Vinyl Asylum

Posted by Damián (A) on July 15, 2017 at 10:49:15

Hi all,

As the title says things have been getting.. HOT recently around here (Spain - some regions hit 45ºC/113ºFª! Locally we're at 40ºC/104ºF.)

I have recently moved to a small-ish flat which (I'm finding out now) gets quite hot. There is A/C and I do use it, but I don't leave it on when I'm not home (too worried about leaks, malfunctions, etc.) Which sadly is a lot of the time.

I have quite a few 45's by now (somewhere in the mid 100's), most of them American pressings from the '60s (so many of them are the dreaded 'styrene' variety), and quite a few of them are rare and valuable. And I'm starting to really worry about the effect that this relentless heat could have on them.

To give you an idea of how hot it gets inside, some surfaces in the house (faux-granite counter, even some parts of the floor) feel very slightly warm in a completely "wrong" way.

I store the 45's in open-top cardboard boxes, vertically, none of which is packed tight (so I can flip through the records). So they're kinda leaning against the ones in the back of the box.

I have noticed that the outer plastic sleeves on many of them already feel 'floppier' and slightly tacky to the touch, which is really freaking me out. I pulled out some of the more valuable ones and checked them for warpage and didn't notice anything out of the ordinary so far (many of them have a small degree of warpage from the cheap pressing plants they came from in the first place..)

I also have some LP's but those are more 'everyday' stuff and I can probably replace most of them without too much difficulty. It's the 45 RPM singles that worry me the most.

The LPs are sitting vertically in IKEA shelves, some packed more tightly than others (but none overly tight - most of them lean one way or the other, I try to 'split' the packs so half of them lean against one side, half against the other - very OCD.)

SO.. to get to the point. How worried should I *really* be here? Should I take any special measures?

I've even thought about putting the expensive ones in a small box inside a plastic bag with one of those silica gel baggies to absorb moisture and into the fridge.. but it seems a bit out there. Alternately I could ask someone to keep them for me for a while, but I like to play them!

I'd really appreciate any tips, comments, experiences etc. from those of you living in hot places so I can either take action in some way or just chill.. 'cause I'm starting to really stress out over this. As you can probably tell!

Thank you!