flattening warped vinyl

captainsalty

captainsalty

Ikon Class
Joined
Apr 28, 2011
hey guys,

i remember we had a discussion about this on the old g45 forum, but still:

is it possible to successfully de-warp a vinyl?

disc suffered from head during transit.

20 years ago, i tried de-warping on a pretty cool disc (rites - hour girl) by putting the record in an oven, between two glass panes.

unfortunately, can't report back: i forgot about the record in the oven, and when i finally remembered, all that was left was a pig pile of melted goo.

(on a side note: i think this caused psychological trauma, since i never replaced that record, even if it is a personal favourite and not hard to get)
 
someone made a record flattening device called a Vinyl Flat I'm not sure if you can still buy them. they are like a pizza warming oven pouch with heavy metal plates you screw together. they are only really useful on storage (room temperature) warps.

any kind of heat warp, which sometimes look awfully a lot like storage warps, cannot be flattened in the Vinyl Flat. heat deforms the wax permanently.

also, I don't think it works on styrene, although I haven't tried it
 
Well here is the high end solution I've been eyeing for quite awhile . At that price you'd need to de-warp quite a lot of records to make it worth it . Of course you could also charge your friends a fee to de-warp their records , but after owning a record cleaning machine for a long time I pretty much have an idea how that will work out... I wish they had skimped on the design to lower price for at least 1 K .
https://www.afi-record-flattener.com/afi_flat.htm
 
It looks great I'll admit to that. However sceptisism of heating vinyl makes this a big no go for me. Of course curious as I am I'd love to see/hear a demonstration of this device.
Could be another forum item called The Flat Vinyl Society:smyle:
 
I've actually unwarped a record before, but it was probably a matter of luck.

This was nothing of value and so I had nothing really to lose. I heated my oven and put the record on large cookie sheet. This was over 20 years ago. I don't recall the temperature setting or for how long, but it worked. When I say "luck" ... I'm guessing that you only have a 5-10 second window when the record is perfect. Otherwise, it'll do further damage.
 
There are a few shops offering disc flattening services in Germany and likely in other countries, too. These guys only work with LPs and I've had several albums succesfully de-warped by them.

This shop in Munich does 7"s, too though I've never tried them. Please report back if you have a go with them.
 
The shop in Munich uses the AFI and their prices are decent if you consider what it costs . The other outfit uses the cheaper Air Tight Disc Flatter and charges more....
 
oh dang, greg, i read your post too late.

tried the oven, made things worse..

but i will give this shop in munich a try, it's not far away from me.
 
mr. splendid said:
https://www.afi-record-flattener.com/afi_flat.htm
Click to expand...

I just noticed Mr. Splendid's post with link to the Flat record flattener. I think it looks very interesting, and it happens to be distributed in Australia by my favorite high end audio dealer, Sonic Purity. I'm very tempted! I don't have many warped 45s, but there are a significant few. Plus some LPs. The "tempering" mode sounds very interesting as well. I wonder if the tempering process shares any similarity with the effect of the Furutech Demag machine? I wouldn't be surprised if there was some crossover happening, because the tempering effect described in the Flat PDF is exactly what you hear with the Demag.
 
I ordered the AFI FLAT.2 record flattener yesterday. $5250 (Aust.) well spent! :wtf: It should arrive in a few days. I have a few 45s (and some LPs) which need to be un-warped, the main one being the alternate "red" label Denise 45 (although strangely mine has yellow labels). The alt Denise has a very minor edge warp, about 3cm wide, caused by heat. As well as the physical warp, it has some mild swishing noise caused by the heat warp, but only audible in the lead-in grooves. It will be interesting to see if the AFI flattening process can reduce this noise, as well as stopping the vertical movement of the tonearm.
 
Great , that way I can get a first hand assessment ! As most high-end equipment is geared towards the album collector market it will be interesting to know how well this works on singles .
 
Very curious as to how it works and the end results. Good on you Mark for purchasing this piece of equipment. If it does a good job then the price is irrelevant in my opinion.
 
A slight hitch in my plans for world domination of the record flattening market. The FLAT.2 machine arrived today, but one of the glass side panels is cracked. I've contacted the supplier and he will replace the unit, but there will be a delay. Meanwhile he has asked me not to use the faulty unit. Disappointing. Here's the unboxing, which proceeded well until my nephew noticed the cracked side panel. You can see that the glass panel is quite thin at the point of breakage.
 
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