Unusual types of gramophone records

The only common exception to this is the 7-inch 45 rpm record, which was designed with a center hole slightly more than 1+1⁄2 in (38 mm) in diameter both for convenience in handling and to accommodate a very fast record-changing mechanism contained inside a correspondingly large spindle, as implemented in RCA Victor's early stand-alone "45" players.

Early on, some 78 rpm records had larger holes in freebie marketing schemes that sold a phonograph cheaply, but required purchase of compatible discs at full-price.

This concept has been extended to the production of records consisting entirely of circular multiple bands to provide collections of infinite loop sound samples of duration limited to one revolution of the disc.

Lead-in groove length, positioning, and motion varied by manufacturer and era, with some moving slower (some requiring several revolutions before encountering audio) and others being very short and jerky.

King Crimson's USA, George Harrison's Wonderwall Music, and the Dead Kennedys' Plastic Surgery Disasters all start in the lead-in groove.

[24] Their most famous was a three-track Puzzle Plate (9317) given as prize for a competition in 1901, for which many master recordings had to be made, distinguished by suffix letters against the catalogue number.

The opening track of Zacherle's 1962 LP Scary Tales consisted of three parallel grooves of the same song, each containing different lyrics (an assortment of humorous, macabre retellings of Mother Goose rhymes).

It had eight interlaced grooves, each track starts with the same happy and upbeat "Super Spectacular Day" beginning of the song but have eight different dark and gloomy endings.

[27][28] In the 1980s, Rhino Records re-released the Henny Youngman comedy album 128 Greatest Jokes as a series of concentric grooves, which they call a "Trick-Track Master".

[29] UK punk rocker Johnny Moped's debut album Cycledelic has a lead track with a parallel groove listed on the label as "0.

[31] It featured Noel Whitcomb, a well-known horse-racing commentator of the day and the game revolved around betting which "horse" would win the race on that occasion.

A commercially unsuccessful extension of the system introduced grooves nearly twice as fine as those of microgroove LPs, yielding playing times of up to 20 minutes per side at 80 rpm and again requiring a special diamond stylus.

It was intended that the buyer purchase an adapter from Cook Laboratories or a tonearm from Livingston that allowed two cartridges to be mounted together, with the proper spacing, on a single tone arm.

Highway Hi-Fi was a system of proprietary records and players designed for use in automobiles, utilizing a slower play speed and high stylus pressure.

[citation needed] Laminated cardboard records have been produced as integral promotional novelties on packaging, most notably on the backs of cereal boxes in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The recordings were pressed on very thin, flexible sheets of vinyl (or laminated paper), providing a mixture of economy, practical utility and novelty appeal.

These bound-in thin plastic 331⁄3 rpm audio recordings stored computer data such as video game programs that would be played on a turntable and dubbed onto a cassette.

[40][41] In the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1960s, bootleg copies of banned Western music were individually recorded onto used medical x-ray film and sold on the black market.

In 1983, American post-punk band Talking Heads released the album Speaking in Tongues; a limited number of copies were pressed on clear vinyl and included in an elaborate plastic case designed by Robert Rauschenberg.

In late 2010 – early 2011, dubstep artist Skrillex released a limited 500 copy run of his EP Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites on 12-inch glow-in-the-dark vinyl.

Most of these early picture discs were simply a very thin clear plastic laminated onto a sheet of printed cardboard before being stamped in a record press.

Some suffered from audible defects such as low-frequency noise due to a surface texture or were rapidly worn to shreds by the very heavy pickups and crude steel needles used to play records at that time.

[citation needed] Some extreme examples required smaller grooving than standard 7-inch such as the single "Montana" by John Linnell (of the band They Might Be Giants) which was in the shape of the United States.

Alternative rock band Snow Patrol released a specially created web-shaped vinyl for the single "Signal Fire," a song which was used in the film Spider-Man 3.

Earliest records produced by Emile Berliner, and those by other early companies as Zonophone before paper labels were widely used, had their titles and other information etched or incised into the master, or embossed into the stamper (or both) – either way therefore appearing on all the pressings.

After having already released both colored vinyl singles and picture discs in the 1980s, Canadian rock artist Bryan Adams issued a 12" single of "Can't Stop This Thing We Started" in autumn 1991, which had the front cover photography etched onto side B. Coheed and Cambria released their fourth album Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World for Tomorrow with side four having etched artwork on it incorporating the band's logo.

The 1980 A&M Records LP of Split Enz's album True Colours was remarkable not only for its multiple cover releases (in different color patterns), but for the laser-etching process used on the vinyl.

First US vinyl pressings of American rock band Rage Against the Machine's third studio album, The Battle of Los Angeles, have a faint etching of the graffiti outline featured on the cover.

The short BASIC program shows a static screen containing a lightly paraphrased quotation from Albert Einstein and a Biblical verse (John 14:27).

One of the many features added to the vinyl version of Jack White's 2014 album Lazaretto is a floating hologram image of a spinning angel that appears when the record is played and viewed at from a certain angle.