33Rpm 7" Records With Small Spindle Holes

[Denbo]

Without doing the research, I always thought that 45rpm 7" singles were made with big holes for the benefit of jukeboxes. So why do us record collectors keep finding 33rpm 7" singles with small holes?

 

Also, I wonder why they cut a different, almost reggae styled version, of 'Sugar Dumpling' for the RCA Victor Lp 'Twistin The Night Away', which I have on one of those 33rpm 7" singles with a small hole, which inspired me to put the question out there. Hope I've got the right section of the forum for these questions. Apologies to moderators if I've not.

[The Yank]

The creation of 45 rpm singles really had nothing to do with jukeboxes. RCA came up with the format to counter Columbia's 33 1/3 rpm format.

The 1st 45's came out in March of 1949 - the 1st 45 jukebox ( the Seeburg M100B)  came out about a year later. The 1st 45 players came with

a changer so you could stack the records on top of each other. The engineers found that the records were getting damaged  when dropped.To reduce the

stress and friction, they came up with the larger hole.

  A lot of the 33 1/3 singles were usually in stereo and were made for jukeboxes. In 1961 RCA released singles in both 45 rpm and 33 1/3 format

and were eventually going to phase out 45's. The idea was a disaster and in 1962, the 33 1/3 format was discontinued.

  Finally, I don't know why Sam made two versions of "Sugar Dumplin' ".

[Dave Moore]

Good post from 'The Yank'. In addition, the 33 1/3 format was used right up to the mid 60s for certain Juke and LP Promo formats. You could get six tracks on the Jukebox for the same 'space' as a double sided 45. A good example are the Motown/Atlantic/ABC/  Little LPs, the story of which will appear on the Front Page of Soul Source shortly. 

 

Regards,

 

Dave

[pikeys dog]

Lots of Jukeboxes were manufactured to play 33rpms (Seeburg particularly).

 

My theory is that Argentina and other South American countries ended up with the 7" 33.3RPM format, as 45 became the industry standard for Jukeboxes in the US, all of the old boxes were dumped on the S. American market.

[Kris Holmes]

cracks me up that some albums you can get entirely on 33rpm small hole 7"s as an alternate format, multiple 7"s all packed together, one track per side, pretty cute.

[Kris Holmes]

The alternate "LP" version of Sugar Dumpling is definitely from the 7" 33rpm Twistin' The Night Away album pack.  Very different from the 45.

[pikeys dog]

cracks me up that some albums you can get entirely on 33rpm small hole 7"s as an alternate format, multiple 7"s all packed together, one track per side, pretty cute.

 

 

These 'albums' were created purely fro Jukeboxes - it's not very often that you find them complete, but when you do they are housed in a printed title envelope, with title strips and natty little facsimiles of the album cover.

[Kris Holmes]

yeah, i have a few still in the envelopes & all, coincidentally enough, the Sam Cooke "Twistin' The Night Away" one with "Sugar Dumpling" was the first one I could locate here after seeing this thread   The RCA ones are called "Featured Artist Promotional Pre-Packs"....