On Sunday, July 3, 2011 at 12:39:02 PM UTC-5, Chris K-Man wrote:

On Jun 23, 4:35 pm, klu...@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

So, these 45s you have... are they actually vinyl, or are they the normal styrene pressings?

The styrene sounds okay when it's new and clean, but one or two plays with a worn stylus and it's horrible.

A fineline stylus can help a lot playing back worn styrene.

Note that a lot of 45s were cut incredibly hot in order to make them loud on jukeboxes. Sometimes there are playback linearity issues, sometimes there were record linearity issues. A 50x microscope will tell you which. --scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

____________________
Anyone here own any "swingers"? . . .
Those in the know - know what I mean.
-CC

For a quick easy fix buy a mono stylus and cartridge for your phonograph to use when playing 45s - avoid using a stereo stylus cartridge when playing 45s.

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On 06/01/2023 20:32, k kazoosymbols wrote:

For a quick easy fix buy a mono stylus and cartridge for your phonograph to use when playing 45s - avoid using a stereo stylus cartridge when playing 45s.

That is one way to finally wreck them. Most of them after the late 1960s
were stereo and microgroove pressings, which a mono cartridge will make unusable quite quickly.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

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k kazoosymbols <kazoosymbols@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, July 3, 2011 at 12:39:02 PM UTC-5, Chris K-Man wrote:

On Jun 23, 4:35 pm, klu...@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

So, these 45s you have... are they actually vinyl, or are they the normal styrene pressings?

The styrene sounds okay when it's new and clean, but one or two plays with
a worn stylus and it's horrible.

A fineline stylus can help a lot playing back worn styrene.

Note that a lot of 45s were cut incredibly hot in order to make them loud on jukeboxes.

All the jukeboxes I have ever worked on had automatic volume control, so
a louder cut would sound the same as a quieter one (and an EP would
sound just as loud too).

Sometimes there are playback linearity issues, sometimes
there were record linearity issues. A 50x microscope will tell you which.

More likely to be physical overload of the cartridge or insufficient
headroom in the pre-amp.

--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

____________________
Anyone here own any "swingers"? . . .
Those in the know - know what I mean.

If you have a good transcription deck, just stack some sacrificial
records to get the disc above the centre pin, then you can centre the
grooves, regardless of the position of the centre hole. For refinement,
add some sort of optical indicator to the arm pivot, so the process
becomes less hit & miss.

-CC For a quick easy fix buy a mono stylus and cartridge for your

phonograph to use when playing 45s - avoid using a stereo stylus cartridge when playing 45s.

By all means parallel the channels of a stereo cartridge to get mono,
but don't use a mono cartridge with little vertical compliance or you
will damage the record. Even mono records can be damaged this way
because of the vertical stylus movement resulting from the pinch effect.

Have you considered that most of the 45s on the market nowadays will
have been played many times previously - often with something quite
brutal - so they will all be worn to hell?

--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk

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muzician21 wrote:
Hadn't played a 45 in a long time. It seemed to me they always

sounded

"overloaded", distorted, never as "clean" as an

LP.

Just got a 45 off Ebay - brand new condition. As I do with any

vinyl

before it gets played I hit it with vacuum irrigation using the

Disc

Doctor solution and brushes, distilled water rinse.

Yup, sounds distorted with a buzzy, grainy edge. My turntable is

an

SL1200 MK2 with an Audio Technica catridge in good condition.

While

not a $100k exotic setup it should be up to the task of playing

the

disc. Clean condition Direct To Disc albums sound great on it.

What's the story with 45's?

Does anybody have a good enough memory to understand if when 45s were
new they still had the difference in sound that you might be hearing
today?


This is a response to the post seen at: http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=181909909#181909909

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On 20/12/2023 00:19, MummyChunk wrote:

Does anybody have a good enough memory to understand if when 45s were
new they still had the difference in sound that you might be hearing
today?

This is a response to the post seen at: http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=181909909#181909909

They were often pressed on polystyrene, not vinyl, with the accomanying
surface noise problems and were usually played on decks with a heavy arm
using cartridges with limited compliance. As a result, they got damaged
on the first play, and "as new condition" on eBay as often as not just
means no visible scratches.

Many of them were also over modulated, and very few cartridges can
manage to play them cleanly. Think 128kbps MP3 as the best quality most
of us ever heard from them.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

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In article <RdqdndE1b96Rrh_4nZ2dnZfqn_idnZ2d@giganews.com>,
MummyChunk <mummycullen@gmail-dot-com.no-spam.invalid> wrote:

muzician21 wrote:
Hadn't played a 45 in a long time. It seemed to me they always

sounded

"overloaded", distorted, never as "clean" as an

LP.

Just got a 45 off Ebay - brand new condition. As I do with any

vinyl

before it gets played I hit it with vacuum irrigation using the

Disc

Doctor solution and brushes, distilled water rinse.

Yup, sounds distorted with a buzzy, grainy edge. My turntable is

an

SL1200 MK2 with an Audio Technica catridge in good condition.

While

not a $100k exotic setup it should be up to the task of playing

the

disc. Clean condition Direct To Disc albums sound great on it.

What's the story with 45's?

Does anybody have a good enough memory to understand if when 45s were
new they still had the difference in sound that you might be hearing
today?

Two comments:

First of all, 45s were often cut way too hot in order to make the sound
loud on jukeboxes. And often with some aggressive EQ to make them play
without skipping on jukeboxes. This is not conducive to good sound.

Secondly, 45s are usually injection-molded styrene instead of vinyl
pressings, because you can injection mold them a lot faster than you
can press vinyl. For high speed mass production, the process is a win,
and when the discs are new they sound fine. But as soon as they get any
wear on them, the mistracking is much more offensive-sounding than that
of worn vinyl.

You can try using a fineline or van den Hul stylus on worn discs, and
fiddle with the VTA to see if you can find a position where the
distortion is reduced.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:

[...]

First of all, 45s were often cut way too hot in order to make the sound
loud on jukeboxes.

They were very heavily modulated but they didn't sound louder on the
boxes because most juke boxes (certainly all the ones I have worked on)
had automatic volume control, so that E.P.s would play at the same
volume as standard 45s.

Secondly, 45s are usually injection-molded styrene instead of vinyl pressings,

They were vinyl pressings for many years, only the later ones were
injection moulded.


--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk

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Liz Tuddenham <liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid> wrote:

They were vinyl pressings for many years, only the later ones were
injection moulded.

Don't know about the UK, but in the US, Bestway started doing styrene in
1950 for children's 78s but as soon as RCA came out with the 45 they started licensing the patents out. There is a 1954 Billboard article about the
process saying that even Columbia had adopted it by then.

I keep meaning to write this stuff up for one of the audio magazines. I
had no idea that the adoption in the UK was delayed. In the US, I never
saw any vinyl 45s until the late eighties when they were a big thing for college radio bands.

You have any information on styrene in the UK? Any info would be appreciated. --scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:

Liz Tuddenham <liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid> wrote:

They were vinyl pressings for many years, only the later ones were >injection moulded.

Don't know about the UK, but in the US, Bestway started doing styrene in
1950 for children's 78s but as soon as RCA came out with the 45 they started licensing the patents out. There is a 1954 Billboard article about the process saying that even Columbia had adopted it by then.

I keep meaning to write this stuff up for one of the audio magazines. I
had no idea that the adoption in the UK was delayed. In the US, I never
saw any vinyl 45s until the late eighties when they were a big thing for college radio bands.

You have any information on styrene in the UK? Any info would be appreciated.

I have a collection of 45s up to the 1980s and they didn't appear to be styrene. I'll have a closer look tomorrow and see if I can work out
when the changeover occurred.

I can remember seeing the occasional transparent or coloured 45s much
earlier, but they were always aimed at children

--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk

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