After reading the posts about whether the RCA 45 j2 was assembled in the US from 100% US made parts I conclude that it is indeed an all American product.

All those who think it would have been fun to work on the "45" assembly line (for a week), hold up their hand.

Willie

Oh, Willie!
Ya know being a restoration tech, I've worked on enough players of all types through the decades to actually feel like I'm on an assembly line!

After a while, I just do things almost without thinking, like a robot.

I find that properly restored, with good idler wheels, not homemade jobs, properly lubricated, etc., they play quite well, with no vibration.
The problem is people who want to take shortcuts in restoration.
Today's modern turntables are very lightweight.
These turntables have ball bearings. Know very manny modern ones with bearings??
The light plastic tone arm of the RP-190 series also lends itself to fairly light wight playing of the records.
I put the best parts in mine, and, use quality non-gumming synthetic oil on bearings, and, pivots, and, good quality grease on changer slide mechanisms.
I have no complaints on them once the bugs are ironed out.
Bill Cahill

Todays modern turntables in most cases cant compete with a good quality older turntable, new ones have been cheapened with the least cost involved.

Yes, mine had the ASU removed years ago so is now 45-only, and the ear speakers are connected at all times so it plays modern stereo 45s very well. But my post was referring to the DS-160 in its natural state, as an indication of the absence of stereo 45s in 1962.

-David

It doesn't take more than a minute to search and find that Stereo 45-rpm records were available from the beginning in 1958.

Here's a link to a disco of MGM stereo singles starting in '58.
http://www.bsnpubs.com/mgm/mgmstereo.html

Here is one of my favorites from 1959. It's an excellent recording. I had to dig deep for this one, it was a whole dollar.

Reading the entire link Doug posted, it says that MGM introduced stereo singles in 1958 for stereo jukeboxes and ended them in 1959, not releasing them again until 1968. In 1962 they were producing 33rpm little LPs for jukeboxes like the DS-160 which could play them in stereo. So I think it's fair to say that there were no stereo 45s in 1962.

-David

There are many excellent turntables available today. Some of them are extremely expensive, some are reasonably priced. Check out here:

http://www.needledoctor.com/Online-Store/Turntables

-David

x

MGM stereo 45s may not have been current but there were stereo 45s in 1962.
They were not a “first” in ’68.

If you didn’t know that stereo records existed in ’58 and after, you learned something new today. That’s what’s so great about this forum.

I knew that RCA Victor stereo 45 records existed in '58 and that is why I believed it could be possible that RCA was planning to release a stereo 45 player before the plant was destroyed by fire. V-M released their stereo 45/16-rpm only players in '58. Competing companies always seemed to be on the same page. RCA's 45 players were manufactured for almost a decade. Just about every American company used an RCA 45-rpm record changer in at least one of their models, including Motorola, Zenith, Admiral and Magnavox. I would call that a huge success.

Here are stereo recordings from 1960 and 1963. I know they were not common but along with promotional DJ copies, I think that most 45's were also cut in stereo.

Here are some articles with information on the market for stereo 45s:

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&h ... 0cd5f45c6c

I haven't figured out how to post individual references on google books, so the above is the query I used to get the information. If the link doesn't work, just go to google books and query "billboard stereo 45." Some items of interest:

1) Stereo 45s were indeed introduced in 1958 for two markets, teenage purchasers and jukeboxes. VM chased the teenage market with their 45/16 stereo player (one of the references has the description and advertisement) while Seeburg introduced the 222 stereo jukebox (which I had prevously thought to be a dual-speed machine like the later DS, but it was not).

2) The market for stereo 45s didn't develop so they were discontinued in 1959. Perhaps a few were around later, but stereo 45s were not generally available after 1959. How do we know this? The references include articles from 1960 and 1966 in which jukebox operators discuss the lack of stereo 45s for the few stereo machines they had installed, as well as an article from 1962 where Wurlitzer was considering custom pressings to create stereo 45s for its machines due to the lack of them from the record manufacturers.

3) The failure of the market for stereo 45s was attributed to the lack of stereo phonographs. So the 1968 reference to the Atlantic/ATCO CSG compatible stereo 45 was interesting. What I had thought was the introduction of stereo 45s was actually a re-introduction, and it was successful. These stereo 45s could be played on monaural or stereo phonographs. They worked by combining the low-frequency audio components (which are non-directional anyway) so they would not bounce a mono cartridge out of the groove. DVC has posted on this in the past. I have one of the 1968 stereo 45s which I used to play on the RCA 6-EY-3A, and it has survived as well or better than any other styrene 45 which has been subjected to a 6-EY-3A. With CSG, Atlantic/ATCO indicated that they would cease production of monaural records, both 33s and 45s. Other record companies seemed to have followed around this time.

4) Columbia had made plans to introduce 7-inch stereo singles at 33 rpm. I don't know if they actually released any. These would have been different from the 7-inch stereo 33 "little LPs" that were being released for the jukebox market.

As to whether RCA Victor had plans to introduce stereo 45 players, I believe that there is no question, of course they did. They were going into stereo, and it would have made no sense to introduce stereo 4-speed players and not stereo 45 players. To have done so would have marked the 45 players as ripe for discontinuance. So I'm sure that they had plans for a full stereo phonograph product line, including the 45 player family.

However, corporations often make plans which they do not execute. RCA at the time had severe competition for R&D funds, and phonographs were nowhere near the top of the list. I used to read RCA annual reports around that time (my grandfather was a stockholder). They had two corporate priorities: 1) Color TV, in which they were investing millions in RCA Victor for receivers, RCA Broadcast for studio equipment, and NBC for programming and station equipment, and 2) Mainframe computers, in which they were investing many, many millions trying to compete with IBM in what was ultimately an unsuccessful effort ending in 1971 and sucking the company dry. So it is likely that when the 45 changer plant was destroyed, forcing RCA to make a significant investment in restarting production at a different location, RCA probably could not justify the expense based on the much lower sales volume of the 45-only players by that time. The 45 players were history, and the stereo 45 player along with it.

-David

I wondered if RCA considered the loss a blessing in disguise. I also wondered if the loss could have been something more sinister.

The same thought crossed my mind.

-David