5 Reasons Why 45's are the Best (in my opinion)

I can see why someone without a vinyl set-up may not want to spend money to get one. But that doesn't explain the constant perceived superiority of one format over another that I see here all of the time. Even if digital is better than vinyl, I don't care.

 

So true. I have many styrene 45's, a lot of them going way back, that still sound beautiful today and it's not like I haven't played them often either. I still seek out 45's at used stores, record shows, etc. So much to love: different mixes, unique edits (another bone of contention on this site), non-LP B-sides, picture sleeves, etc.

 

Styrene is something that has to be lived with. There seems to be a lot of singles that are only available on styrene. I have plenty that sound good still: I thunk my oldest most played one is T. Rex bang A Gong. Styrenes main problem involves grading. One play with the wrong tracking weight or a worn stylus can mean *instant* groove damage. And yet look shiny mint. A real bummer to pick the best looking single only to play it and hear fuzzy soft passages. Yet the scuffed up one with 'Tina' hugely written across the stained, ring worn label plays fine. Go figure.
The dilemmas of the 45 collector.

 

True enough. I recently found 2 styrene Atco 45's from the 1968-9 time frame that looked excellent but sounded terrible. What ticked me off even more is that both singles were Monarchs. Good thing they were only $1 gambles. When I worked for the NYC King Karol record chain in the mid-70's, virtually all Columbia and Epic 45's were styrene yet a fair number of the promo singles that I picked up of the same titles were on vinyl. When I moved to the west coast in the late 70's, I found that many Columbia/Epic store copy 45's were vinyl out here. To some degree, I recall that ABC 45's were also often on styrene with vinyl promos.

 

45s are easily my favorite format. One great song per side, enjoyed without all of the filler that was used to bloat the running times of LPs. Sure, some artists could manage to produce LPs that were great from start to finish, but there were only so many bands out there called The Beatles. A perfect single, on the other hand, could be easily achieved as long as a band had two great songs to record.

I also like that 45s were an affordable medium for garage rock bands and small regional acts to get their music onto wax. Sometimes they only put out a 45 because it would help them to secure live bookings. But there were so many hidden gems produced in the 50s and 60s that you could spend the rest of your life hunting them down and never find a good copy of every decent 45. Plus, the collectors market for rare 45s can be astonishing, with people often paying hundreds (if not thousands) for rare regional 45s of obscure bands that maybe only 100 people remember today. The Nuggets box sets only scratch the surface of what is out there.

 

Some artists only have one or two good songs in them.

I can't tell you how many singles I own by artists I normally dislike, but they got it right that one time...​

 

I could bloviate ad nauseam about the joys of 45 rpm singles. Especially when they come in company sleeves.

 

The Who - Join Together is in my collection on UK Track records. I like this single!

 

How can one tell styrene from vinyl?

Any era or country of manufacturing in particular?

 

Yeah and there'd always be countless decent 45s from that era that you never knew existed.

 

45's really sound better to me.

No filler just good songs.

 

Lots of places?

The UK 45s I've heard have been a distorted mess.

 

UK Who singles I have on Reaction and Brunswick are generally cut pretty hot and of course bear some distortion. Similar to some of my Pye Kinks singles. Doesn't matter to me though. They sound awesome. Like hearing music live in a small club with the amps cranked. They're not meant to be pipe & slippers listening. Thats what I have my UK LPs for.

 

Stereo mix with drums only issued on promo 45. According to Billboard, A&M was pressing 600 copies of each release.

 

Beautiful record. Is it yours? I love that song. There's a great cover version of it on the first Fairport Convention album.

 

Seems to be a US thing mainly. Styrene 45s have a different look and feel, and different sound when tapped. The outer rims are generally squared off, whereas vinyl is usually a sharper rim edge, styrene lacks the gloss, is more resistant to bending and cracks easily if bent, the groove area looks 'coarse' in comparison to the identical vinyl version, and the labels are glued on and usually show telltale bubbles and/or wrinkles.

 

Wow! Great stuff. I'm impressed. There can't be many of those left in that condition.

 

Exactly! Great post. Those mono loud cut 45s are so exciting to listen to. The Who still sound great, but not as powerful when the sound is cleaned up or separated into stereo. I personally prefer the sound of the original UK singles of all The Who, Kinks, Beatles, Stones, Hollies, Small Faces etc releases to anything else I've heard the same tracks released on. Not by a long way though. They sound great on CDs and LPs too, but they just don't sound the same. I understand why people prefer the cleaner sounding CDs. But I don't personally. For 60s and 70s pop, rock, soul and punk music I almost always prefer the 45 to anything else. I don't care about slight imperfections and having a totally clean sound. I hate groovewear as much as anybody though!

 

Yes.

'Til The Day After was also issued as a promo stereo 45:

I found out about the stereo promos about 4 1/2 years ago, and in that time I think I've come across 3 copies of 'Til The Day After/Highway and 2 of Live/Time Will Show The Wiser. Somehow the last copies of each are probably about as close to mint as one could ever hope to find, but the others were all quite worn. And I haven't come across any further copies.

We definitely disagree there. Preferring a "hot" mono mix is one thing, but I'll take a clean transfer from tape any day over a distorted 45. That's not to say every 45 is distorted, but certainly quite a few are, whether due to wear or simply not being cut well.

 

I'm 100% in support of the 45 rpm single and probably have over 10,000 of them in my collection, cataloged. It seems to me that the Top 40 radio stations went away as fewer 45's were released. It also affected the jukebox industry. It was actually more cost effective for a jukebox filled with 45's than a jukebox filled with CD's(which is why most traditional jukeboxes were replaced with digital players). Very seldom did anyone play an entire CD on a jukebox but usually only played the hit songs, ignoring the rest. Even with other 7" record formats, like EP's and Compact 33's, they fell out of favor in jukes with the final record playing jukes reverting back to 1 speed, 45 rpm.

As a kid, buying a 45 was much cheaper than buying an LP and every 45 you got had at least one hit on them. I remember paying everywhere from .68 cents for one at K-mart to over $1. in the 80's. At Woolworth's, they had the cut-out 45's sealed in plastic priced at 3/$1 and sometimes on sale for 4/$1.

Quality and play-ability were always issues with 45's. Being the cheapest things a record company would issue, they wouldn't spend much effort in their production. After the mixing, many times being a fold-down from stereo to mono, cutting and pressing was where they cheaped out. Vinyl was the premium material for any records, but I'd say most 45's were injection-molded polystyrene, which could be easily broken and wore out quickly.

What I've found is that it is hard to find a 45 in decent shape and those which are go for top dollar.
They first thing people did was to throw away the sleeves which the 45's came in. I did this myself with 45's until the late-60's. Then they played them mostly on cheap-o record players with worn needles. Today's equivalent would be a Crosley. Many promotional radio station 45's were ruined from being back-cued many times and not using a proper conical stylus or a worn out stylus.

As mentioned before, the advantages of 45's is the often different versions than on the LP's and the non-LP recordings often on the flip sides. Many of these different tracks never showed up on anything else until after CD's came out. Some big hit recordings never have showed up on LP's or CD's, like the short stereo or mono versions of "Roundabout" by Yes. Even other special completely different radio station versions which cannot be replicated, like Don McLean's shortened mono-only version of "American Pie" have never showed up on any other format than the 45 rpm single.

Superior sound of 45's, yes, when they were done right. The audiophile world has known this for decades. From the 45 rpm Angel classical releases and the 12" disco/dance singles to current day re-issues of classic albums on 12" 45 rpm discs. One of the modern pioneers realizing that the 45 rpm speed gave superior sound was the now defunct Classic Records. Now, most of the audiophile re-issue companies are doing this.

There have been quite a few 7" 45 rpm boxed sets of audiophile quality records released over the last 10 years or so. Most are grossly overpriced like the Who boxed sets. Some like the boxed set from Creedence Clearwater Revival were very reasonable, especially being able to buy this directly from Fantasy Records for the legitimate retail price. I can't think of better boxed sets than Classic Records' Hendrix sets. They were so popular that subsequent pressings had to be done. Another sell-out was the Rhino boxed set of Altantic Funk and Soul classics. They had to re-issue it in 2015 due to demand.

The RSD 7" 45rpm releases are way way overpriced, as are most of the other RSD special releases. When new 45's are released most are overpriced. For re-issues, Collectables has some great 45's available for decent prices and they often have sales, so they are even more reasonable. At oldies.com, they even have grab bag 100 45rpm record sets of original 45's for cheap, if you just want to increase your 45rpm record collections.

 

Depends on the record label and pressing plant. Columbia 45s were usually styrene, while Motown 45s were usually vinyl, for example. For Atlantic, 45s pressed at Specialty or Plastic Products were vinyl, while those pressed at Monarch were styrene.

 

When I was growing up I was very lucky that my parents indulged my record habit but that was the era of the 45 and albums were almost a luxury. Back then, most albums were a hit single or two, the B-sides and a lot of filler unless it was a hits compilation of some kind. In the 50's and early 60's, it was basically all mono and most singles sounded pretty good and still do today, depending on condition of course.

I agree that the new single issues are often overpriced. The Who sets and the Cream set both come to mind. The Byrds Sundazed singles box was too expensive as well. The Record Store Day singles are mostly outrageous price-wise but I still manage to pick one or two up each time to get an exclusive track or something.

The Collectable reissue 45's at Oldies.com are a hit & miss proposition. Some of them play beautifully and others are very noisy. In one order, I got one 45 that had a piece of something embedded in the vinyl and another that was so off-center that the beginning grooves were not even on one side of the disc. There was no problem getting them replaced so that worked out OK. Also, some of the Collectable singles contain stereo versions rather than original mono so that's another thing to consider.

I will pay a decent price for a single that is hard to find if it's in nice condition, especially if there's little chance the song will ever see the light of day on CD or a vinyl reissue.

 

Being on the West coast, the major record labels who had pressing plants out here, RCA, Capitol and CBS all pressed exclusively in vinyl. They also pressed for other labels. However, most of the other major labels had their records pressed by Monarch or Allied out here and the 45's were mainly made of polystrene and reserved a lower quality of vinyl for special requests and LP's. It seems to me that most 45's available on the West coast were made of polystyrene. By far, most were made by Monarch.
Though I've seen plenty of polystyrene Motown 45's, but yes, I'd say that most were vinyl and pressed by United and MCA. About the only way we received Atlantic group pressings by Specialty were those sent to radio stations. As far as other East coast pressings are concerned, most that we got out here were cut-outs. Other pressings that were out of the West coast norm were available through national store chains, like K-mart, who did not use the traditional West coast distributors.
As a side, I don't think that I have ever had or seen a Canadian record, outside of 78's, which were not vinyl.

 

I love these 45s, too, but some of these guys kill me with their constant talk of "styrene." And I thought I was fanatical about this stuff.

 

I don't see anywhere in this thread where you've posted anything about "styrene" 45's. How are you fanatical about "styrene" 45's, pro or con?
The reason that "styrene" always seems to come up in threads about 45's is because the material they are made of often affects the sound quality and lifespan. "Styrene" records seldom held up under commercial use as well as those made of vinyl. For the major record labels, 45's came in both "styrene" and vinyl, depending on where they were made. For comparison purposes, a "styrene" 45 would be like a VW whereas a vinyl 45 could be a Rolls-Royce.