Cha Cha and Mambo tracks on Swapatorium

There are a couple of great Cha Cha and Mambo songs available at Swapatorium today.

It's four tracks by two cuban singers - Celia Cruz and Celio Gonzalez. I think I found it at the flea market at Brick Lane in London's East End back in the 80's. I was immediately drawn to the wonderful kitsch photo on the sleeve. The vinyl itself is rather badly warped and only the two inner tracks on each side will play properly. Thankfully they are both really excellent examples of Cha Cha and Mambo and well worth the 50p or whatever it was I paid for it.

Link

Reader comment: Doran says:

Regarding the warped Cha Cha and Mambo record. Here are a couple of techniques I've used when dealing with warped vinyl. I've used all these with varying degrees of success. In all cases I've done it so I could get one good copy, which I would use in the future (ie. I didn't use these techniques to play the vinyl every time). Also note, I probably wouldn't recommend these techniques with a really expensive turntable and stylus, though they never messed up mine.

1. Try weighting down the stylus with one or two pennies. Or perhaps a nickel (which weighs about 5 grams).

2. Place the vinyl onto a hard surface (eg. table top), between two sheets of clean paper (not the sleeve, since it sometimes has stickyness), and then place a heavy, flat weight on top for 15 minutes or so (I'd use an unabridged dictionary). While the vinyl usually has enough physical memory that it'll ultimately re-warp, it's possible to flatten things out long enough to record one copy.

3. Drizzle a bunch of distilled water all over the surface of the vinyl (avoiding the label). While I usually used this to reduce pops and clicks from scratches, the added dampening from the water would sometimes be enough to hold the needle in the groove on warped records.

4. Lastly, play it at a lower speed, so the needle doesn't jump, then process the recording to shorten the time and raise the pitch. While I did this a couple of times, it was back in the early 80's before I had a digital processor, so restoring the sound in the end wasn't so easy, though I could get close.