What's so bad about 8 track tapes?

I find the rearranged orders kind of amusing. They’re like alternate versions of albums. Everything else about 8 track stinks.

 

Yes, now that you mention that, records were lower priced! I think the point I was making was that the 8 track was affordable. It conceivably costs more to manufacture tapes, and that the 8 track cart has two moving parts, three if we count the pressure pad. Cassette tapes also sold for a dollar or two above the LP record. Reel to Reel tapes were never a bargain, and hard to find in some regions.

 

I see all the criticism of 8 track tapes and it is well deserved. But I remember people thinking they were so cool with their 8 tracks and made fun of my cassettes. I hated how songs were chopped, albums rearranged and the tape hiss was loud. Some audiophiles got hooked when some of the 8 tracks feature Quad sound. Even auto manufacturers were putting in stock 8 track with quad capability. I must admit, Tubular Bells did sound neat in a compact car with the four speakers all sounding something different.

 

Not only that, they came in fancy colors, pink shells, ivory, tan, olive green, black, and red, like the Columbia TC-8's

 

Very interesting on the price. I remember the racks of prerecorded 8-tracks, as they were diminishing to be replaced by cassettes.

When I was a kid first getting into music three things were really apparent to me:
1. 8-tracks sounded OK when they worked and new, but that wasn't usual, so not good most times, and were already going away. Most who bought them around me were buying because of legacy equipment.
2. Prerecorded cassettes (in the US) were mediocre when new, got worse after that as they wore, if they didn't jam up and seize.
3. Recording LPs I bought to good quality blank cassettes (TDK, Maxell, etc.) was much better than #1 or #2 and they worked for a lot longer. Even on a boombox, but a component cassette deck was much better.

 

In the Midwest and South, 8 track tapes were in use to the end of the format. Many older vehicles had players, many had players and some had recorders at home. We stood by our tried and true. In Oak Ridge, TN (a tech town, cassette in cars was a minority until around 1975-1979). Many rural users around us used 8 track until there were no new tapes available, as they had players and existing libraries.

 

I think you're misremembering a bit. The extra premium for stereo was on LPs, not 8Ts. Mono LPs were $3.98, stereo $4.98 (mostly). There was never a premium for stereo 8Ts, because virtually all of them were stereo anyway. IRC, 8Ts were $6.98 across the board, until Columbia started charging $1 more for artists such as Bob Dylan.

As always, just my opinion, YMMV. (But I was in the biz from 1967 to 1972, and I remember pricing pretty well.)

 

Tapes cost $1-$2 extra until around 1978. when they cost the same as a Stereo LP disc. This was quoted list prices. In my area, most tapes were not discounted or discounted little, Stereo LP discs were discounted heavily.

 

From the dusty recesses of my mind:

45s, 99 cents retail = 67 cents wholesale
Mono LPs, $3.98 retail = $2.47 wholesale
Stereo LPs, $4.98 retail = $3.09 wholesale
Virtually any 8 track, $6.98 retail = $5.22 wholesale

Some of these prices varied a bit, depending on if you bought stock from a distributor or a "one stop" (a step between true wholesale and retail - commonly used by jukebox operators to buy 45s at "one stop" instead of buying from the Columbia distributor, the RCA distributor, the Capitol distributor, etc. Time is money, even in the days of 35 cent gas.)

 

Thanks for the info. The margins on retail sales are small. The operating costs to keep the doors open are high. Retailing is a tough business, and also must stay on top of buying trends.

 

In my area, the $4.98 Stereo LP was typically $3.57 street price at most department stores served by rack jobbers. Most retail record stores usually $3.98 or less if there was a good sale. $.99 45 RPM singles was normal street price until the price increased first to $1.09, then to $1.29 in 1975. $6.98 list 8 track usually was street price with no discount from that. This is typical Oak Ridge, TN retail prices. Our cheapest record store, Hyacinth Sound had $3.29 LP discs until 1975, then increased to $.3.99 on $5.98 list Stereo LP discs. 1975 was the first big year for record and tape list price increases.

 

It's way smaller now. Those were the good old days for everyone. Playback products were better built for the most part, and records were more affordable. Records cost dealers nearly what they sell for these days. It's like running a hamburger joint; if you don't sell thousands of them, you'll actually lose money on them.
-Bill

 

I installed a very good sounding 8 track system in my '69 GTO. It was a Kraco top of the line model, decent power, could hear it playing across Bradlees dept store. It featured a good FM section which received CBS FM 60 miles up river, a big deal since they were among the first FM stations to play pop n rock. The stock car radios did not receive as well as this little unit did. Never had a problem with it, never ate a tape. The 8 tracks worked well when new.


The people in the photo are my brother and my boss! (He was THE boss, and got that car for me before it hit the lot $2,000 financed) The car was sold in 1976, with the 8 track, still fully operational (had the first car audio amp ever produced, a Craig unit at 12.5 wpc)

My next car, a '66 MGB roadster had an anemic solid state AM radio, however the parts car had a "no name" TUBE AM radio. Man, that was the best AM car radio I had ever heard, aside from an early 60's Philco (with tubes) It probably was a single EL-84, maybe 3 to 4 watts, quite possibly Mullard or Amperex, don't know, never had it apart. The AM radio was a demotion, but enjoyed its sound anyway, top down, bright sunshine, a great vibe. Just tuning the dial a little left or right brought on some harmonics, very good sound from that radio.

My next car was at the advent of the cassette era. In 1980, I landed a 1970 GTO sitting at a used car dealer, a rust free Virginia car. Put the MG out front with a for sale sign, sold the next day, and laid out the cash for the GTO. This one got a Craig in dash cassette player, 12wpc, and my choice for speakers after careful deliberation and auditions was full range. I liked them much better than coax and triax, (at the expense of the upper range which my young ears were good to 16kHz plus) but hated their coloration. The speaker of choice was the Radio Shack 40-1260, whizzer cone and cloth accordion surround, a very oversized ceramic magnet. (just try to find these on eBay) It was a three speaker system, one in the dash. I experimented with surround from the front speaker (mono across Lch Hot and Rch Hot) which was kinda cool. But then went with Lch front and Rch rear.. imaging isn't important in car audio, just good sound. Ya get to use the ol' balance control for the best seat.. the front seat graced by good female company.

I must admit, the cassette tapes sounded better, and I think a better system in the '70 GTO.

 

I agree about the track listing as well. Sometimes the changing of the track arrangement was better than the original. I recently bought a Alabama 8 track tape(Mountain Music). I found it odd that they added the Mountain Music song twice. Does anyone know why this was done? I see it on all of the Alabama albums of the same.

On a side note does everyone ever notice how the early learjet "Flat Pack" 8 track tapes always have their pinch rollers melted away. Some people collect these. The fact they do this makes me irritated.

 

This was done by some duplicators so that a song didn't have to be split in the middle by the wildly reviled "ker-chunk!" as the player changed tracks. A&M, whose 8T's were usually made by Columbia, did this more than most.

Quite a few folks hated that method too, since the repeated song was sometimes one you didn't like as much as others. Potato, Poh-taa-toh.

 

I don't actually hate it, just found it odd. I never had a tape with a duplicate song so I wondered what the reason was. Interesting reason!

 

In the documentary So Wrong, They're Right one interviewee mentioned that on his 8-track version of the Lou Reed album Berlin it featured some instrumental music that didn't appear on other versions.

The following video contains the instrumental segment:

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What's so bad about 8 track tapes?

Answer: Everything.

 

Well, if there was no 8-Track, you folks then would have had the choice of what's on the radio in mono. There were a lot of places where the music you folks mostly like was AM, and directional pattern AM at that, meaning transmitter power was vastly reduced at night. The 8 track was the first, popular, widely available tape platform available in cars and trucks. Which offered true freedom of music choice. Cassette machines in cars were very rare in the USA until the 1970's. Consider this!!!

 

True. Although 8-track had its flaws, it did allow you to listen to your own music in the car and it was simple to use (stick the tape in and it plays...hopefully).

 

Ed McMan: You are 100% right about the convenience aspect of 8 tracks. no argument there. But why did they allow them to be so awful sounding? They could have made them sound better, but they went with "cheap", betting on the convenience factor. My friend as a teen had a 67' Plymouth (Valiant)? with an 8 track. I remember cringing at the sound.

 

They were not cheap, Stereoguy. Many were either very expensive factory installations, or custom installed.

 

There were 4-track (Stereo-Pak) car tape players, too. They were briefly popular in the mid-1960s. Then came 8-tracks, cassettes, and PlayTapes. Bulova even announced a 16-track tape cartridge system, but aside from one mock-up prototype, it never materialized.

 

This response bothers me the most about cringing 8 track players or sound. Sound equipment during the 1960's and 1970's was terrible at times if you didn't buy high end speakers. I owned speakers from this decade and they do not sound that good! As I said before I have a Marantz TDR 830(Arguably one of the top best in that decade) and a set of nice speakers and these 8 tracks sound fine. People didn't take sound speakers SERIOUS until the 1980's. Early cassettes also sound bad in the 1970s without Dolby with the dreaded hiss. I completely disagree that 8 tracks sounded bad. Sure, if you get the bootlegged ones/various sub manufacturers they sound questionable at best.

I'm just so tired of people saying 8 tracks sound horrible when they listened to them on some junk player from the decade. Yes they have their flaws. But you know whats worse? When a cassette player eats your cassette tape. Have you ever replaced the tiny splice and taken them apart? Its the worst. You might as well throw it away and get another unlike 8 track tapes. I'm waiting till some of these cassette tapes start reaching 60 years old to see how people start to really feel about them when their tiny soft pads and splices fail.

 

Car amplifiers then weren't very powerful, car acoustics challenging (and just as challenging now). Could you do better then on 6-8 watts. I seriously doubt you could, and it fit in a vehicle. P.S. The best separate component home 8 track decks could reproduce to 14 kilohertz, wow/flutter slightly higher than a cassette machine then. As in the Pioneers, the Sony, the Akai, the Wollensak models, and similar. And P.S. the Advent 201 was the finest cassette deck, when Nakamichi was still learning how, an excellent. reliable, well built cassette deck. Most pre-recorded tapes then were substandard.