30 year old tape deck, and my rediscovered old chrome and metal tapes.

I have found memories of cassette tapes. I myself in the mid to late 80's recorded my whole music collection onto mix tapes which I used when I worked in a retail mens jeans shop for 3 years. Epic times and the only way really to have a good collection of hits and 12 inch remixes to go. Twin tap decks and a very decent amp and speaker set up, our little store had better music quality and tunes than Our Price & Revolver any day. Used chrome taps as metal tended to have too much highs and I felt chrome offered the best audio mix suited, well to my ears. I totally hogged the audio playback in the store for the entire time I worked there. Every time I hear tunes from the tapes I recall the good times I had back then. Sadly none of them exist any more and my vinyl (little over 2k of them) sold off at a car boot sale in spring 1996. I sooooo regret that but luckily near all my records and mixes I've re acquired digitally.
 
Tapes were kinda of a failed medium since they degraded quickly. Even the chrome and metal tapes I had failed and muffled in certain parts. Go vinyl for the nostalgia.
 
dowie said:
In fact even a lossy digital format (mp3) would be objectively much better - yet there are no doubt some audio loons out there who'd stick their noses up at lossy formats like mp3s but perhaps claim some subjective 'warmth' from whatever distortion/artifacts get added (thanks to Dolby B etc..) to their even more lossy analog tape.
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I never used Dolby B/C as it removed too much of the sound. If recording on metal / chrome tape proving you set record level up correct the background noise can only be heard on track spaces with volume loud, but even then you have to focus to listen to it.
 
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Kids today won't ever experience the Saturday morning walk from Rumbelows to Woolworths to see which one had the cheapest offers on Twin-packs of BASF Chrome 90 ready for this weeks' Top 40. :cool:
 
Oh, this brings back memories! I remember spending hours making tapes like you describe. I still have my Yamaha 3-head tape deck in the loft, along with my pre and power amps and CD player. I recall pushing metal tapes to their limits, trying to get the levels as high as possible, without distorting the sound. Dolby always switched off, like you say JasonM. ;)

One day, probably in 20 years when the kids have moved out and I have the space, I'll get it all down from the loft. :)
 
BadMojo said:
I still have my Yamaha 3-head tape deck in the loft, along with my pre and power amps and CD player. I recall pushing metal tapes to their limits, trying to get the levels as high as possible, without distorting the sound. Dolby always switched off, like you say JasonM. ;)
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My tape deck had separate record head also. Yes the secret was pushing the record level as high as possible before clipping occurred, doing this it reduced noise levels so Dolby was not required. I also use to run brand new tapes back and forward first so any stretch in the tape happened before the recording.

Hopefully you have a good amp / speakers in your house. If so get your tape player / metal & chrome tapes back in action, you will probably be surprised.
 
doofer said:
Kids today won't ever experience the Saturday morning walk from Rumbelows to Woolworths to see which one had the cheapest offers on Twin-packs of BASF Chrome 90 ready for this weeks' Top 40. :cool:
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Ah, those were the days. Tuned in, FM-Stereo light on. Tape wound on so it's ready to record. Record level set. Play & Record pressed and finger on the pause button.....and then sister puts her hairdryer on causing massive radio interference - denied!

Didn't get BASF in our local shop. Usually had TDK SA. But my choice was always Maxell XLII-S :).
 
Hated tapes, have no nostalgia for them what so ever and they were simply a means to end for me, I did actually record all of my tapes to Minidisc which I reckon Ive still got in the loft somewhere.
 
For some strange reason, even though all my tapes are MIA (apart from my rave tapes in the attic), I have always kept one. It sits with my CD's and it is not even that good, or the band famous, but I like it as it reminds me of times past.

Anyone ever heard of the Senseless Things? I was a big fan when I was a kid. :D

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I got my old tape deck (Aiwa or Akai can't remember) down from the loft a couple of years ago but the mechanism had gummed up presumably from the lubricant degrading so I binned it. My fostex 4-track still works fine though so I use that if I need to digitise any tape, I still have a fair few to do.
 
I remember having Akai,Aiwa and Technics cassette decks,not actually sure what happened to them now lol
Moved on to a Sony Mini Disk which were fantastic but never really took off.
I even had one in the Car which cost £299 from Currys :eek:
Recently put in the skip along with a Sony 10 Disk boot changer :(
As for cd writers :mad: i got one from PC World when the first came out,an HP cost about £260 bloody useless never worked :mad:
My recent PC build got a DVD Writer for about £10 :eek:
 
I have a Yamaha tape deck too, with Dolby S. Used SA90s mostly on it. It had auto calibration and could detect what tape type was being used.

Bit of a tangent but what I miss is the lcd inline remote scrolling display from my Sharp Minidisc. You could see all the track info without having to take out the player itself.
A real pain when you are listening to music on smartphones is having to dig it out of pockets.
 
there was a lot to like about cassettes, cheap, you could record all sorts onto them. you could fix them!
but i did have a load of them chew and sound was bad at times.
they are making a bit of a comeback along with the vinyl. cant see me going near them again, sticking with the CDs.
i do have a few of them in the attic though, wont rule out picking up a deck to play them on
 
HamZilla said:
I have a Yamaha tape deck too, with Dolby S. Used SA90s mostly on it. It had auto calibration and could detect what tape type was being used.

Bit of a tangent but what I miss is the lcd inline remote scrolling display from my Sharp Minidisc. You could see all the track info without having to take out the player itself.
A real pain when you are listening to music on smartphones is having to dig it out of pockets.
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SA90 tapes for me too, but i had a denon deck.

As soon as i moved to a cd player the tape deck only ever got used for recording tapes for my walkman, and then that got chucked when i got a portable cd player.
Tapes were fine and everything but compared to any half decent cd player (at the time) the sound quality is garbage.

Thank god for mp3 players, although i'm still using cd's on the hifi ;)
 
Getting my first radio tape deck was unbelievable. I got it for my birthday before the summer holidays in 1988 when I was 10.

I still have such vivid memories of the music from that summer. The other memory is that the tape deck had MW and LW radio. I used to spend ages tuning in and exploring what was out there. Before the internet it was a strange one way connection to another world.

I do wonder if current 10 year olds will get such a blast of nostalgia about a Spotify account in 25 years.
 
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