"Check this out," the Dalton resident said, showing a visitor a 45-rpm record by a band called "The Teddys."
"These guys are from Germany. This record is pretty rare. I haven't seen it anywhere else."
Lincoln, the drummer for the band Shut Up and Dance, was sitting on the floor in the back of White Knight Records in Great Barrington, poring through a stack of 45s about 2 feet high. Next to him was a box of 78-rpm records that he also perused.
"Oh, yeah," Lincoln said. "I love rock 'n' roll 78s. I love the sound. They spin faster, and the sound comes out more fidelic. The basses are deeper, and the sound is fuller."
"Fidelic" actually is a neo-term. What Lincoln meant was that the sound on 78-rpm records is more true to the recording.
Vinyl records, thought to be dead after the widespread introduction of compact discs in the 1980s, have made a mini-resurgence in the past decade. The rise mostly is in 7-inch singles, a favorite of fans of independent recordings. The British Phonograph Industry said sales of those singles worldwide in 2005 topped the 1 million
According to BPI, the surge partly is due to artists such as Beck, the Arctic Monkeys, the White Stripes and Elton John offering singles from their latest albums. Other artists, such as Bruce Springsteen, Rod Stewart and Bob Dylan, have, in the past five years, authorized a small percentage of their reissues — usually 50,000 copies or less — to be vinyl.
But for professional DJs, vinyl has never gone out of style. According to a recent Associated Press story, United Record Pressing in Nashville still presses about a quarter-million vinyl discs annually. Most of those discs are singles for DJs at dance clubs and radio stations who still use vinyl to mix, scratch and blend music. A smaller portion of the discs go to record stores.
Collectors such as Lincoln, and Sharon and Lee Palma of Great Barrington said they think the vinyl sound is still superior to CDs or downloads.
Vinyl records use analog technology, whereby a physical groove is etched into the record, duplicating the sound wave. CDs work by transforming the sound into digital information.
"The tonal quality of vinyl simply cannot be beaten," said John Conlin, the owner of Tune Street, a CD store in Great Barrington.
According to howstuffworks.com, digital reproduction in compact discs is not as complete as the analog reproduction in vinyl grooves. Specifically, sounds such as a drumbeat or a trumpet tone in CDs are slightly distorted because they change too quickly to be picked up by digital conversion. A vinyl groove mirrors the sound fed into it, and no conversion is required.
The downside of records is that specks of dust or damage is permanent and often can show up during quiet spots. CDs are more durable.
"It (vinyl) is just better," said Sharon Palma, who has an extensive record collection with her husband, Lee. "We grew up in the 1960s, and a lot of our records date back to then."
Then too, there is the "magic" of vinyl.
"A vinyl record is an artifact," said Hal March, the owner of Toonerville Trolley CDs and Records in Williamstown. "It's a work of art."
Ron White, the owner of White Knight Records, said a small percentage of his customers look not for the recording itself, but for a certain album cover, which they will frame.
"Some of the artwork on those old records is just beautiful," he said.
White, whose store houses several thousand vinyl discs — the largest retail collection in the county — began accepting records several years ago from people intending to throw them away.
"I just didn't want to see them go to the dump," White said. "It's a marginal part of my business."
White Knight and Toonerville Trolley are the principal vendors of vinyl in Berkshire County. The Berkshire Record Outlet in Lee also does a small business in classical and show-tune albums, according to owner Joseph Eckstein.