33 1/3 vs. 45 RPM

Back in my AM radio days everything was vinyl in the control room. I have often talked about how much I loved the smell of vinyl in the morning to paraphrase Robert Duvall as Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in the movie Apocalypse Now. But I was asked last week if I preferred playing the 7” 45 RPM singles or the 12” 33 1/3 RPM albums. You know, I never really thought about that until now. From the viewpoint of a radio DJ, each has its advantages and disadvantages.

For the quality of the recording; albums always sounded a little better to me than the 45’s did. I always found that a little strange because when it comes to tape recordings, the higher the tape speed generally the higher the quality; 7 1/2 inches per second (IPS) sounded better than 3 ¾ IPS. And the best yet was 15 IPS usually found on the higher end reel to reel recorders, especially those multi track machines, used in recording studios back in the day. But in the case of records, generally 33 1/3 RPM sounded better than 45 RPM and 45’s sounded better than the old 12” 78 RPM disks that my parents’ generation grew up with.

By the way, I am not ignoring the quality differences between the vinyl 45 RPM records and their acetate cousins. We had both and the vinyl records were definitely better.

Another thing that contributed to the better sound on albums is the cueing process that was used in radio to control when the beginning of the record went on the air. This process was called “slip cueing”. The record was placed on the turntable and the turntable was started. The DJ would then place the needle on the record in the groove before the beginning of the song and let the record spin until he or she could hear the first notes in the cue speaker. Then the record would be backed up to a point a second or so before the beginning of the song and held by the fingertips while the turntable spun below the disk. The disk would slip on the turntable until the DJ’s fingers let go of the disk and he or she turned the “pot” or volume control up to get the song on the air.

“Wait a minute,” you say, “isn’t that a little hard on the record, going backwards like that?” Exactly, it was hard on the record and eventually there would be a second or so of scratchy noise at the beginning of the record. We even had a name for that noise; “cue burn!” This meant that we normally had to replace a vinyl record every month or so. For acetate records it was more like every week.

So, advantage albums for sound quality.

Ease of handling was a different matter entirely. The 45 RPM records rocked this in so many ways.

First of all, there was only one, or in the case of Extended Play (EP) 45 RPM records, two songs per side. Albums could hold upwards of 6 or 7 songs per side if the songs were short enough. So it wasn’t a matter of dropping the needle in the groove on the outside edge of an album, the DJ had to find the song he or she wanted on the label or the track listing on the album cover and then count the tracks on the disk to find the desired song. Only then could the rest of the slip cue process be carried out. Obviously, we never did “instant requests” with albums. There was no time.

I learned the hard way at WUSC-AM that albums had sharp teeth that could bite you. And the soundtrack from “West Side Story” was the one that bit me. I was planning on playing “I Feel Pretty” (Side 2 Track 2) but I accidentally cued up “Jet Song” (Side 1 Track 2). I was running out of time so when I heard the first note in the cue speaker, I backed it up and let ‘er rip. Needless to say when the song I was expecting to hear was not there I was a little surprised. But I thought, what the heck it is Broadway so it must be ok and I’ll just correct my error in the back sell announcement. Well, if you know the Jet Song from West Side Story you know that it ends in a big production “F-Bomb”. Noting subtle, nothing quiet, a big standing with feet wide apart singing full throated “the whole ‘bleeping’ street!” My jaw dropped I opened the mic but I was totally speechless. Not even a squeak came out as I segued into the next record with a big noticeable “wow” as that turntable struggled to get up to speed.

I just knew the FCC monitoring van was parked somewhere on campus with their tape recorder running to catch it all. I expected that two guys in trench coats wearing fedoras pulled down low over their eyes would be bursting into my control room any moment to bodily throw me out of the station. But I dodged that bullet. When I reported the incident to our program director and music director, they asked me if I had pulled the album out of the library. I said no, because it was very popular, but I did take my pocket knife out and make sure that no one else would ever play that particular track. What I did to it was way beyond cue burn. Thank goodness the statute of limitations has run on that!

The other thing that made 45 RPM records easy to handle was the large one inch in diameter spindle hole. We could pick up 45’s with our middle finger in the hole and our thumb on the outside edge without touching either side. Albums required two hands or you would get fingerprints on the sides where the grooves were. This often required cleaning with special solvents sold for that purpose. Even today I see ads on the Internet for vinyl record cleaning machines. By the way, my British friends are saying “What!!” right now, because their 45 RPM records have the same ¼ inch spindle hole as our 33 1/3 RPM albums. Sometimes the demo records we received from the record companies had the smaller hole with knock outs so we could make them fit on the larger US spindles. I hated those because I always had to use a file to smooth out the rough edges once the knock outs were punched or they would stick to the spindle and not slip cue very well.

By now, my young DJ friends are saying that this is a lot of work; I’m sure glad all of our songs are on computers and start with a mouse click. Well the disadvantage there is when you are not sure of a song’s intro, with vinyl you could listen for the first sung words and then cue up the song and “walk up the record and hit the post!” Oh wait, that isn’t done in radio any more. Too bad, there is little more satisfaction for an old school DJ than hitting the record like that. Trust me; I’ll be one extremely satisfied cat when I hit the air on WUSC-FM at 10 AM tomorrow! Oh MY!