What? Vylümi Shine Pro safely backlights colored vinyl records allowing you to display them like works of art.
How much? Vylumi Shine costs $60 and the Shine Pro is $120 plus shipping.
Conclusion? It won’t fit in a Christmas stocking but get it anyway.
Website? https://vylumi.com/collections/all
Black Is Beautiful
Looking for that elusive gift for the record collector who has everything? Before we get into the details of this device that illuminates colored vinyl, a little background is in order.
Records are made with PVC pellets (which are naturally slightly milky-white in color) that have been mixed with black carbon which is gives them their shiny black color. The black carbon also fills in imperfections and adds strength and rigidity which makes the record last longer. This is important because, unlike a CD, cassette tape, or digital music file, a record album degrades each time you play it.
Another thing basic black has going for it is that the quality of black vinyl records tends to be high because it’s the industry standard…they’ve been producing them that way since the advent of the vinyl record. As a result, the quality of black records is remarkably consistent. The black color also makes it easier to spot imperfections during quality control inspections.
Color Me Impressed
Colored vinyl, on the other hand, uses PVC pellets mixed with dyes. In addition to records made using a single, non-black color, there are variations on the colored vinyl theme like multicolored, split color, smoked, marbled, and splattered. Yes, I’m talking about records, not meat or cheese. By the way, don’t confuse any of these variants with picture discs which are a whole other story and tend not to sound as good or last as long as colored or black vinyl.
A Little History
Colored vinyl records didn’t start with the vinyl LP. Some 78 RPM titles dating back to 1917 were colored, starting with a Vocalion Records release that was a reddish-rust colored shellac. Perhaps not the most appealing color choice, but it served its purpose of making their records stand out. I believe the first prolific use of colored vinyl by a major label was RCA Victor’s introduction of the 45 RPM single in 1949. To give the new format a little extra excitement, each genre had its own color. For example, country music used green-colored vinyl, classical used red, children’s recordings used yellow, while pop music stuck with basic black.
The Sound of Color
There’s a school of thought that says not all colored vinyl is created equal. That is to say, certain record colors may not sound as good as others upon playback, or as good as your standard carbon black record. It’s strange to think that color could impact sound, but it can. In fact, one could argue the more colors present in the vinyl, the worse the sound might be because of all of the foreign ingredients. There are even glow-in-the-dark records, though I don’t know anyone who plays their records in total darkness. I’ve read these are noisier than their black and colored brethren, but I can’t personally attest to that since I don’t own any. It would follow, then, that a transparent clear record would sound better than a colored vinyl record (except for black).
Do You Hear What I Hear?
If I played a colored vinyl record for you, immediately followed by the identical recording pressed on black vinyl, would you hear any difference? I suspect most people wouldn’t, but if there was an overt difference, it could just as well be attributed to the manufacturing process rather than the color of the vinyl. If the record plant doesn’t have much experience pressing colored vinyl, that won’t help either. Regardless, most record enthusiasts don’t buy colored vinyl records because they think they sound superior. They buy them for their unique appearance and collectibility, especially since many colored vinyl titles are produced in limited batches.
Price Check
Speaking of limited quantities, that, along with the cost of the dyed pellets, tend to make colored vinyl titles more expensive. So, you’re paying more for a record that technically probably won’t have the same longevity as less expensive black vinyl and possibly not as good sound quality. Mind you, there are plenty of black vinyl titles that can be quite pricey in their own right.
In Living Color
If you want to add some colored vinyl to your collection you don’t need to search very hard. Some record labels specialize in colored vinyl like Third Man Records, Real Gone Music, Enjoy The Ride Records, Sundazed Music, Wax Mage, and WaxWork Records. Major retailers like Barnes & Noble, Urban Outfitters, and Newbury Comics sell colored vinyl, some of which are exclusive to them. Even record clubs like Vinyl Me Please and Vinyl Moon release titles on colored vinyl. Yes, Virginia, there are record clubs.
If you want to go off the deep end, you’ll find records that go way beyond colors. Romanus Records, for example, has pressed records with different kinds of material sandwiched between the 2 sides including kitty litter, razor blades, sand, gunpowder, colored liquid, LEDs, and even pieces of Doritos chips! I wonder how some of those records would look with colored lights behind them. I was delaying this article to be able to display my “snow globe variant” Scrooged LP soundtrack I ordered more than 6 months ago. It contains a clear liquid with sparkles inside. I decided to go forward with my article rather than continue to wait. Such special releases require more time since they’re much more complicated to produce.
The Vinyl Verdict
You’ve heard the saying, “Once you go black, you never go back.” Somehow, I don’t think that phrase was about records, but it might be equally applicable. The absence of black carbon likely means colored vinyl records won’t have the same strength and longevity as their black counterparts and may not sound as good. That said, unless they’re abused, most colored vinyl records should last long enough and sound good enough for the average record enthusiast. If sound quality is of the utmost importance, you’re probably better off playing it safe with good old, boring black vinyl. On the other hand, if seeing colors and patterns spin on your turntable puts a smile on your face and you’re enthralled by the art, go for it. After all, records have the potential of being the most visual of all music storage formats.
Show Off
Colored vinyl is meant to be seen and heard. If you’ve got an album you especially love the color of, why hide it inside a cardboard jacket? Sure, you could frame it, but that’s not very exciting, and it prevents you from being able to easily play it. What if there was a product that allowed you to safely display your colored vinyl, backwash them in light, and easily access them for playback? Well, there is.
Let There Be Light
Vylumi Shine and the Shine Pro do just that. Andrew Boudreau came up with the idea and had his final design completed in 6 months. He hand-assembles each one out of his home in Atlanta, Georgia and sells them on his recently revamped website and on Etsy. The two models backlight a record to make its color(s) pop. Simply place the record over the center nub and turn the light on. Voila! Instant glowing artwork. The record “floats” so you don’t have to worry about it making contact with the surface and getting scratched. And the LED that illuminates the record never gets hot enough to warp the record, so no worries there. The result is beautifully mesmerizing.
I got in touch with Boudreau to ask him some questions about his unique invention:
Peter: What gave you the idea for Vylumi Shine?
Andrew: It all started in late 2021 when I picked up my first picture disk. I was searching online for ways to display it since it’s widely known the audio quality on all of them are notoriously bad and I couldn’t find anything that didn’t have a massive picture frame as part of the display. I knew a good friend of mine had a 3D printer so I ran him through an idea of what I now call the ‘Nub.” It’s a very minimalist design and is simply a rod the size of the record spindle that angles up to safely keep the record in place and that’s attached to a base plate. I was using a simple command strip to test hanging a few on the wall and while I was thumbing through my collection I thought: “I wonder what else would look good hanging on the wall,” so I grabbed a copy of Cowboy Bebop that I knew had a nice colored marble to it and hung that on the wall to see how it looked. It looked okay, but a bit lifeless, so on a whim I brought it over to an outside window to get some light on it and it came to life! That’s when the light bulb(s) went off (dad joke, apologies). It just dawned on me that I had so many of these color variants in my collection, and they were just spending their lives tucked away in their sleeves on the shelf. So, I built my first prototype out of cardboard, a battery powered LED light string, and the nub and just started putting records on it to see how they looked. It was very basic, but the idea worked. 4 prototypes later I had a design I was really proud of and started showing people in February of 2022. Everyone I showed wanted one for themselves so I started making a few. I opened the Etsy store in March of 2022 and my own website in June. So far, I’m at 300 units sold worldwide and I can’t explain how proud and fulfilling it is to see my customers showing off their collections on social media.
Peter: You source the parts and assemble the units by hand in your spare time?
Andrew: The electronics I source through two separate companies and I’m trying to narrow that down to one moving forward. I do that for a few reasons; First, it allows me to be more nimble when new technologies emerge. Secondly, after putting in an inquiry with a product design company, I learned that it would take about $200,000 just to get custom electronics and molds designed and the same, if not more, to actually get them produced. I’m very proud that the structural materials are all made here in Georgia. Very early on I had run this idea by my neighbor, as he likes to tinker and is generally handy. I came to him with the problem of properly diffusing the light to see if he might have any ideas. He operates a company that specializes in large scale vinyl wraps and signage projects for conventions and airports, so I thought he might have some ideas and I recalled that he had a few CNC machines that weren’t getting a lot of use because Covid had really hit their business pretty hard. I drew some designs on some printer paper and he cut those out on the CNC machines, and to this day his company cuts all of the structural parts. As mentioned above, a friend of mine makes the nub on this 3D printer and I’m able to pay him a fair price per batch he prints. But to the other part of your question, after I get my daughter to bed and my wife settles into a book, I head to the basement and assemble these by hand still. I’ve had to make a few tools to speed up assembly and help to standardize the sizes of a few components, but I can’t explain how much I love doing this!
Peter: Does it work with picture discs?
Andrew: You can certainly display a picture disk on a Vylümi, but sadly, picture disks are all opaque and won’t let any light through.
Peter: You have a Patent pending?
Andrew: I do! I have both Trademarks and Patents pending for this as of this last summer.
Peter: Do you own a lot of colored vinyl or records in general? What’s your favorite-colored vinyl title?
Andrew: I’ve been trying to catalogue my collection and I think I have about 1,000 in my collection right now. I’ve been building a vinyl collection since 2008 when I invested in my first Hi-fi setup and started to get into finding color variants 4-5 years ago. Color variants are probably 10% of my collection and I didn’t get into collecting the more boutique pressings from Wax Mage and others until I came up with this idea and found them through my research. My favorite though? That’s like picking your favorite child! My recent favorite is a pressing from Glory or Death Records by Great Electric Quest (which is actually his band). It’s a beautiful party monster and really transforms with the Vylümi to look like a sheet of elegant stained glass…It also glows in the dark as a bonus!
Peter: What’s the rarest or most expensive record you own?
Andrew: This little invention has introduced me to a lot of amazing people in the industry. Pretty early on I contacted the folks at Wax Mage/Gotta Groove, Wax Vessel, SlyVinyl, Heathen HandMade Records, Romanus Records, and Plastikat Deviations to get their feedback on my idea and early products since they make the hand-crafted art my audience is collecting. Recently, Matt Ortt at Plastikat surprised me with one of his liquid-filled records that is a complete one-off. It was made for the owner of Glory or Death Records and is the first liquid filled that has two separate chambers of liquid in it. A portion of that liquid is black, so when it’s on the turn-table spinning, it spreads out pretty evenly with centrifugal force that it just isn’t awesome eye candy like the rest of his stuff. He put it on his Vylümi and it just transformed. He dropped me a note that said this album looks best when lit up, and we (he and Buddy from Glory or Death Records) thought you should be the rightful owner of it. That about made me cry, I am so honored to have it and it is by far the most-rare album I own.
Peter: What brand and model turntable(s) do you use?
Andrew: For my 40th [Birthday] I was able to purchase a Rega P6 and have a Dynavector 10×5 with a ruby cantilever and optimized contour nude contact line diamond tip from Sound-Smith after bending the original cantilever in a cleaning accident 3 months into owning it. That one hurt the soul, but I can’t speak highly enough of the crew at Sound-Smith and their craftsmanship they put into repairs and upgrades.
Peter: What’s your professional background?
Andrew: My day job is and has always been in technology sales. I get to be a nerd all day long and I have to constantly learn about what’s new in the market, and my customers are always bringing me difficult problems to solve. It’s a pretty demanding, high stress job, so sitting down to spin a record at night has always been my way to unwind. I’m certainly not an engineer or someone who is crafty/handy, so the fact I was able to come this far with an idea is a miracle unto itself.
Peter: What kind of music do you usually listen to?
Andrew: My tastes are certainly firmly on the rock side of the spectrum. I can be found listening to your typical classic rock albums, but spend most of my time reliving my high-school days with grunge/Alt music from the 90s.
Peter: Anything else to add about the Vylumi Shine/Pro?
Andrew: I would just like to thank everyone for their kindness and support (!), and thank you Peter for taking the time to talk with me. This has been an unintended and amazing journey. I never thought this idea would take off in the way that it has and all of my customers have been so patient and understanding of the fact that I’m a one-man shop doing this in my spare time. The vinyl community has been very generous to me over the years and I’m so thankful I can provide a little something back. Thank you all for the support and I can’t wait to see where this journey goes!
Picture This
I found splattered vinyl to look the most impressive with Shine Pro. Colored vinyl that’s all one color looked like a giant-colored spotlight. As it turned out, I only had one splatter-colored record in my small LP collection. Its base color was transparent which meant I could make it whatever color I wanted with the Vylumi Shine Pro’s light, which was very cool. You can see more impressive Shine Pro-worthy pictures on Boudreau’s website, Instagram, tiktok, Etsy, and Facebook (links provided at the end of this article).
Size Matters
If you happen to have a few colored 45 RPM singles or 10″ records in your collection, Boudreau has you covered. For $20 you can get a set of adapters that fit both of those sizes, though the adapters can only be used in conjunction with the “dust cover” which is an additional $30.
Ask The Manager
As a Product Manager, part of my job involves finding problems with a product before it goes into production and coming up with ways to improve it. In the case of the Vylumi Shine Pro, I have a couple of suggestions for improvements and enhancements.
To start with, being able to anchor the base or give it some weight would be great, as the base is very light weight since it’s just a thin, empty plastic case with LEDs. If you use the wired remote instead of the app as I did, you must be very careful not to accidentally yank the base.
Getting my record off of the center nub was rather difficult. I had to pull the record to the point of bending the sides of the LP. Due to the nub being a black or dark brown color, I didn’t notice until later that it’s actually positioned at an upward angle instead of straight so the record doesn’t fall off easily. Had I known to pull upward instead of straight, it would have been a bit easier to remove the LPs. Still, Boudreau has since modified the nub in production to make it a slightly smaller diameter. I’d also suggest putting a radius on the nub. No sharp edges in close proximity to records!
It would be nice if at least the Pro model could be wall mounted. Boudreau told me one can easily glue a saw tooth hanger on the back but the problem is the dangling wires from the combined wired remote control/power supply. His first-generation models were battery powered and could thus be wall mounted. I assume a built-in Li-Ion battery rechargeable version would be too expensive to make.
What I would really like to see the Pro do is what records are supposed to do- spin. Seeing colored vinyl come alive through light is amazing, but having the record actually rotate (not necessarily at 33 1/3) would be very cool and more engaging, especially if the record was liquid-filled. Without a doubt, this would push the cost higher, perhaps to the point of turning most buyers off. If you’re tempted to manually spin your record on this device, Boudreau warns users against this or else the 3D-printed nub will eventually become sawed off.
Don’t Try This At Home
The Shine Lite sells for $60 while the Pro goes for twice that plus shipping (the Pro is on sale as of this writing). Frankly, both models look remarkably simple. Being the cheap and creative guy I am, I tried to think of a less expensive way to accomplish the same thing, which is also part of a Product Manager’s responsibilities. Since I was a kid, I’ve had a bit of MacGyver in me…spontaneously creating things out of duct tape and tampons, although nothing explosive. I remember one Halloween I secured rope from the kitchen window of our second-floor apartment down to a chain link fence adjacent to the sidewalk in front of our house. I cut a small hole in the top of a white pillow case, slipped the top of a metal coat hanger through the hole, and drew two eyes and a mouth with a black maker to make it look like a ghost. I tied a second rope onto the hook of the coat hanger in order to slide it up and down the main rope. As a final touch to my crowning achievement, I hung a flashlight from the coat hanger inside the pillow case to illuminate my ghost, hung it on the rope, and slid it up and down as the trick or treaters made their way in and out of our apartment house. I was quite proud of my creation and the costumed, candy-hungry visitors appeared equally impressed. A few years ago, I saw a very similar contraption in a catalog, albeit much more refined. That guy probably owns his own island now. But as usual, I digress.
Returning to my MacGyver LP light, I took a cheap picture stand that was collecting dust in a drawer and placed one of my colored vinyl records on it. I then backlighted the record with a Remon 25-watt LED spotlight I bought two years ago on Amazon for $29 (which has since been discontinued) to light my vintage aluminum Christmas tree. The light included a remote control that allows the light’s brightness and colors to be adjusted similar to the Vylumi Pro’s remote, although it doesn’t have a built-in microphone to flash to the beat of music like the Pro can. My color contraption created a similar effect as the Pro, but the stand could be seen behind the record, it risked scratching the record, and the spotlight got hot enough to make me concerned about the record possibly warping. It also sent the light all over the place rather than containing it just to the record itself. The Lite and Pro each cost significantly more than my Frankenstein light, but they accomplish the task more effectively, safely, and elegantly.
If you don’t need the additional control the Vylumi Shine Pro provides, like thousands of color options, 100 dim levels, a remote, free app (by a 3rd party), a timer, the ability to group other Pros, and Siri/Alexa compatibility, you can save some dough and stick with the more basic Shine. Either model is a fun and safe way to display and share your beloved-colored vinyl. If you’re looking for a gift this holiday for the vinyl lover who has everything, this should do it.
I didn’t get my review sample for free and I don’t receive any commission if you buy either of these models, so if you enjoyed this article, please consider supporting RecommendedStations.com by becoming a Patreon supporter for just $1. As a thank you, you’ll received my Recommended Station and Hitchhiker Station every month in your in box and you’ll be helping to support articles like this.
Links: