charge if the label meets the high grade. Our Photo style took us ages to get right to suit the difficult Gold Print on Mauve like early HMV, see one site that only uses scans that are hopeless as the Gold needs lighting to read.

The run-in & intro
This gives the playing sound away being the most vulnerable section for damage & dirt. You can hear from trying a few of our soundfiles what our sound quality basically is like. Records we sell that are EX or better are good enough to archive digitally, and many records we stock we have done just that with them.

A note about saying the Record Plays it's grade.
We Visually Grade & play testing is just that, to see it sounds fine for the visual grade given. If NEAR EX plays NEAR MINT then this is noted as many buy to play & get bargains. If we can offer this & not spend eternity doing so, it's worthwhile as it is a Guarantee of Quality too. You'll no doubt be even more pleased buying vintage vinyl not needing to guess or having to wash records on arrival, risking leaky labels & other problems. See our ebay feedback for buyer opinions. You can "Play Grade" a G copy of a loud 50s track & on a Dansette it'll sound fine, some amateurs will say it "plays EX" as the fidelity is low, but it'll still sound noisy on hi-fi.

Only Grading by "Play Grading" but not Visual Grading is so unreliable to the point of worthlessness.
For a start, Hi-fi is so varying in quality & what you may be used to & then hearing thru another system can easily blind you to the hi-fi facts! So many factors in quality of equipment used, ie you may boast a £500 Exotic cartridge (wasteful to play vintage vinyl!) but your transistor amp with a muffly fuzzy bassy phono stage powered by a DC power supply with high AC ripple, an amp section with layers of heavy NFB to disguise it's crappiness (even at £2000 sadly), ceramic capacitors used for high frequency work instead of polystyrene ones, unmatched basic resistors, unbiased valve stages & weedy 5-inch 'bass' drivers on your £1000 speakers just isn't hifi even if some expert raves about it's "sound"!

Buyer Expectations.
The 1950s Rock & Roll era is nearly 60 years ago, The Beatles hit nearly 50 years ago. Even Punk is 35 years ago. Records are OLD USED items that age as everything does. "Good Condition for it's Age" is not Collector Grade! Most records have "Aged Too Much" & are of little value or interest unless genuinely rare or unusual. You may play your expensive Records on a Radiogram or Dansette, or a £20k system with valves & 15" speakers: how any comparison of sound quality can be made there is impossible. Some buyers demand a groove-by groove breakdown and ask if it has any distortion, ignoring many 60s records are badly mastered, is that not distortion? Asking if the run in on a 40 year old 45 plays Silently is equally pointless, we've bought ones "that play with no noise" well they don't on a Dansette but very obviously do on a £10k hifi. Experience is what stops the foolish questions & how newbies will learn vinyl is another thing. UPDATE: After many years of not getting those awful buyers demanding 50+ year old Used Mint Top Grade records are Brand New, one USA one messages via ebay, thankfully before buying anything. We do put "Mint is Top Grade Used not Brand New" even. There is no way to deal with these rude buyers so instantly block them as they are a nightmare. They are too ingorant to see others regularly buying M or NM are delighted with them, these dreamers demand 'Brand New' for their ignorance of us as a seller & have the cheek to quote Discogs grading, well let them taste the reality of getting badly overgraded items missing tears, writing or even major damage as they only use stock photos. We've had tiresome buyers see a NM copy of a very rare 60+ year old item for them to say "we'll wait for a Mint one". How mindless that is, but these sort of dreamers thankfully are very much in the minority now, if they are the fools who pay £200 for Paul McCartney LPs dressed up with sickening BS hype, or 10x the price for a "rare matrix" on a common Pink Floyd 'The Wall' LP. Be sure there are very few dealers like us who do 2 sided pics & soundfiles of the actual record. One site with mediocre stock & not even listing catalog numbers, no pics, no soundfiles gets rated top 5 best online shop. We really aren't bothered to 'compete' with that.

Remember, not every record is made to today's precision
and it's not right to expect that every record will play with a very quiet background, as CD & MP3 have made buyers expect. CD has made buyers realise how noisy their vinyl records are! 78s are even noisier! Old tapes we made pre CD-R days are full of clicks & pops we'd not tolerate now. Our play checking takes this into account, ie USA vinyl can be pressed on cheap vinyl that will have some surface noise, a low-level hiss, even if unplayed mint. Many records are poorly mastered in many ways, many are cut too loud or are distorted making the audio perfection some unrealistically expect from a 20-50+ year old item impossible as it was never there on the original 45s. Plenty are Dubbed from other Vinyl copies even. But this is the Charm of Vintage Goods. If you can't accept this, then don't buy Vintage. A record we send you will sound great on the basis of how it was made & not need any further work washing it. As an idea of what we discovered, a proper wash will sort out 99% of records to play as you'd expect. Beyond visual damage such as scratches or groove wear, the other tiny amount improve after a few plays to be as you'd like. We put MP3 Soundfiles of all tracks to show how they play, some MP3s are better quality & some we need to redo as the sample rate is out of date.

HOW WE DO VINYL GRADING...

We visually grade under a strong 100w lamp which shows all faults. This is why many have notes like 'B=EX' for accuracy of grading.

To some, a warped record some may knock down a grade or two. This is not professional grading.

The way to describe professionally is to grade it overall ignoring the fault & add the fault separately as a qualifier, eg NM with "Slight Warp" added. An EX record with a clicky scratch is NOT a VG record, it is still an EX record but with a clicky scratch and needs stating as such, as the buyer may not want a clicky record at any grade.

Play Grading is pointless without a Visual Grade, as some jokers who play grade 'it plays EX' are usually using a Dansette & on arrival you'll only be upset with your heavily scuffed tired VG-. See below for our Grade definitions, which may differ from yours.

We buy Records ourselves and generally most we buy are graded right, but we occasionally do get EX records with big scratches, cracks even as well as label marks not revealed. It means you've got an item you'd not really have wanted & for us as dealers, label damage devalues records heavier as the Mint price goes low, ie a £5 mint record with one biro initial goes in the 25p bulk pile as we know it'll never sell singly. No Centre records are not fully the collectable item either as a major part missing & can make huge price differences.

SEE BELOW FOR FULL GRADE DESCRIPTIONS
we keep adding text to this page & it goes further down the page, but it's worth reading on as some nice info to read in between.

LABEL & COVER GRADING
These you can see to decide yourselves in the photos, a picture of both sides of the labels & sleeve tells far more. Look closely, faults such as 'wol' or 'tol' are noted as some are hard to spot, but look at what it means as 'wol' might just be one small initial. Covers are given a basic grade & edge splits you can't see are noted, the rest such as writing stickers, as with labels, is shown in the photo.

WARPED RECORDS
we list if the Record plays & sounds OK, regardless of what the warp looks like.
Warps come in 2 main types, the storage warp which is a slow curve or dishing of the vinyl from manufacture or poor pressure related storage problems which unless extreme will play fine on a standard cartridge tracking at 1.5 to 2g. Some exotic cartridges ride too low & will skip on on warps, but we're playing with a Goldring Elektra decent budget £50 cartridge. Then there's the heat-affected warp which is usually a crinkle of sorts. It may be 'flat' with no arm lift on playing or a slight rise that still plays OK. A warped record either plays right or doesn't & gets binned unless of deeper interest, but clearly noted. You can try curing the warp but usually it doesn't do it or if it does & it won't play as it's shrunk! Even if the warp still plays it might have the sound affected in a tape 'wow & flutter' way, ie bendy piano notes sounding seasick.

Records as we've stated, are not always made to high standards when new
some are pressed on cheap vinyl that will always have surface noise, records badly mastered with distortion beyond that in the actual recording, ie loud clipping noises as amps max out. You also get on some 50s USA vinyl & some UK 60s Decca pressings, records that are mastered with a non-standard stylus, leading to playing with a standard stereo one making a muffly hissy sound as the too-narrow stylus rides the too-wide groove's bottom, missing the music! See below for more on this bewildering subject. A record graded Mint is aware of these weaknesses, eg a UK reggae record dubbed from a noisy JA copy doesn't play without noise, but the UK copy we have is Mint IS Mint, it can be no less as that is how it was made. A lot of UK pressed Reggae from 1960-early 70s is really badly mastered, much dubbed from JA vinyl with little care for Hifi values.

RECORD GRADING
Be aware M, NM, EX are a basic grade of the VINYL. Always check the Photos for the label which you can see.
For non PS items... EX/NM meaning A = NM and B = EX with "A" being the first title we list, ignoring the as-released A side possibly
If there is a PS... NM/EX means EX cover, NM record

M / MINT / top grade USED
The vinyl will appear unmarked, no scuffs, no scratches and no obvious pressing flaws. Signs of careful play may show on the run-in area from autochangers & needle drops as well as a minor amount of spindle use. It is Top Grade Used after all, though you may get a record that had only 2 plays, not that anyone could be sure, so all old vinyl is USED unless sealed & it's not hard to reseal a used item. Mint will play as good as you can get from a 20-60+ year old record. But it is not new anymore. Check the Photos to see the label grade, spindle marks are not noted but 'wol', 'tol' etc is. We do get 1950s records visually Mint but if they have too many Run-In needle trails from old heavy arm record players, they are called Near Mint as it is more used looking even if it plays as good as one barely played. Similarly some Mint records of later years have a tiny non-problem pressing flaw that takes them away from being what a Mint vinyl buyer would expect, so get graded lower or noted.

MINT is NOT Brand New
these are 20-60+ year old items & age becomes everything. It is impossible to prove any unsealed record is Mint & if it's in top grade it doesn't matter if it's had a few careful plays. We've had "Unplayed" items that were damaged mouldy badly stored etc. Are they still Mint as they are Unplayed? Of course not. The labels we have photoed clearly both sides, so no label grade is offered beyond 'label writing', 'label tear'' etc save you clicking & groaning on seeing it. A Mint record may have a lesser label, or a lesser graded one may have a better label. The label, being exposed in the photos may show marks beyond a few spindle marks, check the photos for anything that may concern you.
NM / NEAR MINT
Near Mint, NM, EX+ to us is the same grade. Vinyl has minor imperfections. Light scuffs or one minor mark keep it away from the top vinyl grade. Too many run-in needle trails on an otherwise Mint record get put here. Paper does not mark a record, dust does. NM plays as good as Mint. NM is a record you can buy & play carefully & not be too worried about devaluing. NM is the exact same grade as EX+. Similarly no such grade as EX++++ exists. Keep it simple.   
EX / EXCELLENT
This is a more-used but still looked-after record. EX is still a pleasant looking and nice playing record good enough for the majority of buyers, though some now only want NM or better, which means they probably aren't into playing them to enjoy the music & maybe don't know how to grade either. Vinyl has a few noticeable imperfections, eg a non-audible minor mark on an otherwise NM or M record is possible. EX grade on a low-value hit singles or less collectable items are now no longer stocked by us the buyers of today don't buy them unless very cheap. RC still state an EX record is 80% of a Mint price, this is really not so. Today NM (depending on individual rarity/demand) may be the same as Mint or 10% of it. EX today similarly is now considered rather unfairly below dedicated perfectionist grade, so could be 75% to as low as 20% of the NM price. Some records if modern or common can be unsellable if only in EX to a large amount of over-fussy collectors. All the great vinyl they miss out on!   
NEAR EX, VG+ and VG
are the lesser grades we occasionally list, each being less than the previous. They are below the required Collector Standard, but if you just want the music or a rarity on the cheap, don't avoid them.

Near EX or lower grade: The record will have been played for longer, likely we'll have played all of it to properly grade it and the bias is more to SOUND than merely looks
eg if it has an obvious grey scratch you'd maybe avoid not knowing if it clicked or not, but plays without the expected click each revolution it'll get a better grade than perhaps you'd grade it on sight alone. Even after our years in vinyl, telling how a scratch will play is fairly impossible to predict simply as your stylus plays the groove midway down, not at the top where the scratch would sound. How deep the scratch goes is the point. A person buying records under EX is after the music or a budget priced rarity, not just after the looks, but they still rightly expect it to play nicely according to the grade.

Near EX looks pretty much like an EX, it will have more light surface marking, the label may start to look a bit more tired. EX- can have one or two scratches or marks but play very similar to the EX with a minor amount of extra noise to the EX. EX- play tested. We add the Minus as a word now some can't see the "-" but now use Near EX to match Near Mint

VG+ is heading into 'Party Time' records, well loved for a short time when new but still reasonably well cared for or ignored in a box and sleeves since. The labels can look further worn especially at the spindle, but still on the right side of looking miserable. More Scratches & Marks that may look worrying and possibly less than VG+ to you will prove to play near EX. Buying a VG+ record without playing it is hit & miss, but from us you'll be sure it'll play adequately if not to NM quality. VG+ play tested.

VG is now heading to the well Partied records, but not wrecked & still having a level of eye appeal rather than not . But buying a quiet track graded VG means it'll sound too noisy for today's ears. It'll play with surface noise of some sort that is more apparent if not louder than the music. It'll sound fine on a Dansette & for the price it's a bargain. We rarely list anything below EX- so you won't see it much. VG is the grade most well-loved records turn up in, which sadly means with cheaper items they are of no value beyond those 100 for £25 bulk lots.

VG minus will be a record with serious visual problems from prolonged storage out of a sleeve. It is a really off-putting term, there is little "Good" about a VG- though you can play it through and get something from the music if you tune your ears away from the surface noise. UK Blue Beats from the 60s generally turn up even worse than this, in VG- or G even, but still have some degree of life left, but the record itself will be pretty used up at VG-. We used to buy VG- 1950s R&B 45s from USA years ago & they were usually too worn & marked for enjoyment especially as USA vinyl is less pure & noisier than UK

To others, VG- might be a VG+ or EX even, but that's not proper grading. Reggae dealers using VG- instead of VG+ as they actually are misleading, although once buyers learn what a seller gives for the grade, they'll adjust their perceptions. If you think our NM is EX then that's not bad, but a minor mismatch. If you think our VG+ is VG- then you've not read how we decide on VG+ properly.
WARPED RECORD DEFINITIONS...
edge warp or storage warp, what matters here is how it plays & sounds ok or wiggly sounding.. all are play checked to be fine using a Goldring Elektra on a Technics SL1500, not the highest quality, but a good match for most buyers beyond using a cheapo system. No record is perfectly flat as reflecting a light source onto the rotating vinyl shows, we only note it when arm movement shows.
Very Minor Warp
This is a record with a very light storage warp or a very light edge warp that will play on any turntable, you'll likely only see it when playing it or looking very closely. No problem at all to play & it'll be a bit cheaper
Minor Warp
This is the usual minor level of warp to be found. Many sellers will not even note this! It covers a small edge warp or a slow storage warp, no sharp arm movement, but the arm will be seen to rise and fall in a non-worrying way. Music will not sound distorted, ie piano notes won't sound seasick & both sides have been checked to see it's OK. Buy with confidence if you can accept a minor imperfection at a bargain price.
Warp Plays OK
This is a more obvious warp, such as an edge crinkle or more obvious curve from bad storage. We have checked to play fine both sides & it will play through fine on a quality player. It may not play properly on cheaper players, so buy with caution, ie it'll not be a safe record to DJ with unless you use a decent deck. It may not play properly if you use a exotic cartridge that sits very low or if your turntable is not set up properly or you're using a cheapo plastic turntable, records like this are not for you! This sort of warp may look less than nice, but as we found it plays fine both sides possibly with a little music distortion, so it's worth listing if of note. Anything lower than playing OK both sides won't be listed, unless a label piece, such as a frazzled Stones Demo we had still has a value to frame it.