Barry
17-09-2020, 14:33
Replacing inner sleeves
I have spent the last couple of days examining, and replacing where needed, the inner sleeves of the records in my collection.
What prompted this activity was a recent visit to a charity shop where I bought some LPs. Normally I don’t bother looking at LPs in charity shops as they are usually, shall we say, not to my taste. But I had some time to kill, so rooted through the box and found a clutch of classical records on good labels ((Decca ) Argo, Philips and EMI), recorded in the ‘60s by well regarded performers. The fact that the condition of the outer sleeves was very good, suggested that the previous owner had looked after them. Even so, I carefully checked the vinyl surface on three of four of the records and found them to be clean and free of any marks or scratches; so I assumed the rest would be in an equally good condition.
When I got home I had a good look at my purchases, and found to my horror that those that used a PVC lined inner sleeve, the PVC had stuck to the record and needed to be peeled away very carefully, which in one instance meant destroying the inner sleeve. Worse still, those records where this had happened (on the Decca Argo label) were left with a ‘mottled’ appearance and were very noisy. Careful cleaning by hand (using an RCM was only partially successful) removed both the mottling and the surface noise: laborious, but in the end effective.
This got me thinking about the rest of the records in my collection that use PVC lined inner sleeves, so I did a bit of reading around on the web. It would seem that the problem has been known about for a long time. What happens is that in order to make the PVC softer and suppler than the PVC of the record that it is intended to protect, plasticizers are added to the sleeve lining plastic. With time (and this means something like 50 years), the plasticizer will leech out and start to attack the PVC of the record itself, making the record surface stick to the lining of the inner sleeve. The phenomenon is exacerbated by heat, humidity and more importantly by high contact pressure, caused by storing records too tightly together.
It would seem the record industry in the ‘70s and ‘80s became aware of this problem and replaced the PVC with polyethylene or polypropylene (the harder plastic used in envelope windows). So I decided to order some new inner sleeves with polypropylene liners.
Now I do have some Nagaoka No. 102 inner sleeves. These are the type which have a circular shape at the base to fit the record, but I find they easily crumple when the record and inner sleeve is placed in the outer sleeve; even if the existing inner sleeve is used. Incidentally the best inner sleeves are IMO, those by either Discwasher VRP or MoFi. The very best were E-STAT: a very soft carbon-fibre loaded paper sleeve, which helps neutralise static. Distributed in the UK by Tannoy, they were very expensive and are sadly now no longer obtainable.
So I have been going through my collection to replace the PVC-lined inners, and notice that the worse culprit in their use are Decca in all its incarnations (Argo, Ace of Clubs, Ace of Diamonds), and Polydor. I also replaced all those unlined paper sleeves where the inner sides are unglazed, or the sleeve is creased, dirty, discoloured, ‘foxed’, or has the corners folded. Unlike record collectors who want and seek out the original inner sleeves that may, or may not, promote other titles in the label’s catalogue for the sake of completeness, my records are there to be played and not displayed. All of which means after 500 new inner sleeves, I’m only a fraction of a way through the project.
I have spent the last couple of days examining, and replacing where needed, the inner sleeves of the records in my collection.
What prompted this activity was a recent visit to a charity shop where I bought some LPs. Normally I don’t bother looking at LPs in charity shops as they are usually, shall we say, not to my taste. But I had some time to kill, so rooted through the box and found a clutch of classical records on good labels ((Decca ) Argo, Philips and EMI), recorded in the ‘60s by well regarded performers. The fact that the condition of the outer sleeves was very good, suggested that the previous owner had looked after them. Even so, I carefully checked the vinyl surface on three of four of the records and found them to be clean and free of any marks or scratches; so I assumed the rest would be in an equally good condition.
When I got home I had a good look at my purchases, and found to my horror that those that used a PVC lined inner sleeve, the PVC had stuck to the record and needed to be peeled away very carefully, which in one instance meant destroying the inner sleeve. Worse still, those records where this had happened (on the Decca Argo label) were left with a ‘mottled’ appearance and were very noisy. Careful cleaning by hand (using an RCM was only partially successful) removed both the mottling and the surface noise: laborious, but in the end effective.
This got me thinking about the rest of the records in my collection that use PVC lined inner sleeves, so I did a bit of reading around on the web. It would seem that the problem has been known about for a long time. What happens is that in order to make the PVC softer and suppler than the PVC of the record that it is intended to protect, plasticizers are added to the sleeve lining plastic. With time (and this means something like 50 years), the plasticizer will leech out and start to attack the PVC of the record itself, making the record surface stick to the lining of the inner sleeve. The phenomenon is exacerbated by heat, humidity and more importantly by high contact pressure, caused by storing records too tightly together.
It would seem the record industry in the ‘70s and ‘80s became aware of this problem and replaced the PVC with polyethylene or polypropylene (the harder plastic used in envelope windows). So I decided to order some new inner sleeves with polypropylene liners.
Now I do have some Nagaoka No. 102 inner sleeves. These are the type which have a circular shape at the base to fit the record, but I find they easily crumple when the record and inner sleeve is placed in the outer sleeve; even if the existing inner sleeve is used. Incidentally the best inner sleeves are IMO, those by either Discwasher VRP or MoFi. The very best were E-STAT: a very soft carbon-fibre loaded paper sleeve, which helps neutralise static. Distributed in the UK by Tannoy, they were very expensive and are sadly now no longer obtainable.
So I have been going through my collection to replace the PVC-lined inners, and notice that the worse culprit in their use are Decca in all its incarnations (Argo, Ace of Clubs, Ace of Diamonds), and Polydor. I also replaced all those unlined paper sleeves where the inner sides are unglazed, or the sleeve is creased, dirty, discoloured, ‘foxed’, or has the corners folded. Unlike record collectors who want and seek out the original inner sleeves that may, or may not, promote other titles in the label’s catalogue for the sake of completeness, my records are there to be played and not displayed. All of which means after 500 new inner sleeves, I’m only a fraction of a way through the project.