RECORD CENTRES. As you can see we are the sort who like to discover & research things as we see it, we notice it & remember it as a dealer oughta. Here we offer a little bit of unpublished nirvana about RECORD CENTRE ADAPTERS, the bain of record collectors for 50 years & the bad ones (which we'll note) have ruined many a picture sleeve & added a few scratches too! If only UK Decca hadn't seen those OC45 Capitol singles odds are all of Europe would have used large centres & the pain of losing half the value or more on a no-centre record would not exist! And neither would these little swines: as a dealer they are all over the place, they get in everywhere & end up blocking the Hoover even as they lurk on the floor! Look in any drawer & there one is lookin' at ya, even in a place records don't go they are found. The day you find one in your bed is time to seek help! Who was the insane decision made by to need a record with a centre in the UK? Why not leave them like 78/LP centres, but no, some RCA fool decided a 45 was to fit in the hand & the big hole to get his fat fingers in to grip save touching the playing surface! Still we'd not have pretty UK Red & White Motown demos etc. Read on if you have your sanity in check...

THE FIRST 7" ADAPTORS were made for the USA market & were imported into the UK. The now-notorious heavy cast aluminium WEBSTERS. They are best avoided as they warp or damage the record centre or even warp the whole record after 50 years of being in a USA record middle, as they only have a set thickness and are unbendable, ie they are suited to the thin early RCA 45s not thick Sun, Duke or Federals! These are hard to remove, it involves slightly bending your $3000 NM Elvis Sun 45 & pushing up from behind on the tab over the label in front of you and sliding the nasty thing along the direction of the bend crease, ie bend at the top & bottom edges & slide the adaptor gently left or right, do not push or force & they slide out easily. This has caused early 50s USA singles to get centre chips, often 2 of them across from each other by impatient music fans way back when!       Next also starting from the mid 50s we reckon came the pretty coloured USA-made ones with '45 RPM ADAPTOR' helpfully pressed on. These come in many shades from white to brown and almost black & we hear as they are numbered, certain cheery souls collect the whole number run, with the inevitable rare press mould code! These can be a bit fragile & the legs crack off so they are pretty hard to find as a whole. We have several of these if anyone wishes to buy.     You find a black cardboard adaptor in the early 60s, that are similar to the plastic ones shown, assuming they are not UK made or even EU made as we've found them in early 60s European EPs, no sure way to tell as no info can be found. These have an embossed bump for autochangers. The card ones aren't easily found and are prone to going out of shape & falling out, even when new as you find them taped into UK 45s. There are plenty more 50s USA centres that did not make it to the UK that use various odd methods to stop slipping on autochangers, as an article in US price guides showed.

THE FIRST UK ADAPTORS were for sale as an accessory and are likely the USA type ones mentioned above, no UK records were sold with an adaptor until the Philips group in 1967 with the skinny adaptors noted below. The EMI group 1952-53 ones with large centres as made were sold like that, until the 4 prong centre arrived in early-mid 1953.      The appealing thick one 1st on the left below are the first certain to be UK made type to turn up regularly from about 1963 & were used by the Ex-Jukebox selling companies as the NOC records with these adaptors were often found still together in their Jukebox printed sleeves. These are clearly UK product as never seen in records you buy or see from the USA. Previously the coloured USA plastic ones as above or black cardboard ones are found, or horror-of-horrors some fool ripped a middle out of another record & sellotaped it in sadly found from about 1957 on as 45s became the format as 78s faded out. These 1st ones are the best UK ones as they fit any 45 & turntable spindle exactly & we liked these for our UK 45s sans middle as they stay put & are accurate. Note only a small knobbly bit that doesn't cause problems if storing 45s in card sleeves. Not great for EP sleeves though as they press a mark through. Variations on this come with slight recesses along the legs the 2nd one, a thinner bendier versions. The pointy bit (which was supposed to lock with another record on an autochanger to stop skidding) had grown much longer on the 4th one & is pretty nasty for picture sleeves as it goes right through & crappy to use as the centre hole is too loose resulting in slight off-centre playing or bad for cueing on slip mats, as is with the 3rd, 4th & 5th ones. Then comes a more recent typical ex-jukebox shop types centre shown as the 4th & 5th one. You could buy the 3rd in WHSmith etc in the early 80s. These were replaced by the 'pointless' last one, which was probably still the version you get buying new now, though we rember first seeing it around 1984 in ex-jukebox sale boxes newsagents used to have. Those boxes used to mostly have hits, though we bought much older titles like Spencer Davis Group 1966 & even saw a Tony Osbourne 1959 track no-one wanted for 45p!

THE LAST GROUP are the Phonodisc/Polygram skinny adaptors that were issued with the large-centre UK (& European 45s) from 1967 to 1972. You could buy them seperately as ads on LP inner sleeves show. The early ones are the best as no raised pointy bits & they fit USA 45s nicely, we used these on our USA 45s in days of collecting (ago). These were also used across Europe & later versions (possibly non Polygram-made) were thicker with raised pointy bits & also an angle to the edge as the 3rd one shows. Only the smooth ones are suitable for picture sleeves. The middle one is pretty useless as it's way too big for nearly all records & the thick legs make it very hard to insert. They can all easily get the legs snapped off if you aren't careful & look best in a 'T' design looking like a strongman. Only this way looks cool, other ways look naff!