Letting friends play your records?!?!
bass_fever
974 Posts
So if you had a friend in town, staying at your crib...Do you let them listen to your records? "You can listen to these, but stay away from the RAERZ"I used to let my friends listen to my records all the time, but since I developed my everything must be VG+ or above attitude, I'm thinking records are off limits."You can listen to my entire MP3 library"What are your thoughts?
Comments
Friends >>>>>>>>>>>> Records x 1,000,000,000
Yes. If my friend is interested in my records, my friend can pull and listen to any record he or she wants to listen to. Why do I have them if not to be listened to by me and/or my friends who want to hear them?
Records are for listening. Even rare records. Maybe especially rare records.
Take your LPs to the monastery with the quickness. Playing records should not damage them. Even gentle mishandling doesn't hurt their playability. It might hurt their value as a commodity, but if that's the only value of these records, then the music contained thereon is not that important to you.
A friend will not say never...
JRoot
I'm cool with people playing stuff they bring over on my equipment.
I don't really feel comfortable giving anybody a completely free pass to play the records I own.
DAMAGE. Let's not take it there.
But If a ladyfriend wants to spin some Stephanie Mills....go ahead sweetheart.....
Yeah, different rules may apply here. My girl was scurred to drop the needle after flipping a record over while I was outta the room the other day. So, I showed her how to lift the needle with the lever to minimize DAMAGE.
My wife has some of her own records she plays, I encourage her to play mine, but she mainly listens to cd's. Teaching her about the lever was essential.
I would think what is really the question, is how people treat stuff. If people are courteous, conscientious and careful with their own stuff, I can't see how letting them handle your shit is a problem. However, I have lent books or magazines to friends who I thought would be very trustworthy, only to have dog-eared wrecks handed back to me like there was no problem. Same with CDs/DVDs/videos, where it looks like people played shuffleboard with 'em before they returned them! People will surprise you.
I figure if they are in your house, though, they should be more careful. This business about Friends being more important than records is no doubt true, but it should cut both ways. Friends should treat their friends' stuff with care and respect, no questions asked.
I have always let people play my records. Most people are happy to let me operate the turntable.
Today most of my records are for sale, so I got over a lot of my possesivness a long time ago.
I learned a long time ago not to loan my records. I would say 100% of the time when I have loaned records they either did not come back, or were rinked when they did.
When my records were my own, I always turned sleeves and cleaned them before each play. Now I have the sleeves in open position so people looking through the records dont split the seams trying to take sleeves in and out. I never touch the surface of my records, shoppers constantly touch the surface of the records. I don't worry about it.
Oh yeah, friends are more important than records. This does not mean they should mess with your records. If they use your Stark Reality for dip you might lose a friend. So just let them ask you to play the records you want they want to hear. That way your friendship wont get hurt.
I would teach the right girl how to mix and scratch.
Yeah, since you spend more time with your girl you can always teach her proper RAER handling etiquette.
Would you rather lose all of your friends or all of your records?
If you haven't lost each on occasion, you really haven't lived a very full life.
I can make new friends......+ My music is my friend...........
Well, she hasn't gone near the turntable since, so what does that tell you?
No problem.
Lending my records to a friend/houseguest?
Not until you pry my cold dead fingerz off the wax.
Oh, no doubt. If I lend something to someone, I don't expect to get it back. That's just the way people are. I don't mind lending books, but that's because I don't usually reread books. If I don't intend to listen to a record again, I'll either sell it or give it to somebody. No lending.
that said i still never lend records out, but nobody ever really asks anyway.
Tell that to my Mike James Kirkland. I let the needle slip out of my hand, went to catch it, and ended up putting a gash in the wax. It takes even less than that if you like your records to play clean. I mind pops and clicks...especially when they could have been prevented.
ouch! i guess im going with personal experience. ive had a few times where i dropped the needle and it slid a bit but its never done any noticeable damage yet. but i guess all those G--- records i see got that way somehow...
this enters the competion for WORST BULLSHIT EVER, it's almost up there with "heavy shit takes longer".
im just saying, unless your friend are complete idiots that think the way to play a record is rub it on pavement for 2 minutes and then scratch the needle across it for an hour, they probably arent gonna do much damage. anybody that has the desire to play a record themselves (as opposed to having you play it for them), i would trust to at least have some common sense.
sure, you can do very little and hurt a record, but either you guys are friends with 3 year old kids or youre extremely paranoid and youre imagining that the above situation would DEFINITELY happen if your friends got anywhere near your collection...
I'll lend on special occasions only. I had a houseguest years ago, wasn't even my friend, was my roommate's friend, and he slipped my DON BLACKMAN into his backback to take to a house party without asking. He came home totally trashed, pulled out the record and thanked me, and the sleeve was all bent up! Thankfully the vinyl was all good, but that shit really killed my faith in letting fools around my records.
i am moving in with my girlfriend and am setting up the expedit
but will i have to explain the ground rules to my roomates...
i am more than happy to share but the mix of curiosity and ingnorance of how precious these things are to us scares me
a jewel case is not an LP sleeve etc...
i agree with your general point Ako, that records are actually a pretty sturdy, robust medium as long as you treat them with some common sense.
I used to not care that much about condition. If I could cop for cheaper, I'd do it without much reservation. My standards have increased a lot in the last couple years because I was so tired of upgrading jacked-up copies of shit that I really enjoy listening to.
Not to mention resale value...
can you finger a record's booty?