12" 45 RPM records: What's the story?

remember the 45rpm versions are usually done well after the 33's so you can buy them twice. god bless the music industry.

Mo money Mo money Mo money

you need to make a distinction between the 12" 45's that were 'dance club' singles......and the 12" 45's that are audiophile reissues of various very popular older recordings.

the 'dance club' 45's are all over the board in quality.....mostly bad. i spent about 6 months buying 30 or 40 of these on ebay a couple of years ago. some are very good and definitive recordings of some very popular hits. but many are poorly mastered and poorly pressed. 'dance club' needs and audiophile sensibilities are not the same.

the 45 reissues are another story entirely. most (but not 100%) are dramatically better than even original pressings in almost every aspect. these are generally mastered from the original master tapes and have the finest level of production. they typically only have 5 to 10 minutes per side and therefore can be cut as hot as needed with widely spaced grooves and wide dynamic range.

i have most of these and they are my most played records, by far. if you hear these 45's on a quality tt you will be hearing the music the best possible way this side of the original master tape.

yes, they are expensive and require more effort. to me, they are easily worth it.

the 'dance club' 45's are all over the board in quality.....mostly bad.

I would agree that they are all over the board (so true of all recorded music whatever the media but especially pop....a real mixed bag).

However, I would point out that in comparison to the LP's produced at or around the same time, I often found the 45's sounded better than their LP counterpart...

Are dance club goers sensitivities less discerning of high quality sound reproduction than audiophiles?

I have to think about that one. Admittedly, I have not been to a club recently, but in younger days, when my hearing was at its very best, the top high end club systems in the big city (where you had to line up for hours as well as pay to get in)....well....their sound systems sure impressed me!

In fact this alone probably started me on the quest for a better home sound system as NONE of the big city audiophile stores came close in terms of exhilarating accuracy at high SPL's....I recall Blue Monday (New Order), Two Tribes (Frankie) and many other tracks that just blew me away....especially the accuracy in the hard to produce bass frequencies.

...and I don't mean boominess as top end clubs really had great gear...plus they had the advantage of packed crowds to absorb the longer reverberations. As Sabine put it...one person is roughly acoustically equivalent to 8 cushions in a lecture hall ;-)

Yes, reissues 45s are better than their 33.3 originals. More dynamic and transparent. They take two records to equal one record in 33.3 and thus why they were not issued that way. LPs were issued because they could provide 30 minutes of music per side.