CURRENT POSTAGE RATES 
select45rpm homepage 10,000+ records at www.select45rpm.com
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CURRENT POSTAGE RATES
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PAYMENT & ORDERING INFORMATION
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| TRACKABLE POST All items can only be sent Trackable to comply with eBay/Paypal Buyer/Seller protection dictates. |
| POSTING DAY is always on a Thursday. Orders paid by 2pm Wednesday go out the same week. IMPORTANT: Allow 4 days (UK) or 7 days (ROW) for delivery. If nothing has arrived, please contact us. A card sould be left if delivery was attempted whilst you were out, though this often doesn't happen. Ask us for the tracking number so you can ask at your sorting office for it. If goods are returned, you must repay the post and then gently complain to your sorting office about them not doing their job properly. We can only claim after 14 days & it could take a further 2-3 weeks for the result. You are insured to the limit of the Post Service used, ie. £36 is the limit for UK Recorded & basic Int Signed For. Full insurance is always an option if required. |
| PAYPAL RULES We do not accept single payments over £100 by Paypal. Any over-£100 payments will be returned. Paypal is risky for higher value payments which can easily be paid other far safer ways. Paypal is only really meant for small transactions. For UK orders over £100 please pay by Cheque or Bank Transfer. Non UK customers can pay by IBAN/BIC transfer (adds £7 fee). You can opt to split one order into 2 or more parcels as 1 payment = 1 parcel for Paypal refund policies. We can only post to the Paypal-given address. We cannot add to an order already paid by Paypal, you must make a new order. |
| UK BUYERS: CHEQUES are fine for any amount, but be aware a total of £50 is the least we'll bank, so your order may possibly be delayed by a week or more. Please ask first. PLEASE NOTE: We require a note on a proper sized bit of paper (so it doesn't get lost) stating what you are paying for. We do not accept payments with orders on backs of cheques or POs. Don't sent Uninsured Cash. If using Postal Orders, send it Recorded else if it gets lost you may not be able to claim your money back if you lose the counterfoil/receipt. You can easily check if it's been cashed, ie where & by who, if lost. |
| UK BACS bank transfer For UK buyer to UK seller: This involves Online banking, you will be sent our bank codes for you to make a FREE online payment to us. Takes 2-4 days to arrive. Saves writing & posting cheques & other delays. |
| NON-UK IBAN/BIC bank transfer For Non-UK buyer to UK seller: We give you bank codes, you make an online payment or fill out a form in your bank. This method adds a £7 Standard fixed fee we get on receipt to the total. |
| POSTAL ORDERS Are a faster way to pay small amounts than by Cheque, see below. Postal Orders must clear before posting: Crossed POs are treated as Cheques now. Uncrossed ones are cashed when items are posted. |
ABBREVIATIONS & COUNTRIES
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GRADING & QUALITY CONTROL
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Our view on Grading & what you need to do for the best sound. All records we offer are strictly graded VISUALLY for the Vinyl: we SCRUTINIZE each record under a 100w lamp to see any faults it has. This is why many have notes like 'B=EX' for accuracy of grading. Labels & covers you can see to decide yourselves in the photos, a picture of both sides of the labels & sleeve tells far more. Look closely, biro on dark labels is visible, but you may need to look for more than a few seconds quick glance. Many records we do WASH & PLAY to check they are OK if they look uncertain, but many DO NOT GET WASHED OR PLAYED as they are visually OK. Records are old & have usually been left forgotten for decades. Dirt, dust, nicotine & especially mould builds up in the groove and this is what makes a nice looking record not sound it's best: despite looking clean, it's not. But it's really simple to get the good sound back, just wash the record using your favourite cleaning method and play it a few times. Not every record is made to today's high standards and it's not right to expect that every record will play with a very quiet background, as CD & MP3 have made buyers expect. We now only stock NM or M grades on cheaper or chart hit items. Label damage or no-centre can make a record worthless too, we have been thinning out our stock over the last few years. We only offer goods worthy of you paying premium prices for, as buyers now only want high grade cheaper items if buying singly. See our NEW RECORD BUYERS page. |
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| • Is it an Original? We know UK & USA vinyl exceedingly well & can spot reissues & later pressings with ease. We collected USA vinyl in several genres so are aware of those that got reissued or bootlegged. A stamped run-out matrix number does not necessarily mean it's original, nor is the lack of one meaning it's a reissue. RE 72 means a clear re-issue from 1972. "c1972 pressing" means a later official pressing of the original. "72 issue" means it's the first (UK) issue of an earlier recorded track. We are aware of 'home made' fake demo labels, computer created demo labels, fake factory sample stickers & other nonsense created to trap the unaware buyer thinking it's a bargain. | |
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| • Refunds & Quality Control As we state, our stock is strictly checked before listing & before posting to check it's as-described. This will catch just about every fault & you'll not need to return substandard goods. We are accountable if there indeed is an omission or error. You'll have read our notes about Washing Records, this may be needed on some cheaper items as we do not play every record. Many we do play & wash for own use & many get a wash before posting if any dirt shows, save problems. Changing your mind or not liking the music is no reason to ask for a refund. The ease of copying records to CD or MP3 and not wanting the actual item is no reason either. If you think we've done you wrong in any way, let us know calmy & explain your problem equally calmy. Any problem can be easily sorted if the customer handles it in a professional manner. If a refund is granted it will be for item price only at our discretion. Note unauthorised returns will be treated as unsolicited goods and not accepted. The returned item must be the exact same item we sent you in the exact same condition. You must use the same trackable service to return with save postal losses. We are very aware of the item we sent you, so any damage will be considered Postal Damage & left to you to make a Post Claim, as we would have to if it was damaged on it's way to you. DISCLAIMERS: • By ticking the 'Read' box on the Order Form, you declare you have read & understood it • We reserve the right to cancel or refuse your order at any time, including refunding received payments if circumstances dictate this is needed. • Prices on the site get altered frequently up and down. • Old cached website listing pages are invalid. • Some items may be sold on the current listings, both from the site & via ebay. • If a price has been altered since the last update yet the site currently not showing the revised detail, it will be said to be 'sold' for ease. • This site is completely manually operated & updated, we use no database or generated pages, despite appearances. • We do not offer our stock anywhere else online or publicly. • All stock is our own property & is available for Thursday posting. • Orders not paid for within 1 month after reminders giving no repsonse, will be relisted & further orders from you will not be accepted. • Cancelling an order item from multiple item orders is only OK within 24 hours, anything beyond this may result in the full order being cancelled. • All artists contained within our listings are included without bias or regard to their public standing past, present or future. • Enjoy your records responsibly. |
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| • Vinyl isn't Perfect but sounds the best. Records are not perfect clean sound quality like CDs due to varying weaknesses of manufacture. Collectors are generally aware of this and accept records as made. eg: an ELVIS SUN 45 may be MINT, but it will play HISSY with the normal stereo stylus (they need 1.5 thou size not 0.7 thou stereo); the vocal may distort on over loud parts and even with the correct size stylus there will be surface noise as the stylus rides the groove bottom. No records were deliberately made hissy or muffly. It may be recorded too quietly and the background noise is higher than other records. It is MINT as it's as-made. 50s & 60s records are easier to find Mint now as Collectors have sold up & 40-50 years has got many collections sold. Late 70s/early 80s Picture sleeves are much harder to find Mint as these records are still kept by the original buyers, the casual buyer who sold up after they'd tired of the record didn't look after the fragile sleeves so many are only VG with gritty records. 20 years ago records from early 60s now common in NM or better you could only get VG if you were lucky. Time brings the records out, now a lot of older collectors are selling up. Remember, when that record was first heard, it was from a record, & it sold it (or not) to the public. Any clinically over-remastered thick & dull sounding CD or MP3 removing any trace of hiss or surface noise is missing the soul of the music. And of course the master tapes will have deteriorated & be nth generation copies... | |
• Teach not Preach! Here we've done some samples of a 1953 DUKE 45 by EARL FOREST, done without any EQ. First hear the 45 played with a typical stereo stylus 0.0007" radius. Then a 0.0011" standard mono stylus (as on older players), then a custom 0.0015", then a 0.0018" custom, then a 0.0028" 78rpm size stylus (for post 1940 78s). Hear the differences & you'll be able to tell the best size for the record: 0.0007 is awful & muffly as it rides loosely in the groove bottom, not riding the groove walls, 0.0011 OK, 0.0015 OK, 0.0018 best as it tightly fits the grooves. 0.0028 rides the groove too high giving too much noise, so those fools who say "better with a 78 stylus" are way off & are wearing their records out! This is perhaps an extreme example, but one that shows stylus size matters. We have a range of styli sizes for putting 45s on CD for our use. These custom styli are not cheap, about £80 each now from Expert Stylus Co in UK. |
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• Some vinyl facts we've discovered over years of shuffling old vinyl records... • UK ISSUES are 99% on quality vinyl with little or no extra surface noise. Exceptions are c1964-66 Rio issues and some 1964-65 Island pressing (4 prong centre ones) which were pressed on oddly cheap vinyl. Aside of lo-fi dubbed records & poor mastering where cutting amps were overloaded giving loud buzz/rip sounds on vocals etc UK issues are easy. Dubbed records? Many UK 45s were dubbed from US/JA copies, sometimes very well (Roy Orbison Oh Pretty Woman is dubbed) but others are like Musical Sandpaper (Certain big early 60s hits!!) and Reggae ones dubbed from crackly or clicking records. A few of these dubbed copies skipped whilst the UK master tapes were being made even! (Cajun Hart & Prince Buster). A few hit records, ie Elvis American Trilogy & even a late 60s Supremes 45 that RC used to note, will always play "noisy" as they were dubbed from a less than perfect record. They can still be "Mint" if they look perfect, as this was how they were minted/made. Pop records were disposable product, not hi-tech product like CDs are now with over-restored unnaturally silent backgrounds at the expense of subtlety. You just have to accept this is how records are. Some Decca pressed records from 1963 & 1967 need playing with a Mono size stylus (see above), else they sound muffly & distorted. They are not made wrongly, your Stereo stylus is too small to play these rogue stereo-incompatible pressings! Clear examples of this fault are London 9730-James Brown & Deccas 12631-The Attack + 12633-Paul & Barry Ryan. Oh, The Joy Of Vinyl! • USA ISSUES are not so easy. Early smaller labels (Sun Meteor Duke etc) can play hissy unless you use a bigger size stylus than your 0.0007" Stereo one (they need 0.0015" custom ones, read elsewhere on this site). Vinyl quality in the 50s varies between OK to noisy even on Mint ones as they used cheap recycled vinyl leaving tiny bubbles in the vinyl giving noise & these get worse as played, esp MSICO stamped ones. Styrene copies if Mint are perfect sounding until played heavily on a Jukebox or a chipped stylus wears them. 1960s USA vinyl is better but still some will give surface noise ie Philles & other smaller indie labels. The big labels RCA DECCA COLUMBIA used best vinyl & even 1949 issues can sound great. 1970s USA vinyl to a lesser degree can have noisy pressings on small labels, but generally far better. USA issues due to cheap or thinner vinyl can be very slightly warped (less than 1mm off true). Knowledgable buyers realise this. • JAMAICAN ISSUES. The early 1959-1965 vinyl is generally cheap & soft and even lightly used EX copies will have that surface noise, but unobtrusive. They can wear badly so we always play them to check. Pre-release blanks were often on better vinyl than labelled copies. 1966-1990 vinyl is much better and approaches USA vinyl from this era. The 1970s-90s Studio 1 repressings often use corroded stampers giving much noise even unplayed. Even new 1980s 45s look like early 70s ones as they still use old machinery, Jamaica despite it's rich heritage of music is not a rich country. 1960s Coloured transparent vinyl records play better as this is USA made kiddie 45s plastic imported from USA in the mid 60s. Some JA originals, such as Delroy Wilson "Riding For A Fall" and Chuck & Dobby "Running Around" are mastered with damaged or wrong size styli, so the UK copies dubbed from the JA sound really awful, but having had the JA origs, with a bigger stylus (0.0015"-0.0018" size) they sound correct. |