UK 7"s and Capitol / Warner Bros. US 7"s : How Did

[cymbalism]

crazy question but

1) how do UK 7" pressings get the label logos, text and credits pushed into the center for the labels and the standard copyright info embossed out on the inner trail of wax?

and

2) in the 70s both Capitol and Warner Bros. 7"s amongst a few other labels, had this crazy ridged center right before the label, what caused this and how did they do it?

chew on that one and spit it back out if you would oh knowledgeable ones

[cymbalism]

oh, one more too

is the real hard and easily crackable material they used to press 7"s in the late 70s thru the 80s here in the US made of the same material that nice pressed records are? i doubted it but i figured i'd ask anyways. in the light it sometimes had a reddish tint to it.

[Steve E.]

oh, one more too

is the real hard and easily crackable material they used to press 7"s in the late 70s thru the 80s here in the US made of the same material that nice pressed records are? i doubted it but i figured i'd ask anyways. in the light it sometimes had a reddish tint to it.

I think the hard material you are talking about is styrene, and it is a very different animal than the nice vinyl. Someone please correct me on the details, but styrene records are made by an injection process. It is a lot cheaper to produce than vinyl stamping.

Styrene pressings feel and look different from vinyl. One obvious way to tell what you are looking at is the outer rim: If it looks roughly trimmed with a sharp or rounded edge, it's vinyl, and if it has a hard flat vertical edge, it's styrene. A lot of styrene records were made at a plant called "Monarch" and have an "M" stamped in the runout area. (there may be non-styrene Monarch records, too....I'm not sure.

Styrene records have a nasty tendency to get "recut" by nice eliptical playback styluses, especially in the first few grooves, causing a horrible loud white-noise hiss. They should be played by conical styluses.

Most styrene records are 7" singles, but I think you can find LPs too, especially in the early 1960's.

See Steve Hoffman forum, "Are all U.S. 60's/70's 45's made of styrene?" http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/archive/index.php/t-61290.html

[cymbalism]

thanks steve

what about the serrated marking before the label on the capitol / warner pressings? the link you posted mentioned there are 360 of them on a record but no other mention about it.

i wonder if you can cut styrene, hrmm

[mossboss]

Styrene records where cheap and nasty Emi also produce them as well besides a lot of plants that wanted a price advantage
The questions raised than!
The centre markings where placed on the lacquer in one of two ways
There was a rubber stamp made with whatever on it
Name of band credits serrations etc,
This stamp was pressed against the lacquer leaving a positive image
It was heated enough so as to melt the lacquer leaving a positive impression on it
Of course just like the cut it was then made into a pressing plate
The other method was to use a small pantograph to engrave on the lacquer, the second method was not so common
On Styrene records:
Besides the lower cost of material GP styrene as against PVC there was a a real advantage in regards to stampers
A normal processed record on pvc would wear out a stamper at around 1000 pressings whereby injection moulded would see a stamper up tp 100K pressings with no damage or deterioration
After attempts so as to improve the quality of them they all gave up but not before a lot of them where given away like flexis or used for promotion of new releases or advertising purposes until the whole experiment went to the historical dustbin
An easy way to tell is by giving them a lite tap with a pen If they "ring" they would most likely be Styrene if a dead muffled sound is emitted than it is most likely PVC

[blacknwhite]

Mossy, thanks for the response about the embossed labels, wondered about that too...



Cymbalism, I read somewhere that the purpose of those hatch-marks on the perimeter of the label was to prevent the records from slipping against one another when played on drop-stack changers. It was big in Europe but never really seemed to catch on in the US, a few labels here used it as you mentioned but only a short time. Of course, I never saw a drop-stack changer with a pickup heavy enough to make non-ridged 45's slip...

Steve, interesting Hoffman link on styrene.

From an earlier anti-styrene rant I posted here, with pics:



Vinyl on left, styrene on right - recognizable by a different "look", and lightweight, rigid, brittle "feel". Also, there's a sharp-edged drop-off, rather than a slope, at the label edge. Styrene records can't get the labels "pressed into" the record as with normal vinyl records, so the labels are glued on after injection-molding.



Vinyl on left, styrene on right - since styrene is so much more brittle, the disc had to be made much thicker, all the way out to its squared-off edge; still, they cracked more easily.



Typical shoddily-glued-on label of styrene records: labels often lifted / ripped.


- Bob

[mossboss]

Serrations where there for the vertical playing Juke boxes which gripped the record or pushed it against the platter on a rotating hub with the tone arm held against the record by a spring pushing the arm
They did had a tendency to allow the record to slip if the rubbers on the hub where worn a bit
Serrations fixed the problem
Also the Garard auto 10 odd record stacker was fairly harsh on records early days
The flocked ones certainly let the records slip on one another after a few where played
Later models where much better since they used a rubber mat
Another factor was the paper label that was glued on the styrene records
It was slippery A lot of styrene records where molded without labels so as to avoid the issue
No label records where mainly sold to juke box operators by the thousands
You'll never or its a very rare sight to see serrations on an album
Cheers

[Aussie0zborn]

The embossed label on styrene injection moulded records was made by a lithographic plate at the matrix stage - it was not applied to the lacquer disc. I saw these records being made at EMI Hayes back in the day - the record comes out of the mould and is moved in between two paint rollers that apply paint to the label.

The serated edges along the edge of label was also to stop records slipping on multi-stack turntables. You could stack up to six or so 7" singles on your automatic changer record player. As soon as the record finished, the tonearm would move out of the way, the next record would drop onto the the record already on the turntable, then the tomerarm moved in to play the disc.

The serration wasn't necessary for 12" discs as the weight of the disc prevented it from slipping when a number of records were stacked.

I believe the serrated edge was an RCA invention. You might also notice RCA double albums from back-in-the-day were in this format:

Disc One : Side 1 and Side 4
Disc Two : Side 2 and Side 3

This was for automatic stacker record players. You could stack both discs on the spindle and it would automatically play Side 1 followed by Side 2. You then flip both discs over to automatically play Sides 3 and 4.

The serrated edges were pressed into each and every stamper.

Styrene records suck. They wear out real fast. Some American plants used styrene for 12" pressings. There have been some very detailed discussions about styrene records over at The Record Collectors Guild : http://www.recordcollectorsguild.org