"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
Richard Knoppow wrote:
Look for _Command Performance_ for an illustration of
how records were made c.1940. This had method continues to
this very day for vinyl records. 45's OTOH, were made by
injection molding.

Back in the seventies, if you wanted a 7" pressed you
could either get a
vinyl pressing (like an LP) or an injection-molded styrene
disk. For large
runs, the styrene pressings were considerably cheaper, so
the big labels
used them almost exclusively. But, the vinyl pressings
lasted a lot longer
and the distortion when they wore out wasn't quite as
horrible, so they
sometimes were used for DJ promo discs and small releases.

None of the styrene systems are still running as far as I
know, so if you
get a 7" pressing done today, it will be on standard
vinyl.

A very well thought out record system but
RCA just did not get the point that people wanted
continuous
records and didn't like record changers. The CBS Lp was a
makeshift. Too bad RCA was so hide-bound about a lot of
things.

Well, the thing is that at the time, the vast majority of
record sales
were singles. And really, this continued until the early
1970s for
pop music. A big discussion of the economics of singles
vs. LP records
can be found in Jim Eargle's original JAES article in the
forties.

The LP was a huge advantage for classical recordings and
it totally changed
the form of jazz to be able to make a cut longer than one
side of a 78. But
the 45 sure had a lot of popularity in the pop music world
for very long
because they were very cheap to make, and because the form
of pop music was
such that people wanted one song at a time.

The CD Single flopped mostly because it was very
expensive.... you could
get the full album for only a bit more than the single,
and so there wasn't
a whole lot of demand for the single. But now in the age
of digital downloads
we are seeing a real resurgence in singles sales.
--scott

Well, I am old enough to remember when Lp's came out.
They chased 78's out of the record stores in nothing flat.
The 45 is an interesting case. It was much better engineered
than the Lp. The speed was chosen to be optimum for for the
inner and outer groove diameter, which is not the case for a
12" Lp. RCA also designed a innovative changer mechanism for
it, using a one inch center hole that was much less prone to
wear than the 1/4" (approximately) hole in the Lp or 78s.
This also allowed the use of a simple dropping mechanism in
the changer. The groove area is depressed so that the record
is supported by the label area and a rim at the outside to
prevent groove damage from records sliding or rotating over
each other. I've forgotten the maximum time possible on a 45
but its considerable, probably around six minutes if not cut
too hot. The audio quality of early 45's were better than
early Lp's partly due to the higher groove velocity but also
because RCA chose a different groove shape and there were
some other differences.
Columbia probably developed the Lp from its use of
broadcast type transcriptions to make masters for records. I
am not sure of the date this started but I think it was
probably around 1938. The use of a 16", 33-1/3 disc allowed
more flexibility in the recording session than cutting
directly to a wax master. Columbia (whoever they are now)
has released many CD's transferred from these discs. In a
few cases I hear faults that I thought were in the 78's.
Many early RCA and Victor records have been re-released from
transfers made from the stored metal work. The quality is
quite astonishing, generally better than the Columbia
transcriptions. Perhaps they just aged better. Its
interesting to me that we can hear quality in many of these
early recordings that hasn't been heard since they were
recorded (on the monitor speakers) if even then.
Anyway, this is all pretty far from boat anchor stuff,
although the disc recording equipment certainly fulfilled
the requirements for being boat anchors!
BTW, I knew John Eargle quite well and saw him last
only a few days before he died.


--

--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles
WB6KBL