Compact cassette making a comeback – rewind!

The first tape deck I owned:

Philips N2204, I used to record stuff off the char show on the radio, and from albums I borrowed from a mate, Zeppelin 4 being one I remember, using the supplied microphone held in front of the speaker. That was real HiFi!

Bugger! Threw out an unopened 5 pack of SA90’s last month while clearing my mums house. Clearly I am not hipster enough to have seen beyond the vinyl revival. Vinyl I get – never stopped, but cassettes? Sorry, don’t see the point.

Still got a boxed up decent in its day aiwa cassette deck. Might have to check flea bay.

I have a Denon dr m07 or whatever, not quite Nakamichi standard but best offer and able to collect, a few cassettes too, I was proper nerdy even owned a splicing tool to cut out the twisted and curly bits out . The Amstrad in the car used to chew them cheers Alan Sugar although auto reverse was like Michael Phelps at the olympics turning over

I’ve got tapes from the 80s that still play ok. They’re ok value too, the new ones, as they are pretty cheap.

Who plays the same thing over and over, enough to wear them out, these days anyway?

you know that brown stuff you have to clean from the tape heads and wheels, that’s stuff wearing from the tape. Plus tapes stretch and are often chewed up by lower standard cassette decks. too fragile and low quality a medium.

Got if from Tesco Hypermarket (!) in Irlam.

We used to drive there from Sale to do the monthly shop!

Was that the one with the donut machine or was that Kwik Save?

Here’s mine:

too fragile and low quality a medium.

Jeezuz! Don’t **** buy them then!

[reply]I don’t 🙁

I’m goin shopping… hope you approve-

https://daily.bandcamp.com/2018/03/26/hi-bias-march-2018/

This is the tape deck I have, the Aiwa AD-F770, 3-head, Dolby B/C auto-bias.

My first tape deck was similar to below, I still have it and it was still working till I pulled one of the motors out when a nephew wanted a 12V motor. It made hundreds of tapes and ate quite a few. I bought it in 1974 and if you bought an album you can bet half a dozen people wanted tapes. The sony deck cost me £12, you could buy a Binatone for half that. I replaced it in ~1985 with a philps deck, which I still have but haven’t used for years.

Did anyone have a battery record player?

I only listen to music on a classic FP deck nowadays. Tape is so last week

It was the TDK MA-R C90, like this one;

I tried a couple of those on my Nakamichi 582 but given the ability to manually adjust azimuth plus bias and Dolby level to suit specific tapes, metal didn’t seem to offer much over SA.

This just popped up on boingboing:

Reel to reel tape in a standard mini-cassette

Teac brought out a reel-to-reel system using a standard cassette format frame, allowing tapes to be swapped in and out of the frame, so you could carry a music library around with you. Only available in Japan, first I’ve everheard of it, but it looks pretty nifty. Bet it’s a bugger finding blank tapes…

i’ve just received a cheap 90s walkman of sorts, and am eagerly awaiting The Wedding Present’s Bizarro on tape. I plan on reliving my walk back home after buying it from OurPrice. Excited!

Just threw out one of these last week

To be fair, there was only one channel working but it was a brilliant machine while it worked

I remember working all summer to buy an hs-px303 portable. I remember the track skip function was like witchcraft.

I still have my Walkman Pro.

Why would you ever even consider trying to get cassettes resurrected as a format. Hateful bloody things. Their only reason for being at the time was size and the ability to record stuff. Other formats have come along since and done it much better.

I struggle with the vinyl resurgeance to be honest. But cassettes? Do one.

I’ve just bought this off that auction site:

I know, I’m regressing but I’ve really fallen back in love with the CD medium after I bought an Onkyo C-7030. You just cannot argue with the quality. Especially through AKG K550s.

That Teac O’Casse thing is cute but what a faff. Like building a scale model oil rig out of matchsticks.

I remember the heady day that my earnings rose high enough to switch from AR90s to SA90s.
Holy crap, it seems that sealed 90s SA90s sell for about £6 each, to actual morons, I should have some of those. WIN!

Sure I’ve still got some sealed ones in the loft. Probably melted in the heat though.

I’ve still got some computer games on cassette – The Way of the Exploding Fist and a few others.

Best use of a cassette, especially a C60/90 and one of these…