Unusual Holes
The vast majority of records used a standard small spindle hole slightly more than 1⁄4" in diameter. The only common exception to this is the 7-inch 45 RPM record, which was designed with a center hole slightly more than 1.5" in diameter both for convenience in handling and to accommodate a very fast record-changing mechanism contained inside a correspondingly large spindle, as implemented in RCA Victor's early stand-alone "45" players. The spindle and any records stacked on it rotated with the turntable, so that each waiting disc was already up to speed before it dropped. Large mechanized spindle adaptors were supplied with most multi-speed automatic record changers sold in the 1950s and 1960s, but they were not as fast and efficient. The large hole also facilitates use in jukeboxes, which mechanically place the "45" onto a turntable with a conical spindle having a matching diameter at its base, making the placement operation easier, safer and surer than it was with the small-diameter holes and spindles in 78 RPM jukeboxes.
Early on, some 78 RPM records had larger holes in freebie marketing schemes that sold a phonograph cheaply, but required purchase of compatible discs at full-price. Standard Records had a half-inch hole, Harmony Disc Records had a 3/4-inch center hole, United had a 1.5-inch hole and the largest, Aretino, had a three-inch hole. This spindle format would be resurrected some 40 years later for the Holy Bible Old and New Testaments produced at 16 RPM by the Audio Book Company of St. Joseph, Michigan. The rarest edition comes with a fibreboard insert to adapt the 3-inch hole of the vinylite discs to a standard phonograph hole.
Other records had more than one hole in the label area. Busy Bee, in a marketing scheme similar to Standard et al. would employ a second cut-out area. This allowed the Busy Bee disc to also be played on a standard phonograph in addition to the proprietary format sold by the O'Neill-James Company.
Most 7-inch records in the USA continue to be pressed with a large hole, requiring an adaptor to be used on standard turntables. In other territories such as Europe, 7-inch records intended for home use have standard-sized holes. Many such 7-inch records had a center which could be easily snapped out, yielding a record with a larger hole to be used in jukeboxes or certain record-stacking players; this approach was common in the United Kingdom from the 1950s until the early 1980s, with standard, solid centres becoming gradually more common. Some 7-inch singles in the early-mid-1990s had large holes also, but this was a rarity.
Many blank acetate discs have multiple holes (usually three or four) intended to prevent slippage during cutting.
NON's Pagan Muzak (Gray Beat, 1978) is a one-sided 7-inch with multiple locked grooves and two center holes, meaning each locked groove can be played at two different trajectories as well as any number of speeds. The original release came with instructions for the listener to drill more holes in the record as they saw appropriate.
Read more about this topic: Unusual Types Of Gramophone Records
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