VINYL

THE BIRTH OF THE VINYL RECORD It is hard to imagine that there are adults on the planet today that have never had the experience of playing or even hearing a record. The first came the cylinder, then the 78, the record of choice for 50 years. Due to a shortage of shellac in WW2 (which coated records), the first 78 rpm vinyl came out. The 45 rpm single was also vinyl and made its debut starting about 1949. The “45” was an invention of RCA, primarily to promote their artists with a product everyone could afford. The single would become the format of choice through the 50’s and early‘60s. Not to be outdone by RCA, Columbia Records came out with the 33⅓ rpm 12-inch vinyl long-playing record in 1948. The LP grew quickly in the 50’s and during the 60’s, the vinyl LP became the industry standard and remained so into the 80’s when the Compact Disc began to take over. The 33⅓ LP was superior to the old 78 rpm records that could hold only 3 minutes or so of audio per side; the LP was good for up to 25 minutes and didn’t break when you dropped it. At last, you could hear Beethoven’s 5th Symphony uninterrupted.

RON MIDDAG REFLECTS ON THE VINYL EXPERIENCE There was something about a vinyl album with its colorful, sometimes shocking cover that made it compelling and alluring. I’m talking about 33⅓ rpm vinyl records, the de facto standard in the 60s for playing music at home. As a DJ, the long-playing record was your most important asset. It was what made you cool. Did you have the (album name) LP? If you had it, you were cool. It’s how you got girls. It was the pickup line that never failed in those years. There were many things about the LP that were attractive. It was a sensory experience like no other. First of all, the cover was 12” x 12”, generous by today’s puny CD crystal-case standards, and it usually had wonderful, innovative art that by itself was good for hours of entertainment. You could stare into it while listening and become one with the music. The connection with the artist gave us insight to the music. There was also all of the cool, “in-the-know” information on the backside of the cover. Who played on the record and what instruments did they play? Where was it recorded? Who produced it? Who wrote the songs? There was a total DJ education right there. The inner sheath, there to further protect the delicate vinyl, was often the unexpected source of more art and information. When you slid an LP out of its cover and sleeve, the new vinyl smell was a clear signal that you were about to have a sound experience that you had never had before, a unique adventure in music! The tactile experience of placing the LP on the turntable, handling the disk only by the extreme edges, then starting the motor and gently placing the tone arm onto the spinning platter was another delicate ritual. After all, you didn’t want the coin to fall off, after you had so gently placed it on top of the cartridge. It was a careful, precise etiquette that went well beyond simply pressing a button to start the music. At the time, vinyl LPs seemed as if they would be a part of our lives forever. Yet that window lasted not much more than 30 years. Yes, the vinyl LP is still around—and actually making a bit of a comeback in recent years—but it’s nowhere near the numbers that it once had when it was the main choice we had for home music playback. There are those who say that the compact disc does not offer all of the sound that the LP did and they have a totally valid point. It can be accurately stated that none of the digital formats gives you all of the sound that the analog form does, certainly not the mp3, which offers significantly less depth and richness than the original analog recording. And now, at this point in time, the CD has already faded as the platform of choice, replaced by multiple digital formats used mostly online that are even more of a sound quality compromise than the CD. For most of us, the long-playing record album was the ultimate in musical appreciation, and we miss it.

THE VISCERAL PLEASURE OF PLAYING A VINYL RECORD

The groove speeds by below,

the styus follows every wiggle

Coils convert the wiggles to

electrical pulses, left and right.

THE VINYL STORY

In the world of recorded sound first there was the cylinder made of wax and later, tinfoil. Next came the platter, or phonograph record, a stiff, delicate, breakable disc spinning at 78 revolutions per minute (rpm). On each side is a single groove, cut as a spiral, about 1,401 feet long that plays about two-and-a-half minutes of sound.

The surface of a record originally was shellac, a resin secreted by the female lac bug on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. It is processed and sold as dry flakes and dissolved in alcohol to make liquid shellac. Shellac is very hard, when you carve a tiny wiggle into a groove, it stays there. But shellac had problems, it cracked easier than a teenage ego and it was abrasive and therefore noisy.

The phonograph disc record was the primary medium used for music reproduction throughout the 20th century. In the late 1940s, a great leap forward in convenience of use and quality of sound arrived with the advent of the LP, or long-playing record. The 331/3 rpm LP format was developed by Columbia Records and marketed in June 1948.The new product was a 12- or 10-inch, fine-grooved disc made of polyvinyl chloride, or “pvc”. Its groove is played with a smaller-tipped stylus at a speed of 331⁄3 rpm.

In its native form pvc is white and brittle but becomes flexible with the addition of plasticizers and can be any color. Vinyl records may be scratched or warped if stored incorrectly but if they are not exposed to high heat, carelessly handled or broken, a vinyl record has the potential to last for centuries.

The large cover and the inner sleeves of the 12” LP are ideal for creative artistic works that represented the band and its music while at the same time promoting the album. The small jewel box case for a compact disc simply does not have the same artistic impact.

Each side of a 12-inch LP could play for more than 20 minutes, much more than the older 78-rpm version. At last, a long piece of music could be put complete on one side of the record. The way was paved for Sgt. Pepper and his Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The signals go up wires in the

tone arm & to the preamp

The turntable spins precisely,

exactly at 33 1/3 rpm.

Left to right: A modern CD measures 4"

in diameter, a 45 is 7", and an LP is 12".

Vinyl can be any color, even

transparent or tie-dye

This modern machine

makes a vinyl "master".

This one reproduces the

sound in the vinyl groove