RCA Dynaflex vinyl - really that bad?

Orange RCA label started late 1968 (LSP 4000-4460s) pressed on stiff non flexible vinyl.
From 1971 through 1976 (LSP 4460s-1039) the same orange label was in effect but with "dynaflex" printed at the bottom. Most earlier titles were also reissued on thin flexible vinyl.
During 1975 -1976 the label was light brown. Sometime in 1976 the label became black again with Nipper located in the upper right.

 

I thought the 'tan' or brown label era lasted a bit longer than just one year but I could be wrong. It's hard to tell at this point. But it is safe to say that any tan label won't be 'dynaflex', as they had settled on a thicker (and rather inconsistent IMHO) vinyl by then.

The earliest 'dynaflex' I own isn't labeled as such. It's a 1969 'Victrola' reissue of Verdi's Aida recorded in the mid-50s. The vinyl is extremely thin but sounds very good. I'm assuming they might have rolled out the thin vinyl on Camden and Victrola pressings before going all out, but that's sort of a guess on my part.

dan c

 

Dynaflex...sometimes it's all one can get!

As a newly minted member of this forum, I want to thank all who welcomed me and I have to say this place is addicting!

I have loved a specific reading of Tchaikovsky's Romeo & Juliet for over 50 years.........Munch's recording on RCA LM2043. This is a mono Lp, but a stereo version also existed at the time but only on RCA two-track tape BCS-22.

Years later this work was issued on Lp.......but not 'shaded dog' pressings...rather on a thick deep purple Victrola...(1966)....this was followed by a Dynaflex pressing in 1972.

I have to say that I have the two-track version and both stereo pressings...the Dynaflex version is not bad, in fact to my ears it is as good as it's 1966 plum label brother. So if the earlier version is impossible to locate the Dynaflex pressing will not be an embarrassment to most music lovers, as opposed to hard-core 'philes.

 

1975-1976 is a bit longer than one year.
My source: Goldmine Price Guide.
Example:
Bowie RCA tan label: Young Americans, Station To Station, and ChangesOneBowie.

 

The notation on the labels remained, but by that time the pressing itself should be heavier/stiffer than an actual Dynaflex pressing from the earlier '70's.

 

Thanks for that.

Thats my recollection and what I've noticed about the pressings. I stated Dynaflex lasted until maybe 1973 or thereabouts - when they became somewhat thicker again. (Based on my experience) They were still flexible.... but similar to most other vinyl of the era. Jefferson Starship or Bowie pressings of the 1973-76 era are a good example.

When I think of Dynaflex, I think of those crazy thin pressings that practically sag when you're holding them in your hands.

 

From the Dynaflex time period, there were a bunch of Motown LP's being pressed by RCA that recieved the same floppy treatment (albeit uncredited).

 

I never owned any Dynaflex or Dynagroove LP's, I only saw them years later in used record stores, and they looked like the most cheaply made vinyl I had ever seen. They weren't too many pop groups on RCA in the 1960's when I bought most of my albums, and that's probably fortunate.

 

This is correct, still very thin but cannot bent this LP into a tube.

Played this one and does not seem to have the same vinyl quality as the true Dyna flex pressings did.

 

AES article on RCA's 90g records

"A New Profile for LP Records." Warren Rex Isom. JAES July/Aug 1971 (v19 #7) p590-93.

Those of you with AES access are recommended to hunt down this article. I think it has some bearing on the Dynaflex debate. Isom was the Chief Engineer at RCA at the time. A summary:

• A new 90-gram pressing profile was developed in-house by RCA. It was surreptitiously used in RCA releases (possibly without fanfare) numbering about 5 million total by September 1970 (when the preprint was published). So one can make the educated guess that perhaps the low-weight profile was used starting in 1969.
• The 90g profile was 30 mils thick at the thinnest point instead of 50 grams. So this isn't thin enough to explain away the pressings that people could read a newspaper through, but it was still thin enough to be noticably floppier.
• The 90 gram profile is vastly superior to the standard 135 gram profile in terms of actual pressing quality. The number of blisters and pops for a test pressing was reduced from 20 to 0. (They were counted by placing the records in an oven and heating them for a while until the blisters inside the record bubbled up to the surface.) The vinyl material makes much better contact with the stampers. The mixing of the vinyl during pressing is much improved. There were several other advantages ascribed to the 90g records but these seemed like the two big ones to me.
• The primary reason for this change was for cost reasons (duh) but the point is explicitly made that the new profile is of a better quality than the 135g profile.
• Not a whole lot of discussion is given for how warping is affected. He does comment that some people complained about pinch warp, but does not indicate this is any worse as compared to a regular pressing.
• On record weights in general: "Experience, experimentation, and theory unanimously indicate that the moldability of a record is improved when its thickness has an optimum dimension. This is contrary to the thick-record tradition established in the shellac era as a hedge against breakage which identified thickness with quality." It's implied that this optimum dimension requires a record weight that is much lower than 135 grams.

My take on this:

• I strongly suspect that these 90g pressings are Dynaflex, because the timeframe of their introduction matches that of Dynaflex, and of their floppiness, although as I mentioned, it doesn't explain translucency of some Dynaflex pressings very well.
• I personally haven't listened to Dynaflex records, but I have listened to some pretty low-weight stuff and a lot of it is very good. In my experience, pressing weight have made no difference in sound quality.
• A lot of the pressing quality depends on how long you run the press on each record. It seems to me (and I am not a professional on this subject) is that if you let it press for a very long period of time, eventually all of the imperfections are going to bubble out no matter what thickness you use. But this isn't cost effective and you have to draw a line somewhere as to how long each record is pressed.
• The pressing problems ascribed to Classic Records over the years with their super-heavyweight pressings seem to be well ascribed to the issues that the 90g profile was supposed to eliminate. Ie, the existence of ticks and pops inherent in the pressing, excessive record warp, record noise, etc. Long story short, it seems reasonable to believe that they aren't pressing their records long enough.
• Some people have commented that Dynaflex records are far more susceptible to record warp when shrink-wrapped. This makes sense since the warp-reducing properties of a very floppy record may not matter at all when subjected to a compressive force. There's an easy fix for this, though - new records should not be shrink-wrapped.
• I don't know why RCA stopped doing Dynaflex records, if there were so many good reasons to release them. Especially since the price of oil kept increasing afterwards. I suspect that some production issue kept it from being performance-competitive, or that virgin vinyl finally turned out to be too expensive to use even at 90g or below compared to using reground vinyl, or that there were significant compatibility issues (ie the comment on 8" changers), or the buying public still believed that thin pressings = low quality, no matter if it was true or not.

In summary, this article was published at the very beginning of Dynaflex pressings, so obviously I'd take it with a grain of salt when discussing Dynaflex's deficiencies. But there appear to be very major objective design advantages to using it and I think it's worthwhile pointing that out.

Does anybody have an idea why RCA stopped using Dynaflex?

 

Consumer / retailer complaints? Excessive returns? I vaguely recall Dynaflex being made fun of or sometimes lambasted - maybe it was just the shops I was in then, and/or record collectors. Maybe some reviews I read. Perhaps another member has a better recollection....

 

Were actual Dynaflex pressings all the same weight/thickness from the different RCA plants?

 

Not necessarily. I.I.N.M., Rockaway, NJ pressings were thinnest of all, the Hollywood pressings were thickest (for what Dynaflex was, that is), and Indianapolis was somewhere in-between. And I have Dynaflex-pressed LP's from all three plants, thus am I able to tell y'all.

 

I always thought The Lodger was an american Sterling or Masterdisk cut...I have to look.

 

The light brown label sounds right. I've one of those for Pure Prairie League's 1975 LP "Two Lane Highway"...always has sounded good to me...best of all, in the deadwax it says "Wally"

 

I picked up a Canadian Lou Reed "Berlin" on Dynaflex today for £1, mainly because it was in a beautiful condition original US sleeve. I don't have a US original LP, but this thing totally destroys my UK original LP, Japanese 1982 LP, RCA 80s CD, and BMG remaster. It sounds bloody wonderful.

 

Yeah, I have a couple Bowie albums along with Mick Ronson's Slaughter on 10th Avenue on Dynaflex and they sound pretty nice.

 

Even though there seems to be a lot of love for Dynaflex in this thread, not all of them sounded good or even OK. I used to have the Dynaflex version of that psych band "Indian Summer" - terribly noisy. I eventually sold it and kept the CD.

 

Just listened to a Canadian pressing of Dando Shaft S/T on Dynaflex - sounded excellent! Quiet vinyl, full rich sound. Nice. I think the Dynaflex's vary quite a bit.

 

I just found a copy of Ziggy Stardust on Dynaflex vinyl with a tan label a few days ago. It's a really clean copy, the vinyl is very quiet, very flat, and I think it sounds great, but I don't have any other copies to compare it to.

 

The Nilsson Schmilsson DynaFlex does sound great and many of my country Dynagroove LPs are excellent sounding.

 

What are you playing the CD on? An 8 track perhaps

 

Your experience parallels my own.

Maybe they messed up some classical in the mastering for Dynaflex but the pop stuff was compressed already. Noisy surfaces are not what you hear in a Dynaflex pressing, it's dynamic range compression and the low bass was often missing.

 

My orange Dynaflex Ziggy Stardusts all sound great ... Lou's Transformer sounds similarly great ... I actually am psyched when I come across something and it has that sweet orange label with the Dynaflex tag ...