Coloured vinyl

horse

Anybody else find it a bit odd?

Got a copy of Bill Evans "Waltz for Debby" this week, and the record is pink! Doesn't seem to fit the tone of the music to me....

Another one was the blue vinyl copy of Otis Blue. I see the connection, but not really the point or appeal.

theatreanchor

I would recommend avoiding any vinyl that’s not black. You can get on alright with some transparent coloured vinyl, but often, those coloured presses are gimmicky and sound awful. 

DiscoStu

I love coloured vinyl. I've got a few in my collection but this one in particular is worth a fortune.

jdgm

I had a couple of Hendrix bootlegs (Good Karma 1 & 2) which were transparent red and green respectively.  Not good quality.

I tend to agree with the above - black is almost always better.   OTOH I would expect any Bill Evans vinyl reissue to be very high quality, but yes it's a bit strange for jazz.  There was a blue version of "Kind Of Blue" - think it was the 50th Anniversary one.

However I still wish I'd bought the purple LZ4 when it was offered to me for £10 years ago!

Funkfingers

Coloured vinyl and picture disc pressings are mostly for display purposes. They are rarely durable and, as theatreanchor points out, tend to sound rough, even when brand new.

Reverend

Newer pic disks can be fairly decent, but older ones are usually awful. 
Colour and clear presses can be okay but can also be worth a lot. The brown presses of Iron Maiden - Twilight Zone are worth 100 times as much as other versions. 

hollywoodrox

I’ve got lots of picture discs ,coloured vinyl etc , I know the quality is not so good as the black stuff but I wouldn’t trade them . 

Ally

Heaps of new vinyl seems to be coloured. Its almost like black is the rarest colour of all sometimes. Doesn't bother me much, I still buy it.

MartinBush

I believe black vinyl is coloured, it's just the colour that you are most used to seeing.

Basic coloured pressings should be fine. If there's anything added beyond that then you may be able to hear sound degradation.

Picture discs are a printed picture encased in clear vinyl, so that's a compromise that will also impact on the sound.

bbill335

Ally said:

Heaps of new vinyl seems to be coloured. Its almost like black is the rarest colour of all sometimes. Doesn't bother me much, I still buy it.

this has been true recently, where black wax pressings were held up in the supply chain but bands could get coloured records pressed more easily.

Philly_Q

One of the first rock albums I ever bought, back in 1979, was Rainbow's Down to Earth, on clear vinyl.  It was warped, or scratched, or something, so I took it back and exchanged it... and ended up with a boring black copy.  I've never quite got over the disappointment.

I think I've still got some old singles (e.g. Gene Simmons, ELO) in coloured vinyl.

I don't buy vinyl nowadays, but multiple pressings in different colours seems to be a big thing for certain labels like Relapse and Nuclear Blast.

ArchtopDave

I have the latest Taylor Swift CD with a pleasing mahogany finish. Pretty sure it's high class South American tone wood, as there are no hairs on it.

Kittyfrisk

Philly_Q said:

One of the first rock albums I ever bought, back in 1979, was Rainbow's Down to Earth, on clear vinyl.  It was warped, or scratched, or something, so I took it back and exchanged it... and ended up with a boring black copy.  I've never quite got over the disappointment.

I think I've still got some old singles (e.g. Gene Simmons, ELO) in coloured vinyl.

I don't buy vinyl nowadays, but multiple pressings in different colours seems to be a big thing for certain labels like Relapse and Nuclear Blast.

I still have a couple of those, definitely Paul Stanley... complete with folding paper mask as I recall 

ICBM

My Beatles 1967-1970 on blue vinyl wore out very badly. Admittedly I did play it a lot, but I did other albums too, and they didn't go the same way.

Alterlifeson

In this day and age modern colour pressings are fine IMO. You get good and bad pressings or examples of albums no matter which colour they are. There are a couple of artists I might spend a fiver more on for the coloured version just because they look a bit cooler. 

Glow in the dark, picture disks and to some extent clear pressings are often still thought to sound worse however. I haven't noticed it myself with clear pressings though.

Philly_Q

Kittyfrisk said:

Philly_Q said:

One of the first rock albums I ever bought, back in 1979, was Rainbow's Down to Earth, on clear vinyl.  It was warped, or scratched, or something, so I took it back and exchanged it... and ended up with a boring black copy.  I've never quite got over the disappointment.

I think I've still got some old singles (e.g. Gene Simmons, ELO) in coloured vinyl.

I don't buy vinyl nowadays, but multiple pressings in different colours seems to be a big thing for certain labels like Relapse and Nuclear Blast.

I still have a couple of those, definitely Paul Stanley... complete with folding paper mask as I recall 

Yeah, the Simmons one had a paper mask, although I may have binned it...  The single was Radioactive, on red vinyl.

horse

Tbh I don't notice any issues with the sound of them (at least initially) - just that the look of them doesn't often suit the music, so I think why bother.

In terms of sound quality I find lots of other random factors seem to make a difference - like if you mistakenly buy a reissue that's really a wav of a cd pressed to vinyl