Colored Vinyl Records - Good or Bad?

Colour vinyl is so common nowadays I just prefer traditional black.

I remember Elvis did pink vinyl album

Actually - both black and coloured modern records are crap! The sound quality is absolutely AWFUL! Yet they ask so much more money for records today - even black! Like everything else these days - it’s gone down hill, because it’s cheap and nasty... They make the vinyl much thicker today into fooling you it must be better value for money – but years ago, even much thinner vinyl was much better sounding. Most people don’t realilse (or care) because they’ve only grown up with this shit!

Solid colored, translucent and multi-colored make it hard or impossible to see dust. I prefer black for that reason, and that's why I very rarely hear any kind of tick or noise. .

"Colored Vinyl Records" - is not good, and not bad, - it is useless !

base on a couple of anecdotes ??? never. excellent info.. great channel

for me i luv color vinyl and picture disc compare to boring black vinyl chucky winnipeg manitoba canada

Black vinyl is colored vinyl. PVC , or polyvinyl chloride, in it's natural state, is clear. So black vinyl is the same as colored vinyl. The only pristine vinyl is clear vinyl.

Just a fact

I recently got a white colored pressing of Duke by Genesis, i think it sounds pretty good but it’s not as good sounding as my normal vinyls but i don’t care too much about how it sounds, i personally really like the lower quality as it makes it feel sorta nostalgic + it’s my favorite album of all time so i can’t complain about it

Newer colored vinyl sounds fine. I have numerous LPs to attest to that statement. The first colored vinyl LP (red) I bought was Nazz Nazz - Todd Rundgren's band from the late 60s. They didn't sound the best. But don't get me started on picture discs. LOL

Coloured vinyl was once interesting, when these releases were still limited and special. But now coloured seems the new standard for popular music, but still marketed as special and therefor sold at a higher price. The public seems to dig it, but if i have to choose between coloured or black my decision goes to the cheapest one, which is black nine out of ten times.

Love colour vinyl freaks agree we r not boring by nature so the more colour the better my only one for many years was the white albam and guess witch colour peace and love lloydy

Pretty much over it all I want my vinyl black but sometimes it doesn't go that way especially on over priced record store rip of day where it all has to be any colour but black

In my experiance, I don`t hear a difference, so I love them both more than my CDs!!

I really don’t think black vinyl is better! I have a lot of colored vinyl and most of it sounds great. I’ve done a few direct tests between a black & a colored album of the same release. Very much the same sonics usually. However at times the colored ones seem to have a slight edge and other times the black. I usually get the colored if I like the look and price isn’t too crazy.

Have a ton of colored vinyl and they all sound good to me. The color should match the album art though, and if I have a choice I will always get whatever looks best with the cover.

Great choice on the Faster album, it has great performances and production sound. I've found more quality issues with color vinyl releases lately. I agree Moody Blue is a good sounding release.

Thanks for the very entertaining video on black vs coloured vinyl, Rick! This is an ongoing point of contention between record collectors and I find myself very often in your dilemma….and I always choose colour. Black vinyl editions definitely have their advantages: it is easier to see dust, smudges, and imperfections on them, and the vinyl is usually purer and may last longer.

However, if you handle your records correctly, keep them clean, and use a half-decent turntable and stylus, both will outlive you. Coloured vinyl pressings do tend to be available in limited quantities so they are usually more valuable in the long run. Rick, I would argue that in the 1970s and 1980s, coloured vinyl pressings tended to be superior because the black vinyl equivalents were made of cheap, thin, and recycled materials. My copies of Beatles White on white vinyl and Rush Hemispheres on red sound better than my black vinyl versions of that era. However picture discs definitely sound better today than they did in the 1970s! I have had many terrible pressings of both black and coloured variety and it usually comes down to the quality control at the pressing plant.

Keep up the great work - your videos are fun to watch and you don’t come across as the condescending know-it-alls that many people who post similar videos do! Just a great watch on the Joys of collecting vinyl! Thanks so much!

Vinyl is actually clear until they add coloured pellets to the final product. Black vinyl is actually coloured vinyl. The only bad vinyl discs are those glow in the dark discs where they add phosphorous which creates noise. You can see how dirty your record is when it is black though.

I only have one colored disk, an orange pressing of The Traveling Wilburys. It sounds fine...don't know if it will hold up over many years tho.

I have only a few colored vinyls in my collection of around 400 or so LPs. And only 1 white 7" single out of maybe 150 singles. That single is Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill" bought upon its release in the summer of '85. Also the only gatefold sleeved single I have.

On the 12" side, the 3 colored vinyls I have are actually 12" singles, not full LPs (although they are stored with the LPs for obvious reasons, just like EPs).

One is a German pressing of The Smiths' "William it was Really Nothing" pressed in that purple and white spatter pattern vinyl bought in '84. It looks like it would tear up a needle, especially spinning at 45 RPM, but actually sounds really good. The real reason for buying it at the time was to get the full-length version of "How Soon is Now" on the B-side. I had the US 7" single which was the shorter edited version, and I didn't want to buy the full album (I was in college and had to watch my spending).

The other is the transparent amber 12" single of Belinda Carlisle's version of 'Band of Gold" from '86. Sounded fine at the time, but I haven't played it since first buying it.

About 20 years ago, my wife found a UK 12" single of Pat Benatar's "Shadows of the Night" pressed on transparent blue vinyl on eBay. She got it for me. However, it was packaged in a clear plastic sleeve that hardened at the top flap and stuck to the record surface. I could see that there was leaching onto the vinyl in the form of visible surface residue (the sleeve was probably PVC which will leach like that), so I wasn't about to actually try to play it.

I do have 2 picture discs. Both from Heart. "Dreamboat Annie" and "Magazine" from when Mushroom Records still existed. Of course, I also have several pressings of each album on regular black vinyl, so getting these were for the collector in me. For "Dreamboat Annie", I have an original '76 US release bought by my mother that summer of '76, and a Nautilus 1/2 speed master pressing. Many years later, I picked up another '76 US pressing on eBay. For "Magazine", I have the official '78 release on regular vinyl, and found on eBay the '77 "unauthorized" release. The "Magazine" picture disc is the "Limited Canadian Edition" (it's also the official version of the album). The picture discs do generally sound a little more muddled. A little less high-end clarity. It is, after all, a clear plastic layer that the grooves are pressed into over the printed image layer sandwiched in the middle of the two sides.

Liking your Videos,Thx

If you close your eyes, you can't tell the difference

I have "Bloodshot". In fact I just listened to it a couple of days ago.
Saw J. Geils a couple times. They were great live.
Oh…have the yellow "We’re An American Band' as well.
While I do have a few colored vinyls and picture disks. I’m more or less agnostic as to whether they sound worse or better.

I like coluoured records and with my setup the quality sounds the same. I have Miles Davis Kind of blue on blue vinyl and I am happy but thanks ffort this video didn't know dyes are used with coloured vinyl and black is carbon

It's also worth noting that RCA Victor color coded their 45s by genre way back in the late 40s and 50s when they introduced 45s to compete against Columbia's new LPs but also against shellac 78s.

I have Dave Mason's Alone Together original multi color, sounds great.

I just got a David Bowie Low orange vinyl and it sounds amazing and looks so cool. I have only expirienced bad quality with a splatter vinyl, I wont buy any more of those recrods.

I recall an article I read many years ago in reference to coloured vinyl. The topic being mid fifties vocal group ( doo wop) 45s. The article (appeared) to suggest that virgin vinyl was used on 'sure hit' acts. Other 'take a chance' acts being issued on colored vinyl (or as the US call it; Wax...), as coloured vinyl was supposedly recalled vinyl, melted down and repressed with a (usually) red dye, and resulted in audio/ pressing flaws. Colour being added to disguise these flaws/ blips on the playing surface.

However, how an already clear PVC dyed black 45 that has been subsequently remelted and dyed red is beyond me, given the physical properties of the colour spectrum.....
What is surefire though, is the prices aforesaid doo wop 45s on coloured wax now fetch. The Flamingos on CHANCE, red wax is being a prime example.

A wee note to an earlier query- the 'hissy' 45 reference is probably a Styrene pressing. Very brittle 45s that usually boasted hand pasted labels. Their physical properties had less plastic/ vinyl than mainstream 45s, broke easily and had a 'tinny' ring to them.
Loathed by some audiophiles, there are quite a few desirable mid sixties Garage bands who could only afford a DIY styrene press. Again, these styrene presses have became little desirables in their own right.

Interesting topics you cover, Sir.

Cheers from Bonnie Scotland.....

El

Meine erste farbige LP war eine goldene (gelbe) von Sergeant Peppers... von den Beatles Anfang der 1980er. Sie läuft noch einwandfrei! :-)

Convince me that Vinyl sounds better than CD’s.

If carbon additives are so wonderful then why are premium discs selling for a hundred dollars or more on clear carbonless vinyl?

I picked up a copy of the KOYAANISQATSI soundtrack on the Antilles label a few months ago. Upon adding it to my collection on discogs, I learned that it's not actually black; when held up before a bright light it shines with a deeply translucent indigo. Now I love it even more than I first did, because it just has a tiny bit of additional magic - & vinyl magic is lovely stuff!

I love colored records, but it is a challenge to visually know when a white record is dust free or clean

Sure colored records are a gimmick, so are records in general. If sound quality was all you cared about, you wouldn't pick black records over colored records, you'd pick digital lossless over records at all. The fun of a record is in the ritual of putting it on and watching it spin as it plays. It's all a gimmick, that's why we're here. To pretend otherwise would be pretentious.

Own between 400 to 500 pieces, a small percent colored. Of all those, the Valentine Day issue of Tame Impala's The Slow Rush is sonically the best pressing I have heard. There were 2200 in my red/blue addition with the same number also in double green + I think around 5000 in splatter. I compared mine with the black addition that followed, as well as the CD, mine being easily decernable superior. You are spot on, it's the quality of the pressing process which translates to final fidelity.

Personally I've noticed gold/silver records tend to have more surface noise than other colors/black.

Nothing wrong with colored records, i own a totally clear one that sounds great too.

My problem with color vinyl is that certain colors (specially white) makes it hard to see the grooves and to see dirt or damage. Picture disks are the only ones I avoid buying cause of the surface noise.

I've never owned a colored vinyl record that sounded any good. (shrug) Havent had a lot, but the few Ive had sounded dull and veiled.

I had my mental comment prepared when I saw the title of the video. Glad you addressed the quality control at the pressing plants because I feel that is where most of problems lie. Great overview! It will be interesting to see if picture discs can advance with new techniques. Black vs white? I will never choose white again because . . . in the rare, very rare time I want to move the stylus to a track on the middle of the record, it is next to impossible to see the break on a white album.

Easy, it probably doesn't matter. Now if the material were different, but it's not. It's plastic folks.

i had a few of these. ELo & Goblin. (red & yellow)

I have always wondered about this

Video game soundtracks are being pressed... Both legally and small runs illegally of non obtainable licenses (a shell company pops up... makes 200-300 copies then disbands) and they usually are done with very fancy disc designs and center labels... Im not a big collector of those but I've got a few and a couple friends who has dozens and dozens of these runs... I've noticed no major problems with audio... One such company is using a 10,000 lathe to make the Masters. Colored vinyl discs sound great... But we are running into issues with speckled discs that glitter is added to the mix and when pressed the glitter isn't fully seating into the grooves and causes quite a bit of noise and needle disturbances/distortions. So be on the look out for glittered discs.

Colored disc's can be interesting and certain artists have begun to create some wild color combinations mostly in limited numbers. The vast majority of my collection is standard black but occasionally if I find a band I like to support and they release limited numbers on colored vinyl I usually try to obtain them. So far I have not had any issues with sound quality and haven't noticed a difference. Picture disc's on the other hand are a different beast and are mostly art in record form not for listening but admiring. At least that's the case for me. Enjoyed the video, thanks.

I love colored vinyl. Modern colored wax sounds great. However way back in the 50's black was a lot better than colored wax. A great example, "Parade records" A label that pressed red disc. Not translucent, and I think not even vinyl. Some other material. They ware quickly and hiss a lot after that happens.

Thanks for the info. I had no idea that a colored record wouldn't sound as good as a black one. I own just one record that isn't black. It's Taylor Swift's Evermore which is on green vinyl. It sounds very good by the way. So whatever they did with this pressing I don't think sound quality is an issue. I guess if I have a choice between black or a different color going forward I'll stick with black.

I love colored records - it holds a mystery of when you open it, seeing the color - will it be opaque or kinda clear. I have heard that picture discs are not good, but I don't have much experience with them. If you haven't, you should talk about those as well. There is also a huge market of fake release of picture discs on eBay that are being sold, but never authorized. As always, great video!

I've been getting alot of my records lately from Walmart, my second choice being Amazon, because WallyWorld is within a mile of my house, or Amazon USUALLY gets me what I've ordered in one piece. However, as far a color choice goes, Walmart doesn't seem to give me much choice, as they are repressing bands I like in "Walmart Exclusive" color when I would just as soon buy the plain black version. What's really halarious is the Metallica Black album being sold as a "Walmart Exclusive Not-Really-But-Almost Black" version that I bet STILL doesn't sound as good as the plain ordinary color the album was first released on way back in the stone age when we played dinosaur scale records on Fred Flintstone turntables using genuine rock needles, feeding into a pair of matched ptyerodactals for stereo, with a brontisaurus subwoofer. But we could always upgrade to copper, then bronze, then quartz stylus............LOL........