Acetate Disc - Material and Packaging

Material and Packaging

Despite their name, most acetate discs do not contain any acetate. Instead, most are an aluminum disc with a coating of nitrocellulose lacquer. (Glass was also used for the substrate during World War II, when aluminum was in short supply.) This production process results in a disc that is different in many ways from the vinyl records sold to customers at retail. Whereas vinyl records are light and semi-flexible, acetates are rigid and somewhat heavier. More significantly, the thin coating of lacquer on an acetate is much more susceptible to wear; the playback head of a stylus quickly damages the grooves of the record such that after only a relatively few number of plays the audio quality is noticeably degraded. This is not necessarily a problem, however, since acetates are meant primarily for test recordings. Collectors, of course, may find themselves wishing for greater durability.

Acetates typically come in two sizes: 10" discs for singles and 12" discs for albums. The record's sleeve is typically nothing more than a generic cover from the manufacturing company and the disc's label is similarly plain, containing only basic information about the content (title, artist, playing time, etc.), which is usually typed but is often just hand-written.