Articles

Market Shares (Josef Siebertal, Linz, 13.3.2003)

As a result of a census made by the "Verband der Österreichischen Musikwirtschaft" the share of the good old Vinyl-record is 0,1 percent of the entire rercord-market.The definite leader is still the CD (Compact Disc) with more than 37 percent of the sales.

Nearly 3 percent of all record-sales are handled by internet.

Cleaning the Vinyl-records (Sven Guckes, Stockholm, 4.4.2003)

To clean Vinyl-records effectivly with the purpose to be able playing them free from impair noise - the microgroove has to get sufficient deeply and completely rid of solid particles and dirt-film. Special record-washing-machines come up to this by brushing a special cleaning-fluid, that is distributed among the surface of the record, in the grooves and then exhaustes it.

The wet-cleaning removes figur-prints, grease-spots and occasionally even sticky places (e.g. Coke). However, cotton fabrics, impragneted with antistatic-fluid, almost always tend to paste the grooves with abraded particles of the fluid. Better use carbon record brushes or micro-fibre tissues! Last-named are cleaning the records painstaking without any chemicals - only with water. Simply move along the grooves in circles. Important is not to change the rotary motion.

Shellacs 78rpm (Heike Bruckmann, Mühldorf, D, 15.4.2003)

Shellacs were produced until 1958, although the first Vinyl-record was released in 1948.

In the beginning, 1937, the material - a blend of resin, separations of wax a special kind of louse, soot and other substances - were used for the production.

Most unsatisfactional was the fragility of the material. Nowadays in common language "Shellac" is a synonym for all records with 78 rpm.

Unconventional order of sides on double - LPs (Two-Records-Albums) (Alexander Ost, Wien, 16.4.2003)

Particular in the USA until the end of the 1970s, double LPs were often produced with the unconventional order of sides 1/4 and 2/3. Nowadays the reason for this is known only by few persons: it was a matter of disc-changers, who took some records and played them one after the other.