Avocado Memories: Photos of long-forgotten blank cassettes

Here's a trade ad for what was arguably the worst-ever cassette tape that was mass produced: Tracs by Audio Magnetics. (They were responsible for the K-Mart black-label tapes, too.)
As you can see in the ad copy, Audio Magnetics told retailers that "The action is with the under-$1 cassette buyer. That's three out of four retail sales ... That's where Tracs is aimed." It goes on to say that Tracs is "manufactured to rigid quality standards." Ha! I used them a few times and even as a 13-year-old kid working with a portable recorder, I could tell they were crap compared to the low-end Scotch cassettes that I favored.

 

I used those for awhile since my first ever jambox the Sony CF-550A had the FeCr selection.

I don't remember that variety being around very long. 1976 I think is when I last seen those offered.

 

As a kid, and new to cassettes, I bought several Tracs 60 and 90 minute tapes at my local Revco Drug store back in the early 70s. I figured they were a step up from the regular ones I was using. I liked them because they never gave me any mechanical issues, and sounded OK...until I discovered Memorex and Scotch. I didn't care for Memorex because they were a bit on the expensive side, to me, but I recorded my best tapes on Scotch Highlander. They sounded great, and I liked the translucent blue color of the cases.

When I finally started using a real cassette deck with Dolby, I first used Memorex, but wasn't that happy with them. Then, I discovered TDK and Maxell, and never looked back.

 

They had them up to about 1983. I bought them by Sony in 1982, and by BASF in 1983. After that, they faded rather quickly. I never got a satisfactory sound out of them.

 

I liked them because I could finally fit those longer albums on one side without having to get creative.

 

Yeah. Unless my memory is way off, that was how my very first cassette player worked, with a rotary switch. I do remember that it was made by Lafayette Electronics (remember them?).

But, it had a manual cassette lid that I accidentally broke off one day. I was able to trade it in for one with piano keys and an eject button like most other players.

 

Very much my own experience. I loved Scotch Highlanders. The translucent shell was way cool, as was the slip-case. And for that price range, which was all that a kid with limited allowance money could afford, they offered the best sound quality. I recently bought a half dozen Highlanders that were still sealed. I made a tape for a friend of mine that featured jam sessions of the band he was in back in the 70s. The original source was high quality Maxell tapes that I converted to digital and burned to CD. Then I recorded the best of the cuts to a Scotch Highlander tape and gave it (and the CDs) to him. He loved the CDs but was most impressed by the Highlander tape. He hadn't seen one in decades.

 

My next cassette player was very similar to this one:

 

If I could just be bothered to hook up my cassette deck, i'd make a take right now. I'm so in the mood to make one.

 

I was buying them up to around early 1985 being stock in both hifi stores and a leading drug store that was big on records, blank tape and film.

 

My family had one of these, maybe two? Anyway, it was probably the mid to late '70s and it stayed around for years. I don't remember the sound being too great though...

 

That's the idea, but it doesn't look like the one I used to own. I remember it had a "Megatone" brand, but I knew it was fake because one of my uncles had an identical one with a different brand. I remember that the main knob's handle was circular at the center and that circle had a black sticker on top. It also had an AM radio with a circular, transparent dial at the top left of the recorder, on top of the speaker. The tape/radio selector was below the dial.

 

This Panasonic player and a pair of AKG headphones was my first "Walkman".

 

Yeah, I think these became common/affordable in the mid to late 80s? Then once CDs hit big I think you started seeing blank timings marketed around the 70/80 minute mark.

 

Anybody else spend hours disassembling cassettes with balky or tangled/crunched tape, rewinding them by hand, then reassembling them? After the better-quality tapes started using screws instead of glue, they could be taken apart pretty easily.

 

Not really with cassettes. DATs, on the other hand...

 

Or slapping them on whatever flat, hard surface was nearby to loosen a ragged tape pack from the liner.

 

Ah, but the sound was great on the six-eye ones

 

I started taping on cassettes in 1975. I never liked 8-tracks at all.

 

All cassettes said "Low Noise", especially the crap ones but its not as if you could hold them to it legally!

 

Worse ones ever that I remember were 4 for an Irish pound (about 1.75 dollars), the brand was Apollo. Dreadful, the oxide used to come off them when you played them.

 

That brings back memories. I had lots of these.

 

I used to get Avantis at K-Mart. Not very good, but definitely cheap in a 3-pack.

 

Wow, I had a couple of the Panasonic Slimline recorders. They were real workhorses and built well. I recall that I took one and popped the head off, flipped it around, and put it back on with epoxy glue. This enabled me to record backward all the backward-masked stuff on ELO records so I could play them forward on a non-modified machine. It's so much easier these days and doesn't require mutilating a machine.

 

These were my favorites back around '90. Didn't see a previous photo, and this cassette looks like R2D2 after getting shot in the head. But, they had great sound, and had a sophisticated loook with the sideways label and bubble in the middle.