Coloured Vinyl Lp's

[Steve Carter]

A lot of records mainly singles in the 1970's and on wards were not made of vinyl or were they pressed like vinyl, they were injection moulded styrene if they had a paper label they were stuck on after the injection process and looked very different font wise or they were the plain colour screen printed one's with the styrene black showing as the printed details, unlike vinyl that were applied in the pressing process These styrene records were only supposed to last for 50-100 plays they wear out you can see the wear of the groves quite easily, so back then we were being duped into believing that all records were vinyl. Balance a vinyl record on your finger and tap it, then a styrene record you will hear the difference, they also sounded inferior when compared to vinyl, I remember buying Sylvia by Focus it was a styrene injection moulded single the sound quality was awful, I then got my hands on a vinyl copy the difference was night and day.

[Brian Fretwell]

And of course flexi-discs were another matter. Mianly for advertising but the Americom films had them for the soundtracks.

[Lee Mannering]

Only flexi I have is the Youngers Tartan Bitter beer song.
Being a life long BLONDE nut the majority of my 12" singles are on color picture disc etc. I have Dad's Quad Dark side of the Moon and yes its still superb played on my Thorens turntable. CD4 oh what memories with Pa. Jordan Watts speakers, JVC CD4 amp and loads of volume so loving that 4VR back then. Ironically it appears in my S8 home movie of a family Christmas in the 70's.

[Melvin England]

Steve - I would really appreciate a couple of photo's if you have any showing the difference. Until now, I had never heard of styrene discs. However, I always remember back in '76 buying a copy of (don't laugh coz it was a present for somebody) "Don't Give Up On Us" by David Soul and thinking that there was something odd about it...... looked a bit crappy and the recording level was a bit too high. It wasn't as hard as the 78 shellac's but didn't have that slight flexibility that ordinary singles had.

Would that have been styrene ?

[Steve Carter]

It probably was a styrene disc Melvin, I think that record was on the Private Stock record label a dead give away is the stuck on paper label air bubbles etc, they were never as good as the vinyl disc label (vinyl labels were pressed onto the disc)
or a block colour print direct to the disc, a lot of Slade records on Polydor had the redish print direct to the disc. When I have time I will get some examples. If I liked a record I usually bought the album as it was on vinyl and cut better. In the mid 70's there was a vinyl shortage and the weight of LP's went down, I had a Beach Boys Live double album one disc was okay but the other was like a flexi disc. Go back to the early sixties dig out some of those vinyl's Parlophone, Decca, Brunswick etc, they are so heavy in weight and flat no warping, all my mono Beatles albums play just as well as.they did back then, a few are first pressings I have the "loud cut" first pressing of Rubber Soul, they were called back in after a couple of days, and replaced by a different level cut.

[Osi Osgood]

ELO did quad mixes of they're early albums, and many of those quad mixes have been released on CD's, but I would think that if the vinyl had a certain "cut" to allow 4 tracks, you would not get the surround effects from CD that you received from a surround Quad mix LP. Quite an interesting subject.

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

There were 2 competing quad formats at the time. SQ quad required a SQ processor (often built into a receiver) that shifted any identical but out of phase sounds to the rear. There was nothing physically different with the record from a non quad record, it was all in the mixing. This process was reused for the surround part of analog Dolby Stereo. In fact the stand alone SQ processors where a hot item in the early days of stereo home video.

CD4 was discreet quad stereo requiring the CD4 processor and a special needle for the turntable. If you played a CD4 record with a regular stereo needle, it would destroy the grooves for the surround tracks.

[Brian Fretwell]

I think the CD4 system was the QS one I mentioned with the surround channels at ultrasonic frequencies (20KHz and above) , not a matrix system.

[Melvin England]

It probably was a styrene disc Melvin, I think that record was on the Private Stock record label a dead give away is the stuck on paper label air bubbles etc, they were never as good as the vinyl disc label (vinyl labels were pressed onto the disc)
or a block colour print direct to the disc, a lot of Slade records on Polydor had the redish print direct to the disc. When I have time I will get some examples. If I liked a record I usually bought the album as it was on vinyl and cut better. In the mid 70's there was a vinyl shortage and the weight of LP's went down, I had a Beach Boys Live double album one disc was okay but the other was like a flexi disc. Go back to the early sixties dig out some of those vinyl's Parlophone, Decca, Brunswick etc, they are so heavy in weight and flat no warping, all my mono Beatles albums play just as well as.they did back then, a few are first pressings I have the "loud cut" first pressing of Rubber Soul, they were called back in after a couple of days, and replaced by a different level cut.

Spot on, Steve. It was indeed on the Private Stock label. The B-side was one called "Black Bean Soup."

I have just checked all my Slade singles as you reminded me that I had seen a few of theirs on what I now know to be styrene and not vinyl. Fortunately, none of them are styrene. I do have a few where it looked like the titles and recording details where actually punched into the vinyl disc and then the center sprayed with red dye (as per the Polydor colour). The effect being that it looked like a label..... but it wasn't. They are all certainly vinyl.

I didn't know about the vinyl shortage in the mid 1970's. I thought I would have done as I was very much "in the know" as a teenager in those days. I certainly noticed the weight and thickness of Lp's diminished at that time. I put it down to newer technology and perhaps the ability to now produce A1 quality sound on thinner vinyl. Thank goodness, back here in 2021, with the resurgence of vinyl here in the UK, that Lp's are now being pressed to the old thicker standard of those, as you mentioned, wonderful mono Beatles albums of the 1960's.

.

[Steve Carter]

Another way to tell a styrene record is hold it to the light, it's translucent with a hint of red, vinyl is solid black.

[Rik Jackman]

Interesting about the styrene platters, I had never heard of them before (or more usually the case nowadays, heard about them so long ago I have now forgotten I knew about them.....). My sisters had that David Soul Don't Give Up On Us/Black Bean Soup single which was exceptionally tedious after I heard it for the 1000th time. Thankfully it must have been made of styrene as I remember it cracked (not by my hand I hasten to add) which finally brought an end to my daily torture.

Rob Young - that MC cartridge of yours certainly is the dogs danglies. Thankfully my A1 has stayed the course as local to me I have an excellent electrical/audio engineer/wizard in Henry Dulat Surrey Hifi Repairs – Expert repair of hifi and guitar amps who services my kit for me.

The article with Matt Earley of Gotta Groove Records was very informative. Would I be right in thinking the 'Natural Vinyl' he refers to would be what was being marketed as 'Virgin Vinyl' a few decades ago?

[Winbert Hutahaean]

Is styrene record same as shellac? Because I knew there was another material used to press the disc and it is heavier, called shellac. If we drop it to the floor it would easily break up. But as many people would call everything has round shape, black color and with sound recording on it as vinyl.

[Brian Fretwell]

Styrene sounds like a man made plastic as in Polystyrene perhaps the raw material before it has been polymerised. Definitely not shellac.