Elizabethan 8 track stereo tape player

[Pytor12]

I have this unit,seems to be from the sixties.The tape plays when inserted but there are no stop/start/rewind/eject controls,only 4 ‘channels’ to change. Anyone know how to stop the player and remove the tape? Thanks

[Cobaltblue]

Hi and Welcome to the forum.

It sounds like you have an 8 track player.

There is no rewind as the tape is a continuous loop.

Usually you just grab the cartridge and pull it out.

There are several threads recently about these for example https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...hlight=8+Track

Cheers

Mike T

[Martin Bush]

In most cases, as Mike explains, you pull the cartridge out.

8 Track players and cartridges are great, but both will need servicing after all these years to keep them working well.

They are quite a simple thing, but trying to explain how they work to someone is sometimes quite difficult. I find them fascinating as well as a great way to play music. There's lots of good tapes out there (despite what some may think), but you do need to give them some TLC.

[Radio Wrangler]

There are eight tracks recorded on the tape. For stereo, it plays two of those tracks at once.

As Mike said, the tape is joined into a continuous loop. When the joint comes around, it triggers the player to move its magnetic heads to play the next pairs or tracks. Every four times round, the tape is back to where you started. It just keeps on and on playing.

There is no fast forward or any sort of reverse, all you have is the track select button which jumps you on to the next stereo pair.

Not many home machines were sold, ones for cars were the dominant market. You got in, started up, and shoved a cartridge in. It would then play the same album endlessly until you were heartily sick of it and shoved something different in.

Home machines came in two flavours. Basic ones were just players. Better ones could record and these sold to people wanting to copy their LPs to play in the car.

There were even aviation-certified players made to play muzak and pre-recorded safety announcements.

One hint, always pull the tape out when you've finished using it. Leaving it in puts flat spots on the rubber pinch-wheel.

Some machines had an eject button, most you just pulled the tape.

I was always amazed how few people complained "It says it's an 8-track player, but I can only select 1,2,3, or 4!"

David

[julie_m]

People knew their times tables in those days, so it wouldn't have been a great leap of imagination to suppose that each programme must be using a separate track for each speaker. Four twos are indeed eight; and with the right programme material, you can certainly hear different sounds coming from each speaker (especially bearing in mind prevailing tastes in record production around the height of the format's popularity), so it all makes sense.

[Restoration73]

A small number of decks included a fast forward button - the capstan rotated at a higher
speed e.g. x2 during which the audio was muted to avoid the comedy effects.

[Richard_FM]

There were some quadraphonic 8 tracks which unlike vinyl used a standard format without any matrixing.

While most of the mainstream labels had dropped the format by the early 1980s, they remained a niche market in the USA with truckers & other long distance drivers.

A few small companies licenced albums from the labels, sometimes putting two albums from one artist onto one cartridge to take advantage of the longer playing time.

I remember Record Collector once had a feature on recent 8 track releases, with a picture of a cartridge with Madonna's first two albums on it.