A little bit about me;

Besides working in the recording industry for several years during my youth as a tape operator/engineer, I've been an avid collector of vinyl record LP’s for well over 40 years now. I have somewhere in the range of 30,000 LP's (give or take, as I haven't done an accurate count since the mid 1990's sometime), 6,000 CD’s, and several thousand albums stored within external hard drives. When/where do you draw the line between passion, obsession and insanity?  I'm constantly buying vinyl either from one of the many proprietors here where I live, or from the dozens of online suppliers that I use. I usually have no less than one box of records, containing as many as 20 LP's arriving at my door every week. 

I recently purchased a collection containing around 800 LP's from an estate sale in Phoenix…mostly obscure psych/hard rock and progressive rock, though my tastes are about as close to all encompassing as one could possibly get I suppose, as I listen to pretty much everything, though my true passion lays with Rock n Roll. In particular, that of the late 60’s, 70’s through to the early 80’s. Encompassing many genres…Psychedelic, Hard Rock, Blues Rock, Progressive Rock, Metal, Jazz Fusion, Krautrock, Electronic/Experimental, Punk Rock, New Wave, etc.

 
As a general rule of thumb, I usually won’t purchase an album unless it is in near mint/mint minus condition...though there are exceptions to this rule, depending on the rarity of the item in question, or how badly I want it. 

My records are stored in ten shelving units identical to this:http://tinyurl.com/45l69 That's roughly 22,000 LP's. The rest of my vinyl is stored in crates, until I get off my lazy butt and make another trip to Ikea! Lol. Those units are great, and cost around $200.00. 
 
Collecting slabs of plastic has been a passion for as long as I can remember, and for many years I was considered a “vinyl snob” by my friends. I’ve since learned to accept some digital formats, but mainly as a matter of convenience I suppose. 

About 10 years ago, I went out and bought a record cleaning machine. It's been the most sensible investment I've ever made when it comes to my record collecting. Sometimes you'll have a record that looks perfect, not a mark on it...but when you play sounds horrid. Well, that can be from a number of things...everything from the way the album was stored (controlled environment, or not, hardened mold etc), to release wax from when it was pressed, which hardens and embeds itself into the grooves. Or it could even be from those silly record cleaning products many people used back in the 70's. That stuff was a joke, and all it did was spread itself all over, as there was no way to extract that crap. With these new cleaning machines (which have actually been around for 20 years or so), everything is extracted by a very powerful vacuum. I bought a second machine about a year ago. Now a record won’t go near my table without proper cleaning first. 
These are the two machines that I own... 
 
VPI HW-27 Typhoon Record Cleaner: 
http://store.acousticsounds.com/browse_d... 
Nitty Gritty Mini Pro...this baby cleans both sides at once! 
http://www.nittygrittyinc.com/minipro.ht... 
 
They’re a bit pricey, but if you're a serious collector such as myself, they are a necessary tool, and highly recommended.

**** A Note From Doc ****

I have had the pleasure of knowing Jingles for a few years now. We bumped into each other in the Yahoo Answers section when I discovered that he was asking trivia questions about one of my passions...obscure bands. It was a real pleasure for me since he wasn't asking real simple questions...he was asking ~*~*~* MINDBENDERS*~*~*~  that made me rack my brains trying to remember the answers!!! LOL!!!

          Needless to say, we developed a fast friendship and swapped HARD questions. I am proud to say that I have learned a LOT from my friendship and association with Jingles and he was one of the first people that I asked to be a specialist on the site.

It's real simple....if I had a smarter twin brother, born to a different mother, that ~KNOWS~ a whole lot more than the average bear about the history of rock and band minutiae...Jingles is the guy I would point at and say "He ain't heavy...he's my brother...but he'll know the answer!"