[Vintage-Audio] Re Ultra Thin Flex Records

[Duane Fischer, W8DBF]

Thank you very much Bob!

Thank you all on the list for your assistance also. It is 'all' appreciated.

Personally, I am a serious audio devotee, and I have not experienced 
anything to convince me that the Dynaflex recording style was superior in 
"any" way. In fact, they are easier to scratch and a stylus tracking very 
light, .5 -.75 grams accidentally did a sideways OOPS! skate across the 
album does leave a damage trail.

One point that nobody touched upon. I have the before Dynaflex albums and 
the Dynaflex albums, but what is this one between the two? It is about half 
as flexible as the Dynaflex and slightly more thin then the 1970 and back 
albums.

Duane Fischer, W8DBF/WPE8CXO
dfischer at usol.com
HHI: Halligan's Hallicrafters International
http://www.w9wze.net
HHRP: Historic Halligan Radio Project
hhrp.w9wze.net

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Nickels" <W9RAN at oneradio.net>
To: "Vintage home and professional audio equipment from 1975 back" 
<vintage-audio at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2007 10:38 AM
Subject: Re: [Vintage-Audio] Re Ultra Thin Flex Records


> Here's what wikipedia has on Dynaflex, which was then and still is, 
> somewhat controversial:
>
> Dynaflex was a type of vinyl LP album record pressing introduced by RCA 
> Records in late 1969. Rather than using the stiff plastic material used by 
> conventional vinyl pressings, Dynaflex records used a "flexible" 
> formulation that allowed RCA to use less less material, saving money and 
> also making the record appear to lie flatter on turntables. At the time, 
> many industry record pressing plants were using "reground" vinyl, taking 
> old records, removing their paper labels, then melting them down and 
> reusing the plastic components to make new records. Such "reground" vinyl 
> records typically sounded much noisier than a record made from "virgin" 
> vinyl; collectors noted that "reground" records sometimes had small 
> remnants of paper embedded in the outer edge of the LP.
>
> Dynaflex records were flexible enough that they literally "flopped" back 
> and forth when held in the hand. Their flexibility also gave them 
> theoretically more resiliancy in shipping, resulting in fewer returns from 
> retailers due to breakage and cracks.
>
> Opinions from record collectors and audiophiles are divided as to 
> Dynaflex' sound quality. Some felt that the sound quality actually 
> improved, due to better processes for removing impurities in the vinyl 
> compounds; others feel that Dynaflex pressings were both noisier and 
> lacked bass frequencies compared to conventional records, and also had 
> more "rumble" (low frequency noise) than conventional thick pressings. 
> While RCA claimed that Dynaflex records would not warp as much as 
> conventional vinyl records, due to their flexibility, die hard record fans 
> (particularly classical buffs) decried the new technique, calling it 
> "Dynawarp," and claiming that Dynaflex records were warping on dealers' 
> shelves, just from the pressure of the shrink wrap on the album jacket.
>
> RCA eventually discontinued Dynaflex in the late-1970s/early-1980s.
>
> Note that Dynaflex is a completely different process than RCA's 
> Dynagroove, which was a technique that introduced a predefined amount of 
> distortion during the record-cutting process, in an attempt to compensate 
> for mediocre phono cartridges used by consumers in the early 1960s. 
> Unfortunately, the process detracted from sound quality when Dynagroove 
> was used with high quality phono cartridges. RCA discontinued Dynagroove 
> in the late 1960s.
>
> 73, Bob W9RAN
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