I recently got hold of Squadra Blanco for €50 (a bargin i thought at the time) and the seller did describe it as having a slightly offcenter label that did not affect the sound quality but if he thinks that he must be deaf, blind or bullshiting me.

is there any way to fix this problem by removing the label or something? i took this picture to show what i mean.

image had to make it clickable as the image is quite large

Chalk it up to experience. The label is applied after pressing, so I suppose a glue solvent which does not affect plastic would do the trick. Try the Library of Congress which has a lot of good stuff on the care and cleaning of analog sound. And, next time, ask for a photo.

Ouch, how is that playable with the label covering the part of the grooves like that?


As for a fix. I dont know if this will harm the sound so maybe you better check with the experts first, but I used to sometimes clean very old dirty records (epesically ones that had unidentified sticky goop on them) by soaking them in lukewarm water with a mild liquid soap. I noticed that sometime this procedure would cause the label to loosen up and slide around. Maybe that would work here.

it does play but as you can imagine the sound quality takes a nose dive when the stylus passes over the label bit, i seem to remember a site with correct cleaning methods on it (iirc it was by the author of waverepair although i cant remember the site or his username on here). atleast its only side c that has that problem so most of the album is fine.

His member name here is "cliveb", and this is his website:
http://www.delback.co.uk/

Labels are stuck on with a printed adhesive and it depends what solvent was used for the adhesive whether you can soften it again without damaging the record. There is also the possibilty of leaving a residue in the grooves that would be hard to remove and would affect sound quality and possibly "gum" the stylus up.

Try isopropyl alcohol first (should be available form a pharmacy). It won't damage the vinyl but the label could well suffer. If that fails to work you could try xylene (if you can get hold of it) but that will attack the vinyl slowly so be quick and try it on a "scrap" record first. Let it dry for some time before playing. It shouldn't cause damage since vinyl isn't very soluble but it's a risk.

IIRC labels for vinyls are put into the pressing die together with the vinyl granulate. Then all together is pressed to its final shape - otherwise your offcenter label would not at all be playable.
I think there is no way to improve this other than smashing the disk on the vendor's head

This seems to make the most sense. If the label was just "stuck on" after the fact, the grooves would either be wholly, mostly or partially absent in the paper (more likely, wholly absent).

Continuing with the same premise, even if the label can be removed cleanly, the underlying grooves in the vinyl, to the extent that an impression even made it through to the vinyl, will certainly be wider, more shallow and even less defined than the grooves in the label.

If you want to pursue further information beyond this forum, you might find something by asking your question at The Record Collectors Guild.

The previous posters are right, I believe. Thinking back, I remember photos of the press before the record is pressed: a god of plastic and a label sitting on top of it, almost always in the center. So the grooves are pressed into the label and the plastic under it. The previous poster is right: smash it over the seller's head.

Seriously I'd leave the LP as is, and buy another one! Removing the label will definetly make it sound worse, because the label is put into the record pressing machine together with the vinyl goo. When you remove the label (by soaking it up with water for example) then you will remove the grooves, too.

This bad pressing is unique, have you ever thought about keeping it that way? Keep it in a dry and safe place. The 50€ were because of the bad pressing, right?

Hmmm, I hadn't thought of or realised that. Looking at some LPs I have the label *looks* as though it's stuck on after but maybe it isn't then. If it goes into the press and there's no adhesive, it could be bonded directly to the vinyl I guess, hard to tell.

That being the case, it would be impossible to remove and my earlier post is tosh!

if only, this record is quite hard to find and even when it comes up on ebay or gemm its usually quite expensive (more than €50). it seems labels like bunker, viewlexx (holosynthesis is a part of viewlexx), clone and other dutch electro labels love to press in tiny numbers (i have a few records that are limited to 250 or 500 pressings from those labels) and if you miss it you either wait for a repress (rare but it does happen) or get ripped off on ebay