What you don't know is that Fran is one hundred and seventeen years old! She talks about all this stuff (music history, electronics, rockets, and more) like she experienced it all first hand. She is clearly brilliant! She talks about minute details from 50 years ago like she just experienced it yesterday. Amazing.

I love Fran, she is so smart and natural on camera. Funny and charming. I was a professional recording engineer in a past life and Fran you took me down memory lane. You enrich our lives by keeping the amazing accomplishments of the past alive. You are my hero like Mr. Wizard was.

I was born in 1951 and by the time I was in grade school, I was listening to my older sister playing 45’s on her little record player - very similar to the one you have here. I also remember feeding quarters into juke boxes that played 45’s. Half the fun was watching that machine select the record and move it to the turntable. I’m so glad that because of recording technology, music has been a huge part of my life, from a very early age right up through the present. Thanks for posting this and bringing back some wonderful memories.

Ive just been watching LIFE AFTER FRAN LAB. When you said you are not young or pretty, well i think you are a very nice lady and i love watching Fran lab. Keep smiling and keep safe.

We love you, Fran

Thank you Fran that was riveting , I learned such a lot , you are a great teacher,yes please , more on the other formats of record💐

Fran. I could listen to you talk for days. The amount of knowledge jammed into that head of yours is exquisite.

An *OUTSTANDING* presentation. Thank you!

Yay I have another favorite vintage music channel to enjoy! Fran seems very warm and friendly and, most importantly, informative. Keep up the great work!

Who remembers the 45 inserts that would let you play a 45 RPM record on a regular record player? Better still who remembers the "spindle" adapter that would slip over the 33 1/3 spindle and allow you to stack up 45's?

Fran, my friends and I have noticed that you are very natural in your delivery, never rushed, and even with some fairly technical things you never get above our comprehension, which really makes science enjoyable. Keep doing what you do, you are a positive force here!

I remember these 45 RPM records when I was a kid. To play them on a conventional phonograph (equipped with a 45 RPM speed setting), you could get an adaptor which clipped into the big hole to allow them to be played on the thinner spindle. Later phonographs came with their own adaptor which could be used as needed.

I guess.... orange was the new black...

That was definitely the most interesting 20 minutes I have spent on KZfaq this year! Thanks Fran!

"Oh we got both kinds, we got country AND western!"

~ Love history! Love music history and records even more! Very interesting, 45s ARE STILL BEING MADE and they remain fascinating, and thank you, you rock! Cheers, DAVEDJ ~

Fantastic. My First 45 was Blondie's "Heart of Glass," and my Second was Santa Esmeralda's "Don't let me be Misunderstood." Gerry Rafferty's "Right Down the Line" was the third. Good memories you have brought me. I played those alot!

Love it. I've been collecting vinyl since '75 and knew a little bit on how it was/is made, but I learned SO much more from this video. Please keep it up!

At a garage sale I held I had a portable phonograph out on a table playing a stack of 45's. A kid stood watching it in wonderment. After a few minutes he asked what it was. I said it's a device and that's my playlist. Oh...........wow. Priceless moment.

Fran, thank for taking the time to do this video! Having been born in 1955, 78's 45's & 33's are a major part of my life! .This video is right up my alley! Thanks again! I also purchased that same RCA 45 RPM player at a Los Angeles flea market for $5.00 some 38 years ago.I still have it.

Fun fact: The first 33⅓ RPM 12-inch records on the consumer market were actually introduced by RCA Victor in 1931. They were called "Program Transcription" records and could hold up to 15 minutes of music per side. But these records sounded bad, wore out quickly, and required expensive new machines to play them, which people couldn't afford during the Great Depression, so the format was a commercial failure and was discontinued in 1936.

Fran actually does a good presentation and lecture. It's a friendly and informative little documentary. Better than some professionals. Nothing stuffy in her presentation -- she is prepared and she segues between subjects keeping the conversation interesting. You can tell she has a passion for her subject. If I met her in high school or college this young lady would have been one of my favorite "girlfriends." She knows her stuff. She actually looks too young to really have lived when these records were popular. Nevertheless, she is sharp on the subject of 45 nostalgia. Next time she should mention or included that some 45-sized records were EPs (RCA I believe) -- 4 songs at 33 rpm with a small hole but the size of a 45 record. Several Elvis Presley EP's were released this way. I have some with country singer Jim Reeves and some European records. Great cardboard color sleeves. There must be a reason for this marketing move. Maybe they were trying to introduce a possible stereo 45 eventually. I like that when she talks she can actually show a good example of the machines and how they operated. This video was produced well enough to show students in a school if a music teacher wanted to include the history of records. Her explanation of how the records are cut and why is very good. There isn't anything she said that is inaccurate. High fidelity! Wow...nice explanation. RCA also introduced Dyna-vinyl which was flimsy and I think it was manufactured at their Camden, NJ pressing plant. It was supposed to prevent warpage when in the sleeve. Later, LP's were put into plastic sleeves instead of paper. I enjoyed Fran for the whole 21 minutes. I'd listen to any explanation she tapes -- she has a good clear speaking voice.

Thank you, Fran. You're always so knowledgeable, and I enjoyed learning about this. Another beneficial factor of 45s and teenagers is economics. When I began buying records, it was 1968, I was twelve, and a 45s cost less than a dollar. I remember .78 cents being common. And some 45s would be marked down based on their salability. Your video here came up as a suggestion because earlier I'd watched a film made by RCA in late 1948, early 1949, introducing the new 45 RPM record format, as well as the player that you have on the desk. The film included two other 45 RPM players available to accommodate different uses. One of these was a non-amplified version that plugged into a home system that was common at the time, consisting of an AM-FM Radio and a non-45 RPM record player, installed into various styles of cabinets. Per your mention of the new 45 RPM format being released on March 31, 1949. Perhaps RCA felt that the 31st was much better than April 1st, since that's April Fool's Day.

Even though I know most of this, I must say its superbly presented in a non patronising way, I bought many records in the late 50s and early 60s

Great video! Thanks so much for all the info.

Really enjoyable Fran. the in depth stuff on the cutting engineer was excellent & unknown to me before.. keep em coming.

My Mom grew up living next door to a jukebox record dealer that would sell all the used records to neighborhood kids for a $0.25 each. I spent many nights in the 80's listening to her collection. Sadly, I sold my little General Electric portable player when we moved to a new city and my parent's sold off most of their collection to a local music store. When they went through their records, they found many of the 78's had fractured. She kept her 45's in an "AMfile Platter Pack". Wonderful memories.

Hi Fran, I am very pleased to have bumped into you.

I like how the tech that I grew up with is now antique and in need of detailed explanation. I asked a young man on craigslist if the turntable he was selling had a needle on it. He said he didn't know and he asked me where to look for it.

A big factor in the decline of dedicated 45 RPM players in the late '50s was the advent of transistor radios and Top 40 radio stations. Now kids could hear their kind of music anywhere, anytime, from a small battery-powered radio. It was as revolutionary as the Walkman was in the '80s.

As a budding sound engineer and lifelong musician… I learned more in this video about frequency perception and sound engineering basics than in all the “engineering” videos I’ve watched. So very interesting! Thanks Fran!

Great mention of compression and the RIAA curve, which was explained to me by my dad when he built a home HeathKit amp for our Garrard turntable, It had no radio tuner, but we used it for all the new “Microgroove” recordings, staying away from stereo, keeping to mono. Love your discussion. You are so well informed.

Dear Fran, thank you for this very interesting talk. My wife and I are 68 and 63 years old, and remember the 45 era very well. I was interested in Rock and Roll for about a month when I was 8, and listened to my cousin's 45s with my favorite aunt, many times. I had a Webcor portable record player, like many kids had back then. A few years later, pop music started coming out on 33's. As you know, these were called albums, the word being derived from the actual albums that 78s came in, which, I assume got THEIR name from photo albums. My family was into classical, so many of our recordings came in albums, since a symphony might need 6 or 8 sides. Anyway, what I think is interesting is, that after the 45 began to fall out of use, the R&R songs continued to be only 2-3 minutes long, on the new LPs. (When I was 9 I abandoned R&R for classical, and later jazz, and by that time those musics were mostly on LPs) Anyway, keep up the good work, and thanks.

This is extremely interesting!!!! Thank you very much, Fran!!!!

Thank you for this most interesting video. I started my technical career in the Radio Bantu Studio in 1969. ( Then apartheid South Africa) We had two disc cutting lathes in "Main Control" which were used for cutting the adverts played on air. The 33RPM discs we used were laquer coated aluminium. (We used to peel off the coating of old discs and used the aluminium for project chassies. (I recently used the last disc from my junk pile to make cylinder head gasket for my 1955 Ariel motorcycle!) (I am 72 years old now) I love your videos - thanks so much!

I love anything analog and have 6000+ lps and 1200+ 45's, so naturally I love Fran's presentation. Thank you Fran

Fran-tastic video! I learned a lot I never knew about vinyl records.

Every single thing that I ever wanted to know that I actually wanted to know about the 45rpm record. Thank you Fran! Can't wait for the 33 and a third rpm record history lesson. Now I know why my Beach Boys 20 Golden Greats lp that I was given in 1976 sounded so terrible due to the poor dynamic range. Excellent stuff!!!

Finally! All my questions about the format are answered. So glad you made this vid. So glad I found it.

That was the same 45 rpm player my Mom bought for college (back in 1949)...and then, in the 60's, my brother and I enjoyed it. The Beatles 45's sure sounded magical on that little machine. Thanks for sharing.

Awesome! I was a DJ for American Forces Radio when vinyl was still king and thought I knew everything about vinyl records and pressings. Great coverage Fran! Makes me want to go don to the basement and dig out my old 45s (most are the promotional cuts from Billboard and Radio and Record Mag) and play them for old time sake. I also have an untrimmed gold master record used to press one side of a 33 RPM disk.

Just randomly stumbled upon this, very informative! Thank you, Great Video!

I restored my Seeburg Model 100B jukebox and used it in our Wholly Cow frozen custard store in Lawrenceville, GA. We closed our business in 2002 but that jukebox was the favorite of every kid that came in. "Splish Splash by Bobby Darin was the most played song. The juke was filled with mostly 60's 45's and all the coins deposited were pure profit as well as delighting our customers. I love your videos. - John

You are a treasure here on KZfaq...the way you explain and share your knowledge is just amazing. First... Bravo for collecting these priceless moments in time. I'm 64 and I remember playing my 45 copy of Roy Orbison's "Oh Pretty Woman" on my parents Magnavox Combo TV/ Hi Fi Mono Record Player Console when I was 8 years old. I then had so many other 45's before I saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan . 1964 ...from Roy to The British Invasion !!! Juke Boxes where everywhere and my parents loose change was all I needed !!!

You're one of the most interesting people I've found in quite a while. I love your content!

Nice job. Might as well discuss the LP 's and 78s now. 😉

Awesome video Fran! Made me feel young again, flashing back to my days in my basement going through banana boxes of 45, and 12 inch LPs. Thanks for bringing back the memories. My father was born in 12' and I was blessed with hearing music from the 30's on up. Spent the weekends just listening to music, we looked forward to it, we were never bored as I hear so many kids and adults say today. I think, how are you bored with all these world of wonders. I say we had this and that and were happy with it, you have the world in the palm of your hands with today's technology and science knowledge available to you. All you need is a stack of 45s and a player = Good times Love ya! And Enjoy your videos and your wealth of knowledge you kindly share!

Great presentation! I grew up with music from my Dad and Mom.They had stuff from when ever going intro the thirties, forties and fifties.Wow,78's 10" and 12" singles, 10" and 12" lps. You are so good.

Thanks Fran - that was very interesting and informative. Thanks for being smart and sharing your interests!

Hi Fran, I worked in the Audio and Hi Fi trade for most of my life. I didn't know a lot of what you told us about in this video. I did know about the Fletcher Munson curve and we were told this was what the loudness control on a lot of amplifiers was for to basically compensate for how our ears responded to sound and volume. Yamaha came out with a novel approach to this problem by having a variable loudness control. Thanks again for a very informative video. I didn't know that the RIAA system only came into use latter on as records and recordings became better. Thank again and keep these video coming.

Hi Fran, LOVED your piece on 45 records! I am now 75, but when I was a teenager, I had a stack of 45's AS TALL AS ME! Then when I left home, my younger brother (and his friends) invented the Frisbee...WITH MY RECORDS! Keep up the good work, and best regards, Peter Simmons Hendersonville, TN

This was how I made a playlist back when I was a kid. Stack 'em up!

Thanks, Fran, very cool info. I was especially interested to learn about RCA's color coding system, which explains why those little box sets of classical 45s (the equivalent of the original book-style 78 rpm "albums") were pressed in red. I have just one in my collection: Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" on five red vinyl 45s on RCA Red Seal.

When I was a teenager, I had an old console TV/record player (TV missing) that would play 78, 45, 33⅓, & 16 rpm. Them old Mel Blanc Bugs Bunny 78s sure sounded funny on 16rpm.

Outstanding presentation - so thorough! In that era, my older sister had the 45s and phonograph for them. I had a mechanical player for 78s which I bought at church rummage sales. Today I have exactly one 45 of The Ronettes (and no 78s).

I grew up with 45s, so this video brought back a lot of memories. Thanks Fran.

On the subject of equalization, StuderSSL had the story right. Instead of active compansion, it was a simple boost/cut method to ensure that the bass would fit into the groove, and the high frequency noise would be made less objectionable. The trouble was in the early days, the record labels couldn't come to a consensus as to how much boost and cut they would use, and where they would place the corners of the curves. Thus early Hi-Fi preamps like the Marantz Model 1 and Heathkit WA-P2 sported labels such as, Columbia, London FFRR, AES, NARTB, Old 78, RIAA, (RCA New) Ortho(phonic), and others. In 1954 the Record Industry Association of America decided that they​ would adopt the RCA New Orthophonic (literally "straight sound") curve as the standard. Despite the selection of a standard, many preamps and amps still carried the selection switches for a few years longer. One example of this was the McIntosh C-20 "Record Compensator" which was released in the early days of the stereo era. In the consumer world, actual companders didn't really exist on a wide scale until the seventies, with noise reduction systems like Burwen. In the dawn of the Hi-Fi era, noise reduction as such usually amounted to a simple​ high cut "scratch" filter. The notable exception was Hermon Scott's Dynaural noise reduction system. This split the audio into two bands, each of these would be treated by a variable filter, depending upon the program material. The consumer version of this system had only the HF filter, LF would be passed through untouched. HHScott made several pieces with Dynaural, the last was a stereo preamp with the filter gate action visible on EM84 magic eye tubes. Unfortunately Scott didn't license Dynaural to any other manufacturers.

That was pretty good. I remember being able to hear adjoining grooves sometimes i.e. the grooves were so close together you'd actually be able to hear bleed through from the next groove. I hope I described that all right.

When I was ten, I got a portable record player for my birthday, but I had no records to play on it, so on that same birthday, my mom took me to the store to pick out one record (one only) to get my record collection started. The #1 single on the charts that had just been released was The Beatles 45-rpm of Help! on the A-side and I'm Down on the B-side. My mom bought it for me and I was in heaven playing those two songs over and over and over. Maybe because of that day, Help! is still my favorite Beatles song and I still feel excited when I hear Paul singing I'm Down.

You are a delightful person Fran and I love watching and listening to your videos.

This is fascinating! I don't know anything about anything on this topic but I find it super interesting. Great video :-)

Love the Scott Walker album in the background.

I learned something new today about records, which I've been collecting for around 50 years...Knew about variable pitch lathes but was never aware of the 1-rotation delay, which of course makes sense but I had never heard about before. Wunnerful, thanks!

I am impressed. Wish I could have a soda pop with you - just to sit and talk. Thanks for the effort and the education. Great job.

I enjoyed this a lot, thanks Fran.

Awesome video!... As the saying goes: "...video it and they shall watch!" :P well, maybe that's not how the saying goes, but you have my vote on more videos like this type of content. Again, it was awesome, thank you!

You just reminded me of the large tv/sound system combo we had when I was a kid in the 70's. Maybe 6 feet large, had a radio on the top left and a 78RPM/45RPM/33.3RPM turntable on the top right, large b/w TV in the middle front, one speaker each side. I remember when you trned the TV off, the image would scale down to a dot in the middle which remained lit for half a minute, slowly dimming as the capacitors slowly discharged. The old beast was made with lamps. We got our first color TV in the late 70's (78 or 79?) a Zenith that proudly showed "solid state", and which after a few years needed "tough love" (a good slap on the right side) to start displaying an image. A component card inside came off with repeated heating/cooling cycles, and needed some persuasion to make contact properly. At first we only had 2 tv channels: SRC (French Canadian CBC) from Rouyn-Noranda and CBC from Ontario (Timmins?), which showed really snowy. In the 80's we had a lot of new channels: we got Télé Métropole from Montreal (TVA's ancestor), and Radio-Québec (Télé-Québec's ancestor), all re-broadast from Mont-Vidéo near Barraute. In the late 80's we even got a 5th channel. When I say this to kids nowadays, it's like i talk about rotary phones :-D

The volume control design specs were ingenious for the time. Great video and topic. There was a lot presented here that I really didn't know. Thank you Fran,

Not only were the 78 and 45 different in composition but also in the way the grooves were cut. 78's had a "hill & dale" or vertical up & down. The 45's had a side to side. The 78 tended to shear off the top of the groove every time it was played. Great video

Whenever I see translucent red vinyl, I think of the red Nazz album.

I think you will all agree - We love Fran!

Great video Fran. I so wanted the 45-EY-2 when I was a kid. My parents got me a brief case type model with a white tone arm and spindle top which I used until the electronics died at which point I built a base for the record changer and used it with a 10 watt Grommes LJ6 and a 12" Utah speaker in an old TV cabinet. I rocked the house!

I have a box of Chopin shorts (short pieces) on red transparent, 45 rpms… Also a 33 1/3 rpm (black vinyl), 45 rpm format, proably from West Germany… :)

Thank you, Fran. Very interesting.

When I was growing up in Raleigh, NC, my father worked in a music store that had two 45 listening booths. Side note, they also sold Hammond organs like the B3. You rock, Fran!

Thanks for the trip down memory lane and the info that went along with it. You're the best.

Thanks Fran. Very interesting.

This was super interesting!

Just stumbled across this video. I was in grade school through the 50's. Only my girl cousins had the portable 45 record players. Got into electronics while still in grade school. When you looked at electronics catalogues there were two type of potentiometers - those with a 'linear taper' and those with an 'audio taper'. The audio taper pots were meant to be used as loudness controls in audio circuits. I'll have to watch more of your stuff.

You're amazing. I was born in February, 1949, and spent most of my working life as a radio DJ. I once had quite a record collection but a divorce took most of them from me. My mother worked in an RCA factory where they assembled those products. I enjoy all of your videos.

Adorable AND smart!

Sigmund freud action figure 😂😂😩

Simpler times. I own many different formats of vinyl, cassettes and cds. I enjoy them all. Thank you for being so informative.

Really enjoyed your presentation - I'm 77 & an old vinyl guy - thank you :)

When I was child in the late sixties, I got my first record player--a white plastic GE model meant for kids. I didn't have any 45s but I mailed in some Kellogg's cereal box tops and got 2 Banana Splits 45s! This started my love affair with 45s. Anytime I had any money, I would ask my mom to take me to the store to buy some records. By around 1980, I had over 400. I then inherited my parent's, sister's and uncle's old 45s. By the end of the 80's, I had over 700. My very last 45 I bought was in 1989--Milli Vanilli's "Baby Don't Forget My Number." LOL! I still have all my 45s and have, of course, transferred them to MP3 but I miss buying new ones. I never understood why the concept of the single kind of died with the 45. I never liked "cassingles" or mini CDs. Oh well.

How I progressed through this video. OK, this is kind of interesting Now it is really interesting *looks at sidebar* Wait, she also does fountain pens? And old computers? And space? *clicks subscribe button*

I was around 10 years old and I received as a birthday gift one of the first portable record player. It used six D batteries and I depended totally on the generosity of my family for replacements. But it was the envy of schoolmates! At a later age I was able to feed it with a filament transformer, single diode rectifier and a 500 uF filter cap. The circuit was horrible, with a piezo pickup of 1 Mohm impedance feeding a 10 Kohm impedance pre-amplifier. A 100 Kohm resistor in series with the pickup partially solved the distortion problem. I guess the makers of that whizz-bang player didn't even know what the RIAA curve was. Luckily, the motor had a centrifugal speed regulator! Thank you for the nice ride down the memory lane. Regards from the UK...

WOW…this takes me back…Switching on the old Fischer receiver as the tubes helped to heat our living room in the winter. The lovely sound as one of the stationary 45’s drop onto the record beneath it spinning at 45 RPM ! You can almost see the vinyl bits flying off. The best was when 5 or more 45’s were stacked on the turntable and slippage caused the playing record to be around 40 RPM. You forgot to mention the sprocket you needed to insert into the hold of the 45 so you can play them on a 33/45 combo Garrard turntable. Love your KZfaq videos Fran…..thank you for all the work you put into them.

Totally different machine; but that carrier kinda reminds me of the "washing machine" hard drives with their removable platter packs... 🤔

Good video - very interesting.I wonder who decided that what the world really needed was an accordion version of "She loves you".

Holy Cow! What A Music Collection! A Collection of classic 45 RPM Records!

Thank you very much for these historical explanations and technical ones you explained so nicely in your video. It was nice to watch and hear you.

Do you have any 16 RPM records? I've never actually seen one, but I used to see the 16 speed on the floor model stereos and the component sets that had 8-track players.

"someone left the cake out in the rain. i dont think that i can take it, cause it took so long to bake it, and ill never have that recipe again" MacArthur Park

Holy shit. THE Fran Blanche. It finally clicked when she said "across the river in Camden...". This is amazing. Love it.

Thankyou for caring about LP s and what they are all about your precious also .

Apparently George Martin initially disliked the sound of tape and felt that cutting recordings in the studio straight to shellac was superior soundwise. One track, no mistakes.

Another excellent video, Fran. Thanks! A couple of notes. First, the RIAA curve didn't technically compress low frequencies, but instead attenuated them. Compression (and it's playback complement, expansion) is a lot more electronically complicated and was only used on dbx-encoded discs a couple of decades later as a method of noise reduction. The RIAA curve also boosted high frequencies and rolled them off during playback to reduce surface noise. The varying high frequency filtering on your record player is a simplified loudness control (which you probably already know). A good place for anyone curious about equal loudness contours to learn a bit more is this Wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour Finally, I have heard once or twice that RCA put a big center hole in their 45s so that you had to buy one of their players to listen to them. I have no idea if that is really true. :)

You just explained something I have always wondered about. In the early 70's my band recorded a 45 record. When the sample 45 came to us from the record cutter people it was quieter than the other records in the jukebox. They said we would have to shorten the song to get the volume normalized, so we did and lived happily ever after with a normal volume 45 record. But I never really understood until you're explanation. Thank you for sharing that info. There are rumors that we sold 5 of those records but I think it was only 3 in reality. We did give a heck of lot of the away. We recorded the songs on16 track (which was state of the art) 1 inch tape, and mixed down to a smaller tape. The engineer producer guy shortened the song by literally cutting parts out of the tape with razor blade. And we couldn't play the song like the record, because the change he introduced by cutting wasn't very intuitive on the instruments. And they spelled my name wrong on the label LOL

Every record player I remember from the 1960s and 70s had a 3 way switch: 33-1/3, 45 and 78. Also had an adapter for 45 records. It was fun to play records at the wrong speed.