Avocado Memories: Photos of long-forgotten blank cassettes

This was a waste of time. There is no reason to degauss cassette decks at all. There is no significant build up of residual magnetism ever on a tape head or surrounding area. Not in the quantities that would affect sound quality anyway.

 

Really?

 

Yeah, it's the green marker of cassette technology.

 

My first machine was a Radio Shack small portable, then a Craig portable with joystick controls. Then a Panasonic RQ 309AS, which I owned a few of. My first HiFi machine was an Advent 201, in 1973, and here's what I mainly used for blanks. Portable era: Sony Low Noise, Ampex 350, Scotch Highlander. Advent era onwards: Sony Low Noise, Sony HF, Advent Chrome, TDK D, TDK AD, TDK SA, Ampex Plus Series, Maxell LN, Maxell UD, Maxell UD-XL, Maxell UD XL II. Scotch Dynarange, Scotch Master and Master II, BASF Performance, BASF Professional II. I used Memorex and Radio Shack tape rarely. A little bit of Capitol 2 rarely and Capitol The Music Tape. My cassette machines were my main machines until 1974, then were conveniences. Then I began using A series Teac machines in 1/4 track, then on to ReVox and Otari machines (which I still own). Yes, I am a tapehead.

 

If professional machines require degaussing after X amount of tape has passed through the tape path, I'd be very surprised if cassette machines didn't need degaussing for exactly the same reasons. After owning the same machine for nearly twenty years and noticing a marked difference in treble response during playback, I'll go with the 'green marker' theory...

 

Yes, demagnetizing is simply put, required maintenance on tape machines. People who mainly play tapes need it less often than those who record frequently.

 

I remember switching to That's tapes at the end of my tape days in the late 80s. Supposed to be very good.

 

I miss the Denon 80 minute tapes. The local goodwill offered a stack of sealed Maxell and TDK cassettes a few months and they went like fire. In a world where survivors fight to the death for scraps of the Old Technology...

 

That's were, for a brief time, the MFSL of blank tapes.

 

Yes, Goodwill stores seem to be a great source for vintage blanks. Last year, I picked up a stack of 10 or 12 sealed, normal-bias Maxell XLI-S 90-minute tapes, with the late 1970s tape formulation, for $50 cents each. Those same tapes often sell for $15 or more on ebay.

 

Even I scour the thrift stores searching for good tape. I buy when I can find.

 

I remember getting one of these in a tape trade:



Man, the thing was heavy! The heaviest cassette I'd ever seen!

 

As a kid I would push record and talk into the mike like a dj and spin my 45's.Recording my own show.Then I would play my radio show for my friends when they came over.
Good memories!

 

"Low Noise Special" would make for a great band name.

 

I always had good performance with BASF tapes, esp FeCr's

 

I'll share some childhood BS with you.

Back at the China Lake Air Naval Station in Ridgecrest California, the PX (a/k/a "the gyp joint) did not carry allot of music, so the service guys rigged up a system where everyone can patch their reel to reels and copy each others tapes. I was fascinated by those big machines with those big reels. One guy would have a reel to reel of "Other Places" so you can plug into the patch bay and get a copy. Yes.. They were killing music back in 1968.

My dad wanted to get into the action and bough one of these:

A Ampex Concerto cassette player


The bad part is the machine had DIN jacks so he couldn't plug into the patch bay, so he had to place microphones infront of speakers to get a decent recording. The microphones were two 3" cube things attached to a DIN jack.



It came with 2 cabinets with a 6x9" speaker in each one. It also suffered with grounding problems, it used to buzz like crazy and pickup radio signals from the fighter jets flying by. It met it's fate in the Mid-70's when all of it's rubber parts turned to goo. It was replaced with a Soundesign 8-track player, even my Mom hated this piece of junk. I was disappointed that he didn't bring home a reel to reel but a early model cassette player. I don't remember the brand of cassettes that were available but they were made in Mexico and used to jam like crazy.

 

Those used to be the most commonly available and the cheapest to get. They were fine for taping vinyl or from cassette to cassette or from radio but digital never seemed to be right for it. I remember that it used to drive me nuts that at the start of any recording from CD the playback was suddenly very loud for 2 seconds and then the sound level dipped rapidly to the 'normal level'. In addition, what we now know as 'brickwalling' occurred on every CD recording I made that was a teeny-weeny bit loud. I stopped using them after a while for this purpose and only used them for vinyl, radio or cassette dubs (unless I was desperate).

 

A stoner frIend of mine once taught me when the felt pad fell out or wore downon a cassette is to take the cotton filter out of a cigarette to replace it ...worked great on my store bought copy of Presence that i completely wore the writing off of..

 

Probably Certron.

 

Yep, try turning those with a finger and you could feel the tightness.
Even the graphics tells you what it will do around the capstan.

 

On Thursday, January 4, 1973, while my sister and I were in school, my Dad took it on himself to record, on a Penncrest (J.C. Penney's brand) portable cassette recorder, a couple of stacks of our favorite 45s while they played on our big console stereo. Here's the result:





Many of the selections were haphazardly erased/recorded over by me in the following years, but thorough forensic testing has revealed the original cassette to include, at a minimum, these songs:

"I Am Woman" - Helen Reddy
"Papa Was A Rollin' Stone" - Temptations
"Ventura Highway" - America
"It Never Rains In Southern California" - Albert Hammond
"Convention '72" - The Delegates
"Nights In White Satin" - Moody Blues
"Outa-Space" - Billy Preston
"Coconut" - Nilsson

This, btw, was my "system" in the early 70s:

 

That is absolutely tremendous!

 

Thanks so much. I can't tell you how thrilled I was when he picked me up from school that day in his '65 Chevy II, and the portable cassette player was on the back seat, giving forth with Billy Preston's "Outa-Space". One of those moments you never forget. Love that man.

 

The fact that you still have that tape is EXTREMELY cool! (Good taste in music in that household, too!) And how about that carpet!

 

Great thread! I remember some of the cheap knock-off blank cassettes as a kid in the 80's. Mainly used for recording concerts or album side weekends (remember those!) from my local FM station. I remember taping from the radio and getting the obligatory static drop outs and air noise. Or horror of horrors, the DJ talking over a great Zeppelin intro riff I was trying to record!

Isn't it ironic that as a kid I didn't care how the sound quality was, as long as I got the music; now I fret and worry that a new CD remaster is a little more compressed than the previous.