[78-L] Decca Specialty Series (DAU-x)

[David Lennick]

The D actually stands for Automatic. Don't ask.

Same as in Victor albums..when changers became popular, albums had to be 
reconfigured in automatic sequence, so a D was added to Victor's prefixes (for 
"drop", since previous automatic machines were slide auto) and Decca did the 
same thing..no "D", the set is manual sequence (side 1/side 2, side 3/side 4 etc).

Generally the stuff was vinyl..but it was too expensive for run of the mill 
issues, it wasn't widely available during the War except for V-Discs and radio 
transcriptions, and the pickups and styli were still too capable of damaging 
the discs. Plastic records were a post-war luxury for what became "audiophiles" 
and of course they were a godsend for radio stations.

Pye did press on vinyl..I don't know why other English companies didn't in the 
50s. Probably still too many customers with older players..? Lots of pop 
records in the US were pressed on some form of vinyl through the 50s, and 
everything pressed by Quality in Canada from Day 1 (which was in 1950).

dl

agp wrote:
> At 23:36 04/07/2009, DL wrote:
>> The U in the prefix almost always indicates "unbreakable".
> 
> So -- I guess that means that DAU stands for D-ecca A-lbum U-nbreakable?
> 
>> Deccalite pressings are translucent at that time (not Canadian pressings
>> though). Don't know if these would be by World Transcription or Vogue.
> 
> Ah -- so what was Deccalite --plastic, vinyl, left over to hard 
> raspberry gelatin? I'm sure this is answer somewhere, but just thought I'd ask.
> 
> If such and similar stuff was available and used for promo records by 
> the likes of RCA and Capitol, then why didn't the industry switch to 
> it away from shellac. Naturally one can guess that they didn't want 
> to make a better 78 to compete with the 45 and lp. I do note thought 
> that late 50s Pye 78s in the UK are vinyl, and sound great, so 
> obviously the situation was different there.
> 
> T
>