Old cassette tapes

[rostasi]

Concertape 120's were the 70's choice for me.

RadioShack used to sell these fold-out binders

that would hold 24 tapes (4X6).

With 2 hours on each tape, I'd make these massive 48 hour compilations

for friends and hand them binders of music they'd like.

In the early 80's, Studio was the choice

because I was working for a distributor and could get 'em real cheap.

They had good sound too.

Mid 80's to early 90's was the era of the Denon HD8- 100's.

Told everyone I could about these great tapes.

Sound quality was incredible and often scored high

in Hi-Fidelity-type audio tests in magazines.

Up to just a few years ago, TDK CD Power 110

was the choice for it's great repo of BASS.

Surrounded by cassettes here - thousands of them.

Audio everywhere! Radio programs, audio events, live shows, sound-text experiments,

a load of stuff that are joyful slices of one-off events that can be relived (VHS audio and DAT too)

Some of the tapes are wrapped in melted records - softly molded old LPs that are wrapped

around a cassette and have to be broken just to get to the cassette inside.

Some are painted, decoupaged little artworks, etc...

Still transfering to CDR and discovering past joys.

Earlier this week, one of the doors on the dual-deck decided not to close,

so it's time to look for another good machine.

Just might consider one of those two Pioneer units that Rob was talking about.

[Rooster_Ties]

FYI, the recycling center managed by the not-for-profit I work for (plug: Bridging The Gap just started taking cassettes, videotapes, floppy discs, cd's, cdr's, dvd's, etc... (And all the plastic cases they come in too!!)

They all get reclaimed for raw materials, far as I understand. Less for the landfills -- yeah!!

Check the recycling centers in your area, they may be taking cassettes too. (Got a ton in my basement, and I've been meaning to get rid of them - so now's the time.)

[Guest]

cassette tapes.. i've learnt music thanx to those tools.. lol.. i have a lot of tapes and i rarely listen to them now but thet are still important pieces of my collection...

[chris olivarez]

I no longer have any casette. Some son of a bitch junkie in Brawley,California smashed my car door window and releived me of them. However since they got warped and or chewed up I really don't miss them.

One laugh I got was there was no way the junkie was going to sell a bunch of blues and jazz casettes in Brawley.

[brownie]

My cassette player gave up last year and has not been replaced.

I have used the cassette player from my car audio equipment to listen to tapes. But I'll be getting a new car soon and it won't have cassette-playing facilities.

I have about 40 cassette tapes that I used to record off the radio, including rare concerts by Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Gil Evans, etc...

No way I am going to get rid of them.

I'll probably have to get a decent tape player to listen and enjoy them!

[SEK]

Over a period of a few years, I transferred almost all of the many worthwhile cassette tape recordings that I had to CDR. Most of the tapes were recorded on various Nakamichi decks, and a few of the later ones were recorded on a Sony deck with Dolby-S. Many of the recordings were from mid '70s - early '80s Jazz Alive and other NPR shows and from long-out-of-print LPs. Most sound quite nice; a few are CD quality. Some that were recorded with Dolby-S, sound better than many CDs. Of course, anything that I kept in a car for any length of time was quite degraded.

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

Seeing this thread last night, I got inspired to rummage through a box of cassettes stashed in the closet and -- with the 25 year anniversary of his death coming up tomorrow – spied a couple of TDKs I'd used to tape a WBCN-FM (Boston) Lennon tribute the night of 12/8-9/80 just after Lennon was shot. Soon after the shooting, they suspended the normal broadcast schedule for 10 hours or so and ran a lengthy tribute w/interviews, tunes, news updates about the shooting, etc. Spent part of the day listening to the 3-hr chunk (on my kids portable Aiwa), roughly the 4:00-7:00 am block with the legendary 'Duke of Madness' (Jerry Goodwin) and Dr. Thorazine back in the production room pulling together all the material for the show. Randi (the DJ) comes in after Goodwin and she's pretty broken up….Murray the K is on there there as well. Twenty-five years later it's a real haunting blast from the past......some pretty good stuff on there. Some of the older folks around here like Stereojack, Kevin and jazzshrink will remember the good 'ol days at WBCN!. I should probably get a tape-to-cdr transfer of this one. That cheapo Aiwa ain't gonna cut it though.

[kinuta]

I had cartons full of old cassettes. The best ones I burned to audio cdr-rw on a cd recorder then burned them on my pc, reusing the audio cdr-rw. Rather time consuming but managed to salvage some good stuff.

Edited December 11, 2005 by kinuta

[mjzee]

I saw this mention in a recent issue of Cargo Magazine:

www.plusdeck.com

(Paraphrase:) "Essentially, a dashboard-style head unit that installed into one of a PC's drive bays, the device comes with software used to convert cassettes into MP3 files. It plays the tapes through the computer speakers, too, so you can decide which ones to transfer. $150."