El Vinilo (Acetato)

Milestones of the format

• · June 21, 1948 — Columbia Records presents the LP (long play) at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York: a 12-inch record in “unbreakable” Vinylite, microgroove at 33⅓ RPM and up to 22 and a half minutes per side, developed by Peter Goldmark's team in the CBS laboratories.
• · March 31, 1949 — RCA Victor answers with the 7-inch single at 45 RPM: one song per side, launched with a simultaneous catalog of more than a hundred artists and colored vinyl according to genre.
• · 1948–1950 — the “war of the speeds”: the market settles it like Solomon — the LP keeps the album and the 45 keeps the single.
• · May 1976 — the first commercial 12-inch maxi single goes on sale: “Ten Percent” by Double Exposure (Salsoul Records), remixed by Walter Gibbons from four to almost ten minutes. The format, until then reserved for promotional copies for discjockeys, puts the extended versions of the disco era within the public's reach.
• · 1972 / 1979 — Technics launches the SL-1200 turntable and, in 1979, the SL-1200 MK2: direct drive with quartz control and sliding pitch. It becomes the standard turntable of discotheques, radio stations and mobile sound; the series went past 3 million units sold.

The “acetato” in the Venezuelan miniteca

The Archive documents first-hand how the format was lived in Venezuela. Getting hold of the records “was even harder” than getting hold of equipment: the discjockeys hunted for them at “la media nota” in the centro único of Chacaíto, in Caracas, and whoever got there late joined “la cola de minitequeros,” the line of minitequeros who had come for the same thing. The repertoire was literally hauled by the crate — Fahrenheit's founder came to amass four crates of records (“gaveras de pollo,” chicken crates) organized in two racks he built himself, which “weighed a ton.”

The tool was so universal that the Archive records it as a period commonplace: “everyone used the same Technics 1200MK2 turntables.” The guerras de minitecas — the sound clashes of the movement — were fought on those turntables — eight Technics 1200s sounded at the Explosión de Minitecas of the Parque Naciones Unidas (1985) —, and the format marked even the proper names of the movement: minitecas such as Kisses Acetatos or Jazz Acetatos were named after the medium itself. The 12-inch maxi, with its extended versions conceived for mixing, was the booth's natural fuel.

Legacy

The CD displaced it from the market at the end of the eighties, but vinyl never entirely died: it survived in the booths, among collectors and in memory, and decades later it starred in one of the most celebrated comebacks in the industry — in the United States it sold more units than the CD again for the first time since 1987. For miniteca culture, the acetato is more than a medium: it is the smell, the weight and the ritual of the golden era, the object that was bought in line, hauled by the crate and defended on stage.

Note on scope and terminology

In strict technical terms, the “acetato” is the lacquer disc cut in the mastering process, not the commercial vinyl record; Venezuelan popular usage — and the Archive itself — called vinyl records “acetatos,” and this entry deliberately adopts that period sense, placing the distinction on record. The general history of the format comes from verified external sources; the Venezuelan angle is limited to what is already documented in the Archive (accounts from Fahrenheit and other entries), without adding new local data.

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Credits and sources

• · Miniteca angle (the “media nota” of the centro único of Chacaíto, the “cola de minitequeros,” the gaveras de pollo, the Technics 1200 MK2 turntables as the standard, the sound clashes fought on eight Technics 1200s): “La Revista de las Minitecas” (DJ Vladimir Medina edition), accounts gathered in the entries of the CMTK Archive (Fahrenheit, DJ Gabriel Galdo, Explosión de Minitecas 1985, Kisses Acetatos, Jazz Acetatos).
• · Columbia's LP (June 21, 1948, Waldorf Astoria; Peter Goldmark/CBS; 33⅓ RPM, Vinylite): Library of Congress (Now See Hear! blog), Best Classic Bands, This Day in Tech History.
• · RCA Victor's 45 RPM single (March 31, 1949; multiple launch; colored vinyl) and the “war of the speeds”: Museum of Obsolete Media, Rolling Stone (“How the 45 RPM Single Changed Music Forever”), History of Rock.
• · First commercial 12" maxi single (“Ten Percent,” Double Exposure, Walter Gibbons remix, Salsoul, May 1976): Wikipedia (EN), “Ten Percent (song)” and “Twelve-inch single”; Discogs; Billboard (Tom Moulton's Disco Mix column, 1976).
• · Technics SL-1200 (1972) and SL-1200 MK2 (1979; quartz, direct drive, more than 3 million units of the series): Technics.com (Heritage), Wikipedia (EN), “Technics SL-1200”; Vintage Technology Archive.
• · Vinyl overtakes the CD in units for the first time since 1987: Rolling Stone / RIAA (2023).