The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Vinyl Collection from Scratch

The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Vinyl Collection from Scratch

Vinyl is, in fact, experiencing a real revival, but thankfully not as a replacement for digital music – that would be silly. Instead, more people are coming to recognise that records can be a special, even sacred thing to own and listen to. The format encourages music fans to appreciate a more personal, tactile, and ultimately rewarding connection with their library.

Don’t buy the suitcase player

The first mistake is to treat ownership like a competition. This isn’t Pokémon. You don’t need to catch ’em all.

The second error is to start collecting vinyl before you know where you’re going to put it. If that shelf isn’t flush against a wall, tiny nudges (and let’s be honest, the occasional tremor from the speakers) will send piles of records clattering into the abyss.

Third, never buy a record you haven’t heard before. Actually, scratch that. Just don’t buy it based on what it looks like. This principle also applies to anything recorded in the last 30 years that comes sealed in plastic with a free download code, and therefore cannot conceivably be any different from the MP3 you just streamed.

Understanding the signal chain

New collectors are often left scratching their heads by the fact that a record player doesn’t just connect to a speaker. The signal that comes off a phono cartridge is incredibly quiet – much, much quieter than the signal coming off a CD player or a smartphone. In order to raise it to a level that’s useable for a receiver and speakers, it first needs to pass through a phono pre-amplifier (sometimes phono stage).

Some turntables come with a built-in phono preamp, making things incredibly easy. Some amplifiers come with a dedicated phono input that performs the same function. If neither of those things is true for your setup, you’ll need a standalone phono stage – a little box that the turntable plugs into, with RCA cables running from the box to your receiver.

The full chain looks like this: Turntable to phono stage, phono stage to amplifier, amplifier to speakers. Each and every one of those links matters. A solid turntable hooked up to poor amplification will still sound pretty lifeless. You don’t need to spend a fortune at each step in the chain, but knowing what each thing does will help you make more intelligent purchasing decisions as you slowly build out your rig.

Formats, sizes, and speeds

Not all records rotate at the same pace and it’s possible to change the speed to create music that sounds like it’s being played by a broken tape machine or a chipmunk.

The 12-inch LP (long play) album is the standard format for a full album and rotates at 33 1/3 RPM. This is the format you’re likely to find in used record bins and it’s the one that new album releases are most commonly pressed on. The 7-inch single is intended for commercial singles and plays at 45 RPM. There’s also the 78 RPM format, which is created with shellac instead of vinyl but this is largely obsolete within the realm of modern record players. For practical purposes, you’re going to be working with 33s and 45s.

Most record players have a speed switch or a belt that drives the machine so that you can switch between two speeds, but you should check for sure before you drop the needle. Playing a 33 at 45 RPM doesn’t seem to damage the record. However, it just sounds too fast and about twenty seconds in you’ll definitely notice.

Building your collection strategically

Vinyl records generated 1.4 billion dollars in revenue in 2023, accounting for 71% of all physical music format revenues and for the second year in a row, they also sold more units than CDs (RIAA). There are so many records being produced right now at every level of quality that it can be overwhelming if you’re just starting out. So here’s a plan.

Try to make two different kinds of purchases. For albums you know, the all-time greats you will keep coming back to, look through the recent reissues of heavy 180g vinyl. 180g refers to the weight per square meter of the vinyl record. The extra mass keeps records from warping, and remastered versions included with many 180g+ re-releases often sound better – they’re just not as loud. They regularly go for between $25 and $40 upfront, but they last, and will fetch a fair amount of resale value should you decide to part with them.

For everything else, dig. Secondhand stores, estate sales, flea markets, and record store discount bins are full of vinyl that won’t set you back more than $5 and often play just fine. This is known as crate digging, and it’s basically a sport for a lot of people who collect records. You will invariably stumble across art that was new to you. You will spend a few bucks sampling music you’d never think of pirating or streaming. Some of it will be good. Most of it won’t. That’s okay because the record was super cheap.

When your music isn’t available on vinyl

A missing niche that most guides overlook: not everything you adore can be found on vinyl. Not even 10%. An out-of-print first-gen CD from a bandcamped singer-songwriter. A remix CD that came with a free newspaper when you lived in another country. A set of mp3s that you put together for a party or a funeral. The music that provides the emotional spine for stretches of your life more often than not will never be transferred to a 12 inch disc, because the rights are too tangled and labels too disinterested.

This is where Custom Vinyl Records come in. The technology for making custom, short-run vinyl started out crude and quickly became finicky, then stayed surprisingly similar for like 60 years before becoming definitively arcane. Now ways to press custom records exist that are both affordable and pretty good, using a process called lathe cutting in which the audio is micro-carved directly into a blank record.

We’ve given lots of these as gifts over the years, and it is a profound sensation, holding your friend’s mixtape in your hand. Even if it’s easy enough to do now, in an era when any file can become an object in three days’ post, it still feels like nerd voodoo.

For the kind of collector that wants their record shelf to look like an interstitial zone between all the other formats that ever were, a handful of short-run and individual pressing services will make you a custom record from any audio source.

Cleaning and maintenance – every single time

Vinyl is a format for your sense of touch. The stylus nestles into the groove and reads a physical texture. Anything in the vicinity of that groove relays the impulse to the stylus, which turns it into vibrations. This means any dust, grit, or debris in the vicinity of those grooves gets relayed too – as noise, as pops, as crackle. Some of that is charming. Most of it is just damage waiting to happen.

The non-negotiable baseline: use a carbon fiber brush before every single play. These are cheap, anti-static, and take about ten seconds to run across the surface before the needle drops. It clears loose surface dust and dissipates static buildup. Do this meticulously every time.

For records you’ve picked up second-hand – especially anything pulled from a dusty bin – a wet cleaning pass is worth doing before the first play. You can use a basic record cleaning solution and a microfiber cloth, or a dedicated record cleaning machine if you’re buying a lot of used stock. The goal is to get into the grooves themselves, not just wipe the surface. A dirty groove plays noisy, wears your stylus faster, and wears the record at the same time.

Inner sleeves matter too. The paper sleeves that come inside most record jackets generate static and can leave fine scratches over time. Replacing them with polyethylene inner sleeves is a cheap, one-time upgrade that protects your records from the moment you buy them.

How to store records properly

Warps are permanent. A record with a warp in it may still be playable, depending on the severity, but the skips, wow, and flutter brought on by the warp will introduce all kinds of unpleasantness to the listening experience – and there’s no way to reverse it short of shelling out for a special flattening press, which is really expensive and still doesn’t work every time.

Records warp from heat, weight, and time. It’s basic physics: vinyl is a thermoplastic. It gets soft under heat and mushed under weight. That’s why records stored horizontally – flat, stacked one on top of the other – will slowly start to bow under the weight of the records on top of them, particularly if it’s a tall stack and you leave them in a warm room to cook for a while.

Store your records vertically, like books on a shelf. Keep them in a cool, dry room away from direct sunlight and any appliances that produce heat. If you notice a section of your vinyl shelf starting to lean, don’t just prop ’em up with a half-empty bottle of scotch. Use a proper record divider or bookend to keep the stack straight. Records that are allowed to lean on an angle for the better part of a year will often be left with a subtle permanent lean of their own.

Planning your gear upgrades

You don’t have to go out and buy the most expensive system you can afford. But it helps to understand where the biggest bang for your buck tends to be when you do decide to invest a bit more.

The stylus is the sapphire or diamond-tipped wand that makes direct contact with the surface of every LP you own. Unsurprisingly, upgrading to a new stylus is often the single most effective upgrade you can make to an existing turntable. A better stylus will simply trace the grooves more accurately, retrieving more information and causing less damage in the process.

After that, a dedicated external phono stage (even a very modest one) tends to blow the onboard phono preamps in most entry-level turntables or budget amplifiers out of the water. The difference is generally quite stark once you’ve given it a listen.

Further down the pecking order come new turntables, tonearms, and speakers. They all matter, but you stand to gain more at an earlier stage of your upgrade journey by tackling the cartridge and phono stage first.

Starting well beats starting perfect

The entry point for a proper vinyl setup is much lower than you’d imagine. Buy an actual turntable with a counterweight, learn the function of each part, wash your records before spinning, and keep them vertical. After that, it’s about your collection being exactly that – yours. Reissues and rarities and crate finds and, yes, pressed-to-order originals no one else will have. That’s the thrill.