45 rpm

Quadraphonic 7-inch single (1971 – 1976)

Quadraphonic recording was a means of providing sound from four channels, and on vinyl records was most often used on 12-inch long-play (LP) records. It was not a commercial success partly due to a number of competing systems.

Quadraphonic sound on 7-inch singles was even less common. As well as 7-inch singles playing at 45 rpm, there were also some quadraphonic EPs and Little LPs, which played at 33⅓ rpm. Many of the EPs and Little LPs seem to have been produced for use in quadraphonic jukeboxes.

Nearly all quadraphonic releases on 7-inch records used either the SQ Quadraphonic or Quadraphonic Sound (QS) systems.

Quadraphonic singles were introduced in 1971, and releases seem to have peaked around 1974. In 1976, releases appear to have ceased, a few years ahead of quadraphonic LPs.

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Gakken Toy Record Maker (2020 – )

The Toy Record Maker (also called the Easy Record Maker) was designed by Yuri Suzuki and is made by the Japanese Gakken company.

The self-assembly record maker is a small record cutting lathe that uses 5-inch blanks (available in different colours) and records in mono at either 45 or 33⅓ rpm for a recording time of approximately 3 or 4 minutes respectively. The discs themselves are flexible and are clamped onto the turntable to prevent slippage. The record maker can also playback the discs once recorded.

Whilst the device is officially described as a toy and the sound quality is lo-fi, there are discussions and videos available about how to improve the recording through equalisation, cut depth, disc heating, power source and so on.

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CBS One Sided Single (1982 – 1983)

In 1982, CBS Records started selling one-sided 7-inch singles in the US, to see whether selling them for less than a standard double-sided single would have an impact on flagging sales. There was a feeling that consumers would happily do without the B-side of a single if they could pay 99 cents or less for a single (when singles normally sold for $1.49 to $1.59), though the double-sided versions were also available for sale at the same time.

The singles came in plain packaging emblazoned with the legend ‘One Sided Single | Get The Hit! | Special Low Price’, and were sold under the Columbia and Epic record labels.

One-sided singles were not a new idea, and in the early years of production, 78 rpm records were all single-sided.

Second time around, the idea doesn’t seem to have been a success, and fewer than 40 titles were released by CBS under the One Sided Single series before it was dropped in 1983.

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12-inch 45 rpm album (1970s – )

Since the 1970s, a number of albums have been released on 45 rpm 12-inch records. Strictly speaking these are not true Long Play records as they don’t share all of the characteristics of the Long Play format as introduced by Columbia in 1948 and  because of the shorter playing time, the album is split across 2 or more discs. Notable early releases included PiL’s ‘Metal Box’ album on three 12-inch discs in 1979, and releases by labels such as the Sarastro in France and HMV Classics 45rpm Dynamic Sound Series in the UK.

The 45 rpm speed was already standard on turntables, being used for 7-inch singles and EPs.

The use of 45 rpm instead of the more usual 33⅓ rpm can produce better sound reproduction. On any phonograph record, the speed decreases as the needle moves towards the centre of the record, resulting in a loss of high frequencies and an increase in distortion. Increasing the speed to 45 rpm reduces this problem (though it does not eliminate it) and should allow for an overall improvement in sound quality to compensate for the loss of convenience caused by having to turn the record over every 10-15 minutes.

Most 45 rpm albums are produced for the audiophile market and hence are also made of 180 gram virgin vinyl.

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Recordio Disc (1939 – 1963)

Recordio Discs were a popular brand of home recording discs produced by the Wilcox-Gay Corp. in the US for use on their Recordio machines.

Wilcox-Gay began producing Recordio machines in 1939, and as well as being able to play standard 78 rpm records, the machines had a microphone that could be used to transcribe audio onto a blank Recordio Disc. Some machines also included a built-in radio and allowed recordings to be made from radio broadcasts, but many discs were used to make recordings of family members talking or making music.

As well as home recorders, Recordio Discs could be transcribed in Coin Recordio-Gram machines in a similar way to systems such as Speak-O-Phone or Voice Records.

Space was included on the label for the user to write details of the recording, and the recorded discs could be played back on any record player. Later discs could be recorded at 45 rpm, and included a removable centre section for playback on machines with large spindles. The discs had extra holes in the centre label area for spindles on the Recordio machine to hold the disc in place during recording.

Earlier discs had aluminium cores whereas later ones used laminated cardboard. The most common size was 6½-inches, but it seems 10-inch discs were available as well. Black, cream and red discs were available.

The system was introduced some years before domestic tape recorders became widespread, but as tape recorders became more common in the 1950s sales declined and Wilcox-Gay declared bankruptcy in 1963.

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Audiodisc (1938 – )

Audiodisc is a brand of lacquer disc (sometime known as acetate or instantaneous disc) that was introduced to the US market in 1938 by Audio Devices, Inc. They were made under license from the Pyral company in France that had invented the nitrocellulose lacquer-coated disc in 1934 and that also licensed the process to EMI for their Emidisc brand in the UK.

Audiodiscs were mostly used for home recordings but were sometimes used by recording studios to give to clients to hear at home what they had recorded in the studio. As they were mostly used on simpler home recording devices, they had an extra (sometimes three extra) drive pin holes to prevent slippage – commercial disc cutting machines such as those used to create master discs would have used a vacuum to hold the disc in place. Like professional lacquer discs, the core of an Audiodisc is made of aluminium, making the disc much heavier than a standard shellac or vinyl disc.

Audiodiscs are likely to have handwritten information on the label, and can be difficult to date although various designs of label have been used over the years that may help with dating. They were available in different sizes, including 7, 10 and 12-inches in diameter. The lacquer coating wears much quicker than standard shellac or vinyl records, and a chipped stylus can damage the disc in one play.

Audio Devices, Inc. was sold to Capital Records in 1972 who sold it off in the late 1980s at which point it became the Apollo Masters Corporation. Apollo are still producing lacquer discs under the Audiodisc brand as of 2019.

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Seeburg Background Music Library (1954 – 1960s)

In 1954, Seeburg introduced their Background Music Library, using 45rpm 7-inch mono EPs.

Seeburg had previously introduced, in 1952, the Select-O-Matic 200 series for home or commercial use that could house 100 standard 7-inch singles (for 200 songs). These units were different to jukeboxes as they were not coin-operated and the mechanism was not on show. Records were played sequentially in the order the discs were placed in the machine, but a small lever underneath each disc allowed that disc to have its A or B side, or both sides or neither to be played as the mechanism played from beginning to end all the selected A sides, and then all the selected B sides as the mechanism travelled back.

The Background Music Library used the same machines, with the main difference being that the records were EPs (Extended Play) and had two or more songs on each side. The discs were pressed by RCA’s custom records division. Sets of records were rented from Seeburg, and every 30 days a number of the discs were changed.

When one of the units was loaded with Background Music Library discs from Seeburg, it could provide up to 8 hours of continuous play, before starting over again.

In 1959, Seeburg introduced the Background Music System, an incompatible system using 9-inch mono phonograph discs with a 2-inch centre hole, playing at 16⅔ rpm.

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VinylVideo (1998 – 2003, 2018 – )

VinylVideo is a means of playing low quality video from a normal (preferably good-quality) turntable and television using a specially encoded record and an analogue video converter.

It was first demonstrated in 1998 by Gebhard Sengmüller, an Austrian artist working with media technologies. It was made available to buy in extremely small numbers, and the final exhibit was in 2003. In 2018 the format was revived by the Austrian company Supersense

As of November 2018, four VinylVideo titles are available from Supersense (with the tagline ‘Audiovisual Phonograph Record’) and a fifth title is available as part of a Holger Czukay box set. It is also possible to have your own video cut onto a VinylVideo disc.

The discs themselves are 7-inch 45rpm vinyl, and one side contains the audio version of the single, with the other containing the video version (the Holger Czukay disc has video on both sides).

The video’s audio is mono, and the video itself is low frame-rate, low-resolution black and white.

Playing video from phonograph discs is not a new concept and dates back to John Logie Baird’s Phonovision discs in 1927, and later the Television Electronic Disc (TeD) of the 1970s and the CED / VHD video discs of the 1980s, though with these later formats the discs had an extremely fine groove that could not be read on a normal turntable.

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7-inch EP (1952 – )

The 7-inch EP (for Extended Play) was a format introduced in 1952 by RCA Victor, just a few years after the introduction of the 7-inch single format in 1949.  It sat between the 7-inch single and the 12-inch Long Play (LP) record, and like the 7-inch single many span at 45 rpm, though some span at 33⅓ rpm.

By using narrower grooves, it was possible to squeeze 7½ minutes of playing time on each side at the expense of volume, allowing more than one song on each side (generally EPs have between three and six tracks). Like LPs, EPs did not necessarily have ‘title’ tracks, and could have different names to the songs on them (for example the 1963 Beatles EP simply called ‘The Beatles’ Hits’).  They were also packaged more like an LP with a cardboard picture sleeve, whereas 7-inch singles until the 1970s generally had paper sleeves with just the record label on them.

Whilst less common in the US, the 7-inch EP was widely sold in the UK and some other European countries, and between 1960 and 1967 they were popular enough for Record Retailer magazine in the UK to compile a separate EP chart. They were a good way for artists to produce something more substantial than a single between LP releases.

They declined in popularity after the 1960s, and faced competition from formats such as 10-inch and 12-inch singles or EPs (which could allow for more sound volume with wider grooves), as well as Cassette and CD singles or EPs. However, small numbers of 7-inch EPs are still released.

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Hip-Pocket Record (1967 – 1969)

Hip-Pocket Records were 4-inch, 45-rpm, flexible phonograph records manufactured by Philco. Philco also produced portable players for the discs, but they could also be played on manual phonographs.

Philco teamed with three major record companies, Atlantic, Mercury and Roulette, to produce music for them, and around 50 titles were released. They were sold for 69 cents at Woolworth, and also at local Ford Dealers and came in colourful packaging that was significantly larger than the disc itself.

Hip-Pocket Records contained a song on each side, but could only be played about a dozen times before they were worn out by the stylus.

Americom produced a very similar format under the name PocketDisc.

Both Hip-Pocket Records and PocketDiscs were marketed for their portability, and the ability to send them through the post or keep in a pocket without damage.

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