As the title suggests, I've seen multiple references to 8" discs (like the Pioneer Artists series) rarely or never getting laser rot, but I just picked up The Motels and it has a great deal of it. Since it's a single-sided disc, this is confusing to me -- is this as normal and expected as double-sided full-side discs, or is there something odd about my experience?

My Pioneer Artists: Missing Persons disc, which looks like the same manufacturing as The Motels, has no rot at all...

It's pretty rare mostly because of when and where they were pressed, but the non-digital sound pressing came out in 84, before Pioneer fully fixed everything.

PDO UK 8"'s have bronzed as well.

LD Singles (the thin disks with no B side content at all) should not rot from anywhere (unless PDO UK made some in the late 80's), since they're made more like CD's and don't have glue.

Thanks for the clarification! I didn't make the connection on analog vs. digital audio. For confirmation, the Motels LD I have isn't the remastered one, and only has analog audio; the Missing Persons LD has analog and digital video.

As happycube said, you have to look at the 8 inch disc to see if its the single thickness or double.

Single will be slightly thicker than a CD, I have one and can measure with a caliper.
Double will be as thick as an LD with 2 sides, both may or may not be playable but you will have that thickness.

I have read also about no rot on 8" my only assumption is that either not enough people own them or ones with rot are the thicker discs??
The only one I've ever had with rot was a thick one, but I only have a handful and have about 40 karaoke that I'm on my way to listing on the bay.

The single sided ones should be no more prone to rot than CDs...but then some factories could get anything to rot.

In general though it is said that 8” VSD won’t rot because they don’t have any glue. If they are well made that’s probably true but we’ll see. All the well made 12” discs are still going too so it will be a while.

And they were a few CD-thickness (no glue) 12" made as well, quite rare!

Aluminium laserdiscs

Ex: Jimi Hendrix: Jimi Plays Berkeley (1971) [BM 901 781 050]

Julien