If Dawn & water is considered wild how do we classify the use of Scrubbing Bubbles?! (oops AppleCorp3 beat me to it)
Some of my styrene pressings that haven't been ruined do sound good. But I still hate the darn things. I've replaced many with later, but still earlier pressings, or with Canadian pressings, many of which use US plates. I just don't want the hassle of having to be extra careful.
not you, I'm talking about the wood glue solvent crowd ...but personally I wouldn't use soap unless you get a true spotless rinse, but to each his own.
I saw a Transition sampler for $10 the other day and almost bought it. The jacket was split and the labels had completely fallen off the record. I passed but it looked like it would play well.
I learned the hard way with the MicroLine/Ridge stylus shape. I didn't know about this at the time. It does as you said basically cuts a new groove in the record. Whats really odd though is When I played it back with my Line Contact or Elliptical shape stylus it didn't have the swish sound associated with the other stylus.
It appears that not all styrene records are the same groove properties. The material is delicate and then the type of master cutting - can be risky with some stylus tips, not every styrene record responds so horrible. Then as I said, previous wear can mean a bad messy result with one more play.
In the early 70's my friend's dad saw a whole shelf of Transitions in a back room of a mom and pop shop in Harlem. Not being entirely sure what they were he didn't buy any. The next day he found out what they were and a day or two after that he went back to get them. They were all gone.
HOT clean water???? OMG ! One time, intending to use warm rinse water, it accidentally got too hot and the record warped in my hands! There are 4 ingredients common to many record cleaning solutions, distilled water, alcohol, Dawn dishwashing detergent and Kodak Photo-flo. If you can smell alcohol, the solution has alcohol in it. If the solution has a blue tint and smells like Dawn dishwashing detergent, that's in it too.
One indication of a styrene record is that the labels are glued on. Also, when a the label information is actually inked directly onto the record itself, then it is probably styrene.
All styrene records do have the same groove properties. Styrene records are stiff and can be broken easily if slightly bent. A styrene record groove can be easily damaged if played with a damaged stylus. Also, styrene records tend to wear faster and the heavier the tracking force the shorter the life of a styrene record will be. The way a master is cut has nothing to do with the type of material that the records made from it are. Typically, a styrene record is an injection molding process and not often conventionally pressed. The labels are glued on after the fact. Whereas, with a vinyl record, the labels are pressed onto the record as it is being pressed, so no glue or extra process is necessary.
No you are wrong about the grooves. It does depend on who mastered it and what they were going for. Different properties. The grooves can be delicate and be ruined with micro Lin, or hood up rather well. I have a 45 of "Angie" by the Stones. It's a different kind of groove, it's held up really amazingly well over the last 40 years. No crackle wear.
No. I wasn't talking about boiling hot, I was talking about faucet hot. Using an enzyme cleaner, warm water helps accelerate it and you would never want to rinse a record with anything over 100 degrees F. If it is much hotter than that, you risk warping vinyl and I've had shellac 78's crack if it's too warm.
I have a few albums on Spin-r-Rama, the late 60s supermarket label that packaged prehistoric demos by artists (Four Seasons, Bobby Rydell, Isley Brothers) as though they were current recordings. Pretty sure those are styrene.
I guess that I'm not understanding what you mean about the grooves being different. I have both styrene and vinyl copies of "Angie", RS-19105. The styrene copy was made by Monarch and the vinyl was made by Specialty. Both were produced from the same lacquer master disc. To the touch, the styrene has a rougher surface, but that is due to the injection molding process. Generally, I've never had a problem playing a styrene record with any type of modern stylus. On one of my jukeboxes, somebody had installed a Shure Mirco Ridge stylus. After many plays, I never had any wear issues with styrene or vinyl records. I did replace it after a few years with a more conventional Shure diamond conical stylus. The proper stylus type to use on any 45's, especially mono, is the conical type. Commercially speaking, the conical type will have much less record wear over time. Traditionally, radio stations used a conical stylus due to it's non-directional nature. Any other type of stylus or a worn conical stylus will damage any record, especially styrene, from back-cueing. In the late 70's to early 80's, when radio stations started using other turntables non-commercial turntables, like Technics, they also started using elliptical styli, which gave better sound reproduction on FM stereo. Especially styrene 45's suffered cue-burn damage because of this.
I ordered one of these from a Discogs seller. It arrived today, is an early -1A pressing (both sides), and is definitely styrene.
After looking at pictures at discogs, it would be hard to believe that this LP was made of styrene. Compared yours to the pictures of the label. With styrene records, the label is always glued on, having little dots under the label. Vinyl records have the label molded into the plastic. Styrene records are almost featherweight, compared to the same thickness of vinyl. Even into the early-60's, Columbia "6-eye" LP's had a straightcut edge and hadn't started using the tapered or vinyl dam edges. They also had an eccentric lead-out groove and the tone arm would move back and forth. Harmony was a budget label, but I doubt Columbia would waste their time setting up a vinyl press to press with styrene, which was usually injection-molded. Most of the presses used to make styrene records were dedicated 7" record presses. And in 1959, about the only thing Columbia used styrene for was to make 45's.
The label on *my* copy is glued on, and the LP is styrene. I can't speak for somebody's photo of their LP on Discogs.
.....and a quick read-through of the thread will reveal many instances of Columbia product being issued on styrene LP.
It's probably dependent on the plant...my guess is a vinyl Harmony LP where styrene exists might have been made at Santa Maria, considering their 7" records were also vinyl.
Really grateful to the labels that stuck with vinyl non-styrene, or labels like Columbia / Epic which did both, but I got lucky living in or near the west coast and got CBS Santa Maria pressed 45s on ultra thin - but very durable vinyl, and these singles were forgiving when played on a tiny tot toy or teen DC powered phonos with slightly heavy arms. Then played on a nicer higher end table and still sounded quite good (compared to a styrene 45 than had been through a hot youthful summer of fun). These 45s sounded magnificent- loud and ripping screaming high end and fantastic bass. Here is a short list of singles that could be found on both hi-fi vinyl as well as the dreaded styrene. I've owned both pressing types of some of these singles. BS&T - Spinning Wheel Donovan - Atlantis Sly & The Family Stone - Hot Fun in the Summertime Paul Revere & The Raiders - Let Me Simon & Garfunkle - Bridge Over Troubled Water Even Motown, ABC/Dunhill, Warner / Reprise, and Mercury were using CBS Santa Maria for much (but not all) of their West Coast distributed product. Around 1970-71 was when I noticed how great these loud cut 45s sounded. Little miniature Audiophile discs if you will. No thanks styrene. PS I realize this thread is about LPs, but I had to mention my experience with styrene on singles.
I think you are correct. CBS SM is my favorite pressing plant in the US from the period of 1969 to 1975.
The Columbia Santa Maria factory was known for exclusively using vinyl for records, especially 45's. The Harmony LP in question pre-dates the Santa Maria factory altogether. The Santa Maria factory opened in 1963 and closed in 1981.
Columbia/Epic et al 45's pressed at the Santa Maria factory were vinyl and were definitely NOT thin by any means. They were some of the heaviest vinyl 45's out there. You want to talk thin, then that would be Capitol-pressed vinyl 45's from 1968-on. The edges of the vinyl 45's pressed at Santa Maria were thin and could cut like a knife but the rest of the record, including the label area, was thick. Some CBS 7" vinyl records were pressed elsewhere, especially for jukeboxes and radio station promos. These resembled the style of a styrene 45 with a flat profile, but much thinner than a styrene 45 or a vinyl one pressed by Santa Maria. Many of the radio station promo 45's were on colored vinyl. They were probably pressed at Terra Haute or Pitman, where styrene was the usual. I have quite a few test pressings with an actual Santa Maria label on them and all are thick vinyl. RCA and Capitol both had pressing plants in Los Angeles and they only used vinyl, as did Rainbo in Canoga Park. Other pressing plants around Los Angeles mostly used styrene for the 45's and a cheap vinyl mix for LP's, like Monarch, Electrosound and Alco. Being in California, I usually got the best vinyl pressings available. The big chain stores, like K-Mart, were serviced by record distributors not in California, so we got some pretty strange looking records. The trouble with any of the LP's, other than CBS group, RCA or Capitol, you had to buy the album and open it to see what kind of a pressing it was. If I didn't like it, I'd take it back as defective and buy one at another record store that I knew used a different distributor until I got the pressing I wanted.
