Building Vinyl collection from now? What do you think? (Classical/Jazz Music)

[orangejello]

Exactly.

Which is why I never buy classical LPs.

Nonsense. Not all classical music is big bombastic orchestral music. I think it depends on the type of classical music. String quartets can sound exquisite as can small chamber pieces. Thre is so much stuff on Das Alte Werke - I collected everything I could find from Franz Brueggen (flute, recorder) Gustav Leonhardt (cembalo and small organ as well as the Leonhardt Consort which have definitive IMO recordings of the Brandenburg Concertos that are scaled properly) Anner Blysma (cello) Lucy van Dael (violin) to name a few. I have mono recordings of the Budapest Quartet doing Beethoven which were released in Japan in the eighties on Sony that are the equivalent of Japanese Blue Note reissues. I had a pretty comprehensive library of this sort of stuff that ran to about 4000 laps. I paired it down to 2000 a couple of years ago. Much of it was bought in the eighties when there were fire sales on LPS as CDs took over. I got to sample so much of the classical vinyl catalogue that I got to know what was what. Much harder to do now, but there is some truly fabulous classical stuff on vinyl if you know what to look for.

edit: Forgot to mention that I bought almost the entire 1950s Westminster mono collection absolutely mint - most never played for $4 each - first pressings. They had been stored in leatherrette cases and looked exactly as they did in 1952. Resold the best of them to Parnassus Records for an average of $150 each (He subsequently resold them in the Japanese market for upwards of $500 on average) Leopoldo Wlach, Barylii Quartet etc. Found the collection in a fleabag record store. These are absolutely fabulous recording and singular performances. I think someone has reissued them on CD.

 

[Helicopter]

Agree there is gobs of classical vintage stuff dirt cheap, and gobs or re-pressed Jazz at good prices. There is not a ton of classical being pressed today, and vintage jazz can be expensive.

Vintage jazz depends a bit though. Big band, Sinatra, and other stuff that was very popular in the 60s is often dirt cheap, but a lot if great jazz got popular later on, and that can be expensive. The old recordings will be more expensive for a black artists because of how music tastes and extra income for records were more segregated, and because many really innovative and important artists were black.