[78-L] inner sleeves on LPs

[Chris Zwarg]

At 05:25 08.10.2008, you wrote:
>The Europeans used the same type of inner-sleeves on 10- that they did 
>for 12-inch but I only have retrospective knowledge of these, not first 
>hand from seeing them at the time they were issued. 

All Electrola/HMV 10-inch LPs I've seen have an inner plastic sleeve glued to the inside of the outer cardboard cover, which does away with the nuisance of re-inserting the flimsy plastic thingy into the cover after playing. Unfortunately, a chemical substance in the soft plastic (PVC?) they used tends to damage the record surface after decades of storage, the records then look (and sound) like heat-damaged shellacs. The same thing happens with some types of loose plastic inner sleeves; in extreme cases the plastic sleeve sticks tightly to the record and renders the whole thing unplayable. Even if this hasn't happened to any of your early LPs yet (due to cool and dry storage conditions), it is safer to put the disc in a new paper sleeve and not in the original plastic one, though you might want to preserve the latter as an original artefact.

Chris Zwarg