They are generally much thicker, and were originally made from shellac, hence why they were considered too unsafe and thus brought out of mass production. This was the original size of the vinyl disc, wherein they would be spun on record players at 78 rpm, the proposed ideal speed by Emile Berliner, though a speed that not all turntables can handle these days.

Many manufacturers do not even produce them anymore, hence why there is such a lack of an in between size on the vinyl market. You are far less likely to find a 10 inch record out and about, unless you are on a particularly thorough sojourn of crate digging or storing records of old. I suppose it is not hard to see why this might be of use to some, where the binaries of 12 inch and 7 inch records at their regular speeds simply do not offer an in-between upon which to hold an apposite body of music. That being said, there are a number of releases (however small) that use 7 inch vinyl records at 33 rpm, though they are exceedingly rare. The higher speed is supposedly better for the sound quality of the music imbibed within the grooves, hence why the original progenitor of the gramophone, Emile Berliner, believed that the optimum speed for audio quality was around 80 rpm, and hence why 78 rpm was the go to speed at which to play records for such a long time. This size of vinyl record is almost certainly going to be played at 45 rpm, having become the standard speed for this kind of disc in the middle of the 20th century. The lines are not so clear cut, however, as there exist such things as 12 inch singles, which instead of holding a whole album seek to play an extended mix of a single or simply hold a longer form song without sacrificing any of the sound quality.įor this reason, a 12 inch single record spins at 45 rpm usually, particularly popular among various styles of dance music, where the audio quality over massive speakers is integral to the sanctity of the vibes. In fact, the term single comes from these days, when a single set of songs would be held on these 7 inch discs and played at 45 rpm for the sake of higher audio quality. Where 12 inch vinyl records are traditionally used to hold longer form releases like albums or EPs, the 7-inch has come to hold shorter releases, like shorter EPs and singles.

The 7 inch record comes with the task of holding sound from quite a different angle. This tradition continues to this day, where the dichotomy of 33 vs 45 vinyl comes to symbolize the parallel dichotomy between 12-inch records and 7-inch records. This harkens back to the early days of vinyl technology when Columbia Records began selling these larger discs under the pretext that they could hold significantly more music than any other existing disc at the time, including a whole range of vinyl record types. A record played at 33 rpm will tend to be around 12 inches, in fact. Generally, a record played at 33 rpm will be larger than a record intended to be played at 45 rpm. One of the central differences between 33 vs 45 vinyl rpm is the respective sizes of these kinds of vinyl record speeds.

33 rpm record player