Re: [ARSCLIST] My response to--Re: [78-l] Viva vinyl

[David Lennick <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

You probably have as good a shot at getting the hole in the right place as most
of the pressing plants did..I'd say that at least 95% of all flat discs pressed
in the last 105 years are off center, but it certainly got a lot worse in the
70s. London and Capitol opened their own pressing plants in Toronto at that time
and threw away the book when it came to following specifications..London's
pressings had such oversized center holes we used to draw arrows on the labels
to indicate the optimum contact point with the spindle. As for Crapitol, I got
the tour of the plant and watched as a "lady of a certain age", whose job it was
to check the mothers before they were used to make stampers, performed "quality
control"....she threw the disc onto a turntable (without bothering to center it,
and its hole was a half inch in diameter), dropped the tone arm onto it and
played it for five seconds, and went on to the next one. I made sure not to get
the recording she'd just approved.

dl

phillip holmes wrote:

> So I shouldn't use my hole saw and the hammer drill?  Just kidding.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Lennick"
> >
> > Okay....first of all....DON'T DO THAT! The reasons should be obvious, but
> > they'll include potential damage and cracking, shavings all over the
> > place, and
> > most important of all, it may not be your record you have to center.
> >
> > Better to raise the disc with an extra turntable mat or two..I use a mat
> > and an
> > old thick LP. For really badly centered records I add a lightweight flat
> > disc
> > (flat is very important..this is why old LPs made before "gruve gard" come
> > in
> > handy, and the lightweight flat disc is a 1940 vintage paper-based
> > lacquer).
> > This gives you enough room to center the disc properly with most spindles.
> > I
> > then use a record weight (stolen from an old radio studio, which I realize
> > is
> > not an option for all, but I'm sure you can come up with something). This
> > is a
> > more difficult task to do on some turntables than others, and best
> > performed on
> > tables designed for production use and which allow cuing.