Armada

German shellac label founded in the mid 1920's, for which all records were of size 6" (15 cm). NOTE: For the Dutch trance label, please use Armada (4) As an answer to the challenge of cheap foreign records of 6" (15 cm) diameter, mainly offered at department stores for 75 RPf ("Reichspfennige", the money that was used in Germany back then) following the year 1925, national industries reacted in two steps. One of these steps was the following: German record manufacturers Lindström (Odeon; O), Vox (V), Homocord (H) and Grammophon (G) launched a small record under the name of Armada, whose retail price was RPf 50 (half a 'Mark'), being double-sided and of a limited repertoire. Retailers were offered special conditions of payment and supply. Reduced prices were made possible by using licence-free public domain pieces on one side of the record coupled with chargeable [royalty-paying] ditties of the day on the other. The letters O, V, H or G in front of the order number (which also served as the matrix number) indicate the pressing plants, not the recording studios. Thus one and the same recording may bear a different letter according to where it was pressed. A piece recorded at Vox studios may e.g. have been pressed in a plant of the Gramophone Co. and thus bear the G-letter.