[78-L] quality control problems

[neechevoneeznayou at gmail.com]

I know 45s were made with hot levels to help hide the quality of the 
vinyl. They wore faster but were intended for a market that would listen 
to a song for a few months and then move on to something new. It's the 
nature of the pop music industry overall I suppose.

Of course off center records and crummy surfaces are not unique to any 
format, 78s included. I suspect the out of round issue is the result of 
a warped record being flattened out. At least, that has been my 
experience with 78s. Could it be a matter of a lacquer master shrinking 
and slipping on the substrate? Usually that kind of flaw is seen on old 
lacquers and has developed over time, not on a freshly cut record going 
to the bath to be plated for immediate pressing. Off-center center holes 
is more an issue of degree than right or wrong.

I have rarely seen a pressed 78 record with reversed labels, and I don't 
recall that I have ever seen one with the wrong label, but I know it has 
happened, and we have discussed it on the list some time ago.

joe salerno


On 9/21/2011 2:04 AM, Rod Brown wrote:
> Hey 78ers,
>
> I was digitizing a short stack of Fats Domino records for a client last
> night.
>
> (Yes, I know: "...rock 'n' roll and other children's records," thank you Mr.
> Lehrer. I didn't appreciate that crack when I was a teenager. A joke which
> has aged well, It's a lot funnier to me now that I'm 58.)
>
> I was surprised by how many of these Imperial records had pressing defects.
> But maybe this is typical for the genre?
>
> There were seven of these discs, and three of the fourteen sides had to be
> elevated on mats, free of the spindle, to allow for centering. On several
> others, the grooves were concentric to the spindle hole, but weren't quite
> as perfectly circular as one would wish. Judging by the way the cartridge
> would twitch laterally as a record spun, the grooves were out of round,
> evincing either a flat spot or an eccentricity. One of the records had the
> correct labels, but on the opposite sides from where they belonged, a defect
> I've hardly ever seen in the vinyl LP world. Come to think of it, I'm
> surprised this doesn't happen more often.
>
> I'd be interested to read about record pressing quality control. I imagine
> it must have been a manpower-intensive process, back when. Are there reviews
> of the topic that anyone might like to share?
>
> Best,
> Rod
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-- 
Joe Salerno