Review: Pro-Ject Flatten It Vinyl LP Flattener

Collect enough vinyl and you’re guaranteed to find yourself with a couple of warped albums that won’t play properly. Maybe you foolishly left them in direct sun, maybe you didn’t store them flat, or possibly you found a wobbly old rarity at a bargain price and figured you could restore it and beat Discogs at its own game.

Photograph: Chris Haslam

It's hard enough to set up a turntable or pick the right player, but fixing a warped record without specialized tooling (and the associated knowledge to go with it) has long been too much of a pain to be worth it for most.

Turntable stalwarts Pro-Ject is aiming to fix that. It has just launched preorders for the Flatten It, its first dedicated vinyl flattening machine. It’s a ruggedly handsome lump of aluminum, with two 12-inch hot plates that heat and press your precious long players back into shape. Can it save your worst records? In my experience, it does pretty well.

Finally Flat

Photograph: Chris Haslam

There's nothing especially fancy here, just a highly accurate thermostat offering the ideal warmth to fix your shellacs. Once heated for around an hour, it will maintain a temperature of 136.4 degree Fahrenheit (58 Celsius) and gently iron out any vinyl warping. It will fluctuate just two degrees from this, and once you’ve left for two hours, down to 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius), the record can be safely removed.

How long you press a record for will depend on the thickness of the vinyl. Chunky 180 gram pressings will take longer than the more flexible, and harder to warp, Dynaflex records. Before I put the Flatten It to work on my cherished-but-wobbly collection of warped ’90s white labels, I needed to test it on something a little less precious.

Photograph: Chris Haslam

A quick trip to a thrift store plus five minutes with a hair dryer, and Rod Stewart’s Greatest Hits was warped almost to the point of no return. Two hours in Flatten It, however, and it’s as good as nearly-new, with no discernible damage to the grooves.

Putting the records in and setting the clock is a simple if time-consuming process, but it works brilliantly. I’ve been able to resurrect a few old favorites that haven’t played properly since 1993, and for that I owe Pro-Ject a debt of thanks.

A Worthy Competitor

Photograph: Chris Haslam

At $1,000 MSRP, you’re going to need to be a wealthy and fastidious collector or a record store or dealer to make it worth your while. For most of us, we'll want to wait until a well-heeled friend or local store has shelled out for one.

If you stumble across Ringo’s spare but warped copy of The White Album, it’ll be a wise investment. Most casual collectors will find it more useful for restoring nostalgic favorites than valuable gems.

Pro-Ject’s Flatten It isn’t the only solution. Brave souls who don't want to buy vinyl accessories have been putting their warped records under heavy flat surfaces for years, and even in the oven. Don’t do that. There are other options: Japanese audio brand Orb has the DF-01iA+, which costs around $1,500, while Vinyl Flat offers a cheaper solution featuring a simple record clamp and heated blanket for a total of $224, although I've not tested either yet. For now, the Flatten It remains the best solution I've tried. It works a treat.