VINYL FLATTENING

The first thing to note is that a small degree of warp on vinyl records is quite common and turntable tonearms are designed to compensate for this, so unless the warp is affecting playback you don't need to worry about it.

All records are professionally cleaned before flattening is attempted. We use the Japanese made Orb DF-01i Disc Flattener, which is one of the best on the market. The flattening process takes 4 hours and some records need to be done more than once to get them completely flat. Some records may be too badly warped or heat damaged to be fully flattened, so we assess each record prior to attempting the flattening process and will advise as to whether it is worth trying. You can bring you warped records into either store for flattening anytime (no appointment required) or, if you're outside Melbourne you can post them to us at our Nicholson St address, in which case it's a good idea to us some photos/videos of the warped records so we check to see if it's worth sending them: info@goldminerecords.com.au

Flattening vinyl is not an exact science and there are many variables that effect how successful the process is. These include the type and quality of the plastic used to produce the record, when it was made, the thickness and colour of the vinyl and how badly it is warped.

Picture Discs cannot be flattened, due to their multi-layered construction.

Big warps/Small lumps
Big wave warps or dish warps across the whole record usually flatten nicely. Small lumps, especially multiple lumps, rarely flatten and can be a sign of extreme heat damage. 

Vertical or horizontal stylus movement
The de-warping process can only fix warps that cause your stylus to move up and down (vertical warp). If a warp causes your stylus to move sideways (horizontal warp), this cannot be fixed. If a warp causes your stylus to move up and down and sideways, the vertical warp might be fixed, but it will leave the horizontal warp, which can make the record less playable than it was. 

Can a record come out worse?
There is a very small chance that a warped record can come out worse. We have flattened 1000s of records and this has only happened a handful of times. From what we can tell it has something to do with the specific composition of the vinyl, how heat has affected it causing it to be warped or possibly an issue with the actual pressing. For some reason translucent red vinyl seems to be most susceptible to this issue. As such we cannot take responsibility for any record coming out of the flattening process worse.

COST
• $10 for each successfully flattened record.
• $5 for an improved and playable, but not completely flattened record.
• No charge on unsuccessful attempts.