Updated July 16, 2018, 6:45am
For a while now, my friend DJ Adub has sworn that he prefers black serato control vinyl because they are heavier over any of the colored. I’ve never really believed it. I also feel there are plenty of factors that contribute to how records feel in regards to weight, stickiness, performance etc. I’ve been using the same solid blue records pretty much exclusively since I got them back in early 2013.
Yesterday someone asked a question in a facebook group regarding the clearness of the Clear Serato Vinyl. Since I had the 10″ clears, the 12″ clears, and the USA Clears I posted up images of all three to show the regular clears are more crystal clear and the USA’s are more cloudy. The 10″s also seem to be more crystal clear. Someone commented that they prefer the clears because they felt they were heavier. Abub chimed in about the blacks being heavier again, and next thing you know I’m weighing multiple sets of Control Vinyl that I own in order to get to the bottom of the debate of what control vinyl is heavier.
Using a digital scale that weighs to 1/10th of a gram, I got to weighing variety of the Control Vinyl I own. I still have more CVs to weigh so I may update this list The biggest surprise was the difference in weight that can occur between 2 records within a set. None of the records that I weighed were 180g vinyl. I weighed them each multiple times since I was so surprised by the discrepancies.
List of Control Vinyl Weighed for this post
Clear Blue
123.7g & 125.6g
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Solid Pink
121.2g & 127.7g
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Solid Yellow
122.0g & 127.7g
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Solid Brown
125.6g & 129.5g
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Solid blue
131.9g & 136.5
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Battle Ave 3 Pink
132.0g & 136.0g
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Glow in the dark
133.1g & 139.9g
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Solid blue with custom labels on top used regularly
129.0g & 139.0g
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Solid Black
134.1g & 134.6g
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Clear
148.1g & 145.1g
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USA Clear
185.4g & 193.5g
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So as you can see the black vinyl had the least difference between the set, the clears seem to be the heaviest, and all of them vary quite a bit. I’ll be adding to this post in the future when I decide to weigh more of my Control Vinyl but I think 11 is a good start to show the variance of the different weights. I do have a lot more of the transparent colored vinyl that would be good to represent here better too so stay tuned.
The Pinks and Blues were part of the “Offical” typo series when you could still get (mostly) solid colored Control Vinyl. I’ve been told by Serato Support that they cannot guarantee the transparency of their colored vinyl anymore and have not seen and real solid colors until the release of the Blue 7″ CVs but that story is for another post. The photos actually sort of show that they aren’t really 100% solid though but it is solid enough to not see your slipmats underneath your records which is my main issue personally with clear and transparent records.
“Offical” Typo Series Sleeves
Check out some of the previously released Serato Control Vinyl or buy some of your own from the current offering. And if anyone wants to gift me them pastel blues, feel free to send them my way. I’m so bummed I slept on those!
Update 1
I found a facebook Serato CV Group that has a list of all weights that I need to check against my weights and see if there are any further discrepancies.
