Pro-Ject Flatten It Review: Finally, a Way to Fix Warped Records Leave a comment

Accumulate sufficient vinyl and also you’re assured to search out your self with a few warped albums that received’t play correctly. Perhaps you foolishly left them in direct solar, possibly you didn’t retailer them flat, or presumably you discovered a wobbly outdated rarity at a cut price worth and figured you might restore it and beat Discogs at its personal sport.

It is onerous sufficient to arrange a turntable or decide the proper participant, however fixing a warped document with out specialised tooling (and the related data to go together with it) has lengthy been an excessive amount of of a ache to be value it for many.

Turntable stalwarts Professional-Ject is aiming to repair that. It has simply launched preorders for the Flatten It, its first devoted vinyl flattening machine. It’s a ruggedly good-looking lump of aluminum, with two 12-inch sizzling plates that warmth and press your treasured lengthy gamers again into form. Can it save your worst information? In my expertise, it does fairly nicely.

Lastly Flat

{Photograph}: Chris Haslam

There’s nothing particularly fancy right here, only a extremely correct thermostat providing the perfect heat to repair your shellacs. As soon as heated for round an hour, it can preserve a temperature of 136.4 diploma Fahrenheit (58 Celsius) and gently iron out any vinyl warping. It’s going to fluctuate simply two levels from this, and when you’ve left for 2 hours, right down to 86 levels Fahrenheit (30 levels Celsius), the document may be safely eliminated.

How lengthy you press a document for will rely upon the thickness of the vinyl. Chunky 180 gram pressings will take longer than the extra versatile, and more durable to warp, Dynaflex information. Earlier than I put the Flatten It to work on my cherished-but-wobbly assortment of warped ’90s white labels, I wanted to check it on one thing rather less treasured.