Can You Really Fix a Warped Record? 

Great video! I love your channel, its so well produced. Don't change, even when you have 1M subscribers!

With the oven method I slightly fixed one warp. It's still warped but a little bit playable. Another one did what you presented; the grooves were out of sync. So you're probably right. Throw them out.

I recently got a warped record. I put it in a sleeve and stacked a whole bunch of heavy boxes on it in my kitchen where the floor is flat. Left it there for 10 days and BOOM! Good as new. Played well (:

One solution that I've used is simply placing the LP between two plates of plate glass (not sheet glass), and leaving the "sandwich" in the sun for about 30 minutes, laying flat. It works more quickly on warm sunny days. After 30 minute, bring everything back indoors and let it come back to room temperature, then test the LP to see if the warp has been reduced (or removed). If it needs more time, put it back between the plates and repeat. You can do this as often as needed, without the risk of damaging your LP.

This has me wondering & thinking if some record stores have the expensive machines that fix wrapped records. They flatten the record then put them out for sale in the used record bins.

My Vinyl Flat device has been and continues to be a real record saver. I went through a learning curve but it has paid off big time. If you ever get one (along with the warming pouch that's made for it), let me know and I can give you some valuable advice about using it successfully. Love your channel!!

Hi from England! I have had great results with my vinyl flat and groovy pouch. You just need a lot of patience. No noticeable increase in background noise, to my ears anyway!

I own a Clearaudio turntable, and I sprung for their "Outer Limit" weighted ring (I tried putting in a link to the item, but youtube refuses to post my comment when it has a link). It is super simple to use. You drop it on the record, and it weighs down the outer perimeter of the record. The ring's weight is 3.3 LBs. It will not help records like the super bent ones in your video. But for any record where you see your cartridge holding on like an amusement ride, the ring will nearly flatten out that record, and you will no longer have to hold your breath while playing that warped record (it will have nearly no warp under the weight of the ring). I have only one record which my cartridge cannot track, due to the level of warping -- the stylus skips. So that record is unplayable without the outer ring weight. But with the ring, that record plays with nearly no warp. The extra weight helps, sonically, the same as the weight (or clamp) that you drop over the spindle -- it adds mass to the record, which is desirable. But honestly, I cannot say that I hear any sonic improvement with the outer ring weight, except for warped records that it flattens during playback. I never checked if such out ring weights are available for other turntables. If they are precision made, and have heft, they will help with warped records. Just make sure that your motor can handle the additional mass, as well as your turntable's bearings. Cheers!

Yes. I've successfully done it several times with the Vinyl Flat and it's heat pouch. 👍 One I'm currently trying to fix as we speak is one of the infamous German, HörZu - Die Beatles (Please Please Me). NM record, but both warped & dished to hell and back! Really unfortunate, but hopefully I can work my magic. Wish me luck! 😜

Yes you can but be prepared for an increased noise floor if you use heat

get along bolt 7mm diameter and nut placing it in a drill on high speed heat it with a hairdryer on both sides for about 2 to 4 minutes depending on heat and hairdryer. make sure the record is level and the drill is clampdown

Here’s some great tips to fix a warped record. It’s one of a series of helpful videos about vinyl. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wCednFoVBG4.html

@0:56 "180 gram" records. I have never heard one that sounded right. I gave up on heavy vinyl years ago. Do you have any that have outstanding sound quality? Which ones?

OK as promised I'm reporting back on this process. I had two glass squares about 17"....good size for the oven and plenty of extra glass around the record. Got some parchment paper folded it like a record sleeve....with a little extra. Set my oven to 170F. Really warped record as I said previously. 5 minutes in the oven and then took it out, put on a nice hard surface, put a big coffee table book on top and then added 20 lbs of flat weights....waited until cool(about a half hr). Nada. Tried 10 minutes, same routine ...nada. 30 minutes in the oven, same routine. This time it worked on all the warping...BUT....I have a dimpled surface throughout on both sides. I haven't played it yet, but it looks bad. I sure wouldn't do this to a good copy unless you're going to replace it. I have no idea what caused this, but it certainly wasn't the paper and/or the glass. Gotta be a factor of temperature, the vinyl, the weight......I'd say this myth is 'busted'. I'm gonna go -play the record right now. If I don't comment back, it suffered sonic degradation.

So you tried the oven method "low" with one record one time? I think the exact temperature really matters. The temperature that I have seen recommended is about 220°F What temperature did you try and for how long? And, if your oven is anything like mine, you should probably watch it carefully and put a meat thermometer with an alarm inside of it to tell you if it goes over a certain temperature. It really doesn't seem like very useful advice to say you try something one time and then that means that it can't be done and you should just buy another record. I buy a lot of oddball stuff for a dollar. A couple of them are warped. I'm not going to hunt down another copy for 10 or more dollars just to see if I like it.

Thinking through the oven method....with 50yrs+ of playing records. You do NOT want hot vinyl touching hot glass, metal etc directly..... you're inviting groove deformation. You need a buffer of some kind and I'm thinking parchment paper. It can take the heat and well, it's paper so there's some cushioning, yet it's still thin enough not to interfere with the process(PP on both sides of the record). 170F for five minutes after the oven is preheated, take out, put on a flat surface(still inside the glass sandwich), add a book big enough to cover the area(weight is not important) and then put 20lbs on top of the book. Let sit until cool. I have a badly warped "Butterfield Blues Band Live" double album set....both records warped. Someone stored them horizontally in a garage is my bet. As soon as I get the glass, I'll come back in and give my results.

I hope this channel succeeds!

I honestly wouldn't trust that anything that could flatten a record wouldn't also affect the sound in some way. If you can make a record malleable enough to flatten it you're also making it malleable enough to affect the groove through which the stylus travels. I generally agree that it's better to just replace a record once it's warped.

There are a few different kinds of warps, they're not all created equal. So a simple dish-shaped warp from too-tight shrinkwrap might be fixed to some degree by a flat surface and a stack of encyclopedias over a week or two. I had a rare Third Man Vault LP that had this issue, and while the warp isn't gone, it went from needle jumping to needle surfing, the warp was reduced enough to make it playable at least. But by the same token, I recently bought a repress of Pink Floyd's Obscured by Clouds, the one with the rounded corners, and the shrinkwrap did a number on the vinyl, and no amount of weight or time has been able to change that. It's playable, at least, after the first few seconds of each side. When the warp is on the edge, I've never been able to fix that, either with heat or pressure. I've tried clamping the edge between pieces of wood, using a hairdryer and a dehydrating oven, but any time I've tried to fix an edge warp, it just seems to make it ripple out further along the edge. A few of my local record shops have platter-flatteners, and offer to fix used records for $5 a throw (or something like that), I may take them up on it sometime if I ever get an irreplaceable LP warped beyond playability.

I actually just bought a record PI i’ve had it for two days and have flattened four albums so far and have a copy of Zeppelin IV flattening right now

At least you replaced the zz album. Classic and have bout that album several times. Good info.

A few years ago i tried to get into vinyl but was scared off of it, i had bought a 120$ victrola 5 in 1 and a album (daft punk discovery). Later i saw a lot of videos saying to never use those as after just a few uses they damage the grooves and start to sound terrible, then i saw other videos saying that the cheaper players don't cause any real damage as long as it works as intended, maybe just not sound as good as a more expensive one. So i instead got into cassettes for my analog sound and started collecting walkman units. I was wanting to get into vinyl again since my local wallart has hundreds of new on sale. Ps, my original us release of the white album is the warped one

Hi from the UK. Vinyl waffle press made me chuckle. Yep that's a no go for sure . Funny and informative video thks and best from planet Mack uk

Warped record - yes, but one the groove was warped as well - no flatter can fix chewd groove.

*New update. I think I'm done after this trying to prove/disprove the oven heat method for ridding vinyl of warps. I have a 1970 Cotillion copy of Lou Reed's "Velvet Underground/Loaded". It has what appears to be a 'crease' for lack of a better term, on the first track of both sides. It looks as if somebody took a heat gun near the edge and then tweaked a small portion. It plays, but not well. The rest of the album besides the first track on both sides, plays well. I did 15 minutes in the oven with the glass @170F, brought it out, put on a flat surface(still in the glass) and put 20lbs of weight on top.....let cool. This is a HUGE risk on my part. I looked at replacing an original pressing like this and I only have that kinda money lying around when I play Monopoly....insane. After the cool down which was about 30 minutes, took the record out and inspected. No heat dimples this time, so 15 minutes is 'safe' more of less. The 'crease' is less but not gone. Plays the first tracks MUCH better....decent now. I made a master R2R tape copy of this before, so I'll compare, but don't hear any new damage from the 'heat treatment'. SWEET JANE(pun intended)..........bit the bullet on this one! Just played the R2R master....where the bad crease was, the record itself plays better. The rest of the album sounds identical, so no damage done and some improvement on the 'crease' part. As I said before, if I had commercial lab ovens, good gauges, all kinds of time, a sponsor and a unlimited supply of varying warped records, I might be able to come up with an audible warp cure....or at least an aid. But if a warp is bad enough, just like steel, and you press it flat there will be crease damage. Heat is not going to 'fill in' something like that. But gentle, undulating warps can be addressed, methinks.

Hi there, I'm from South Africa and learned the hard way, you cannot fix a warped record, new or vintage, damage will occur and it's better to buy a new or used in good condition, I've found that new vinyl formulations are inferior to the ones up to the early 2000s before the cash grab 180g became a thing.

= Yes. *NEXT.*

so the long and short of it is... you have a warped record... buy another unwraped record. SIMPLE.