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General Vintage Technology Discussions For general discussions about vintage radio and other vintage electronics etc. |
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2nd Mar 2019, 8:35 pm | #41 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Wiltshire, UK.
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
I used the TDK CDing ones quite a lot - along with their "SA" series - I've still got some here somewhere; I know that one of them has the year-2000-rollover Radio 1 dance-mix on it, which I recorded as I was sitting logged-in-via-dialup to check that none of my clients had Y2K issues.
There were also some rather nice (and horribly-expensive!) cassettes where one half of the clamshell was actually a diecast alloy: I forget the brand - Maxell? - but I used hundreds of these in C15-size for distributing software for a piece of X.25 networking-gear I supported back in the day - until the manufacturer released battery-backed-CMOS boot-memory for the gear in question. The then-redundant metal-shell boot-casettes somehow managed to find their way to my house... OK there's not much you can seriously record on a C15 but free is free! I somehow doubt we will see a return - however nostalgic - to people using cassette-tapes for computer-software-loading. |
2nd Mar 2019, 10:08 pm | #42 | |
Dekatron
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
Quote:
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2nd Mar 2019, 10:54 pm | #43 |
Nonode
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Warsaw, Poland and Cambridge, UK
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
My interest in cassettes was recently revived by wanting to play old cassettes of children's songs and stories for my own children. I picked up a Sony Walkman Professional WM-D6C which we now use on long journeys in the car, connected to the car's aux input. It works well even with one of our favourite tapes which dates from communist-era Poland (the sound quality is actually excellent, marred only by the terrible number of dropouts on the awful tape stock!).
As a result I've started listening to some of my own recordings from the late 1980s and early 1990s which were made on a budget Technics RS-B355 deck. Some of them, especially recordings from CD on to a good metal tape like 'That's' MG-X without Dolby, sound really astonishingly good even though they're 30 years old. Out of curiosity I also bought a Sony TC-K81 three head deck, with the intention of using it as a transcription deck for archiving old treasured tapes digitally. It needs some work, but having experimented with it I've learned a lot about how to make good recordings. If only I'd known all those years ago just how critical the bias adjustment is for getting the optimum balance of headroom and frequency response. I could have saved a fortune on tape! Correctly biased, even the cheapest Ferric tape (I've been playing with Maxell UR, which is about all that's available now) can give excellent results if the background noise doesn't trouble you. Having looked in to the specifications of some tape formulations from back in the day, it turns out that the more expensive tapes (for example, TDK SA-X versus SA) have a higher bias level so they tend to give a better top end on a deck with fixed bias (which is most of them!). I found this site quite instructive: http://vintagecassettes.com/tdk/tdk_...ype/tdk_sa.htm Chris
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3rd Mar 2019, 12:02 am | #44 |
Hexode
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: Bishop Auckland, County Durham, UK.
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
The record industry didn't like the idea of people taping their own music cassettes. This inner sleeve is from a 1970s James Last LP. I wonder what they would have thought of digital copying.
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3rd Mar 2019, 1:17 am | #45 |
Heptode
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
They can live with it because digital copying of digital media can be made difficult if necessary. Cassette copying can't. Any stereo audio that exits a player or computer can be copied onto cassette with tolerable quality loss.
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3rd Mar 2019, 11:50 am | #46 |
Octode
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Oban, Scotland, UK.
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
I repaired a 'boombox' for someone a few months ago that was of the old type i.e. cassette player which made me recall when I was in the merchant navy and used to take my own boombox with me (TRK-5280 - I still recall the model!).
In those days it was 'all' cassette music and visiting ports like Dubai (or anywhere in the Gulf really) meant a shore visit to the markets to purchase tapes at 10p each (non-original of course) and dragging a suitcase filled with them through customs when we repatriated home! Or, back in blighty, trying to make compilation tapes inevitably using the largest capacity tapes you could get (C120's) but nearly always finding they got chewed by the mechanism. |
3rd Mar 2019, 1:44 pm | #47 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Brentwood, Essex, UK.
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
I never had any issues with oxide shedding with blank cassettes, but the commercial cassette of "The Shadows Greatest Hits" sheds so badly that the heads need cleaning every 10 mins.
I never had any issues with C120s, but I always used Philips or Sony recorders. |
3rd Mar 2019, 2:19 pm | #48 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Worksop, Nottinghamshire, UK.
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
There were a few dud tapes about that made the heads filthy in short order.
They used to appear singly in batches of branded ones and looked the same as the real thing. The worst ones I have ever seen were Dixons own brand. They faded in and out and when I investigated there was clear patches of bare plastic. It was a 20 minute quibble when I took them back. They changed the name to PC world and the quibble warranty and poor blank media followed on to CD-Rs. Roll on the day when comparison sites quote customer service waiting times. |
3rd Mar 2019, 4:25 pm | #49 |
Dekatron
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Location: Rugeley, Staffordshire, UK.
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
The worst tapes that I ever had were Dindy and a one off called Wren that I bought from a local back street electrical shop. Man, that tape was so dull it was totally useless for music. Not that I went in for much voice recording.
Good web site for vintage tapes info here: https://tapetardis.wordpress.com/tag/dindy-super/
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3rd Mar 2019, 5:13 pm | #50 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Jun 2015
Location: Biggin Hill, London, UK.
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
I remember Dindy. My father bought some from an advert in one of the magazines (ETI?) and you're right. They were terrible. Not just poor tape, but they tangled and jammed if you looked at them wrongly (we never had problem with good quality cassettes (TDK, Philips, etc) in any of our machines).
Incidentally, until I restore my HP9880 disk system I can only use cassettes for storage on my HP9830 computer. But those are digital cassettes (look like a normal audio Compact Cassette but have higher coercivity tape and a notch on the back face to distinguish them). Still slow, but reliable (no critical volume control setting...) and there is a sort-of file system. You can tell the HP9830 to load file 11 from the tape, it will fast forward or rewind to the apporpriate point and then load it automatically. Even I don't want to use audio cassettes on home micros if I can avoid it! |
3rd Mar 2019, 11:42 pm | #51 |
Nonode
Join Date: Sep 2017
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
I remember my Dad had some trouble with some Woolworths own brand tapes he bought in the mid 1990s.
The sound quality was very poor & he made sure not to buy them again!
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4th Mar 2019, 12:53 am | #52 |
Octode
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Location: Liss, Hampshire, UK.
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
Ironically Woolworths tapes came highly recommended in a large comparison that one of the hifi magazines carried out in the 70's. The big problem was that they would change tape suppliers without warning so you could never quite tell what you were buying.
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4th Mar 2019, 1:35 am | #53 |
Banned
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Littlehampton, West Sussex, UK.
Posts: 142
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
I never tired of cassettes and those that know me from the facebook group will be familiar with the crazy amount of repairs to cassette machines that I have done and will continue to do for myself and other folk that bring/send their machines to me!!
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4th Mar 2019, 1:49 am | #54 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Madrid, Spain / Wirral, UK
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
A lot of the problems of tape tangling were through their use in cars. For one thing, the poor access meant the pinch roller would never get cleaned so you would get skewing. For another, loose cassettes bumping round a car for weeks on end meant the tape came unspooled, and when inserted, the take up spool would have to try and take up that slack before it could even begin to do its job. Result: tape wound round the capstan.
It is amazing how durable cassettes can be. Most problems are down to misuse. I have just changed some cassettes in use in a language laboratory, in use since 2014 and only now starting to show signs of drop outs. It helps that they were never taken out of the machines an that the mechs were good ones with proper braking, variable speed winding, no tape end feeler guide to score the tape, etc. c60s seem to be more durable than the thinner c90s.
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4th Mar 2019, 1:59 am | #55 | |
Dekatron
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
Quote:
Another recent media cassette story involves the Duke Energy alert. The employees found a 'suspicious package' and got jumpy, turned out to be a humble prerecorded cassette. Of course, those of us who use tape in sound art projects had to respond to the former and the latter stories
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4th Mar 2019, 10:29 am | #56 |
Heptode
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
Having a quick look at my tape collection ( small nowadays ) most seem to be TDK SA or Maxell XLII 90. I have one unused cassette still in sealed outer with a reference code of
TDK SA -X100EA. I generally found them all to give v. good results with no mechanical problems.
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4th Mar 2019, 10:54 am | #57 |
Dekatron
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
Back in the days of the HIFI Choice proper lab test (A5 size) books, TDK SA and Maxell UDXLII generally came out with excellent results and listening tests.
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4th Mar 2019, 11:22 am | #58 | ||
Octode
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
Quote:
Quote:
Does anyone remember those?
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4th Mar 2019, 11:33 am | #59 |
Octode
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
My vote for the most hideous quality cassette tape of the 70's / 80's goes to Kingsonic from Hong Kong - truly dreadful quality - the oxide looked dull and was probably great at wearing down the heads ten times faster than normal!
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4th Mar 2019, 11:38 am | #60 |
Nonode
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Gloucester, Glos. UK.
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Re: Cassette tapes making a comeback?
On the strength of this thread I had a root around in my loft yesterday for my old Sony sports Walkman WM-FS593 which I had really forgotten about.
Dragged it down and stuck a Computer program cassette in (only type I have left) to see if it still worked which it did to my surprise. It cost quite a bit of money when new if memory serves but the earphones are long gone although I still have the box . |