I’ve got a half dozen or so my self and a fully functioning Walkman Sports (ruggedized case and supposedly water proof) to play them on when I get in the mood. Had to replace the earphones a few years ago as I snapped one of the earpieces off of the head band.
Hell, I still have about 80 or so vinyl albums…some collectors’ items. I just have to seperate the speakers from being anywhere near the turntable or the volume will bounce the stylus right off.
Ozzy, Black Sabbath and a few others have been known to do that.
Spent 5 years maintaining high-speed cassette duplicators at Capitol-EMI
15 repro’s, 156 recorders, running at 64X playing speed.
10-1/2 inch ‘pancakes’ of cassette tape on Gauss 1200 equipment originally used for reel-to-reel copies, then 4-tracks, then 8 tracks, then cassettes
Master tapes ( 1″) ran thru the repro’s at 240 ips, thats 20 FEET per second
Inter-unit audio cables were 93-ohm coax.
We later modded everything to 80X and went to 12 hour shifts 7 days a week to keep up with demand late 80’s-early 90’s
Depending on program length per cassette (about 20 minutes), we could turn out about 200,000 units per 24 hours.
Everything in the cassette EXCEPT the tape,pressure pads, leader tape, and the metal pins for the corner rollers were made in injection molding area assembled and case halves sonically welded together
Winding machines took full reels of recorded ‘hubs’ of tape, spliced the beginning to the leader, wound it, cut it off after the last selection, re-spliced the tail end to the leader tape, DONE ( it sensed the end of one and the beginning of the next via the ‘cutter tone’..that’s the BRRRRP you hear in the right channel at the end of Side Two)
Then to the print lines (3 of them) then boxed 25 to a box, boxes into cartons, stacked and later shipped
It was fun while it lasted, but the bean counters cut quality control, and there was a company directive to phase out cassettes in favor of CD’s.
I still have a box of unwrapped Sony cassettes, 10 of ’em. Don’t know what to do with ’em !
No playback equipment except for some old boomboxes with dubbing and duplicating functions.
Oh heck yeah. I started duping my LPs to cassette for use in the car, back in 1979. I think I have an Aiwa brand “walkman” around here somewhere. Also, for that matter, a Sony Discman.
I ditched cassettes years ago. They were fine for a while, but once CD became the prevalent format for pre-recorded media, it was a no brainier to buy discs instead of tapes. The quality of pre-recorded tapes was never great, and got worse over time such that they wore out prematurely if played back repeatedly. If I needed a tape for the car or the boombox, I’d dub it from CD. I recently sold one of my last good cassette decks, a 3 head Akai unit that I no longer had a need for.
Dear Lord, I remember the angst as the only semi-rock and roll station in town went from AM to FM and the car I drove at the time didn’t have FM. Enough people complained that the station finally begin doing a dual broadcast in both FM and AM so those of us with older cars could still listen.
Then, miracle of miracles, my parents bought a car with an 8-track! We went from AM only to AM/FM with 8-track to boot. Dang those were good times, even if we were stuck driving a fucking Ford LTD station wagon around.
I’m trying to remember if I ever had a car with a cassette player. By the time I finished school and could finally buy a new truck, CD’s were already a thing. I went from driving a 1960’s truck to a 1990’s truck in one purchase.
Still got a few around here somewhere. Sherwood double cassette deck still thumps along fine too.
I’ve got a half dozen or so my self and a fully functioning Walkman Sports (ruggedized case and supposedly water proof) to play them on when I get in the mood. Had to replace the earphones a few years ago as I snapped one of the earpieces off of the head band.
Hell, I still have about 80 or so vinyl albums…some collectors’ items. I just have to seperate the speakers from being anywhere near the turntable or the volume will bounce the stylus right off.
Ozzy, Black Sabbath and a few others have been known to do that.
Spent 5 years maintaining high-speed cassette duplicators at Capitol-EMI
15 repro’s, 156 recorders, running at 64X playing speed.
10-1/2 inch ‘pancakes’ of cassette tape on Gauss 1200 equipment originally used for reel-to-reel copies, then 4-tracks, then 8 tracks, then cassettes
Master tapes ( 1″) ran thru the repro’s at 240 ips, thats 20 FEET per second
Inter-unit audio cables were 93-ohm coax.
We later modded everything to 80X and went to 12 hour shifts 7 days a week to keep up with demand late 80’s-early 90’s
Depending on program length per cassette (about 20 minutes), we could turn out about 200,000 units per 24 hours.
Everything in the cassette EXCEPT the tape,pressure pads, leader tape, and the metal pins for the corner rollers were made in injection molding area assembled and case halves sonically welded together
Winding machines took full reels of recorded ‘hubs’ of tape, spliced the beginning to the leader, wound it, cut it off after the last selection, re-spliced the tail end to the leader tape, DONE ( it sensed the end of one and the beginning of the next via the ‘cutter tone’..that’s the BRRRRP you hear in the right channel at the end of Side Two)
Then to the print lines (3 of them) then boxed 25 to a box, boxes into cartons, stacked and later shipped
It was fun while it lasted, but the bean counters cut quality control, and there was a company directive to phase out cassettes in favor of CD’s.
You lived a fantastic life
I still have a box of unwrapped Sony cassettes, 10 of ’em. Don’t know what to do with ’em !
No playback equipment except for some old boomboxes with dubbing and duplicating functions.
My Ranger has a cassette and CD radio in it.
If they’d sold them with a free pencil they might still be around.
Oh heck yeah. I started duping my LPs to cassette for use in the car, back in 1979. I think I have an Aiwa brand “walkman” around here somewhere. Also, for that matter, a Sony Discman.
I ditched cassettes years ago. They were fine for a while, but once CD became the prevalent format for pre-recorded media, it was a no brainier to buy discs instead of tapes. The quality of pre-recorded tapes was never great, and got worse over time such that they wore out prematurely if played back repeatedly. If I needed a tape for the car or the boombox, I’d dub it from CD. I recently sold one of my last good cassette decks, a 3 head Akai unit that I no longer had a need for.
Dear Lord, I remember the angst as the only semi-rock and roll station in town went from AM to FM and the car I drove at the time didn’t have FM. Enough people complained that the station finally begin doing a dual broadcast in both FM and AM so those of us with older cars could still listen.
Then, miracle of miracles, my parents bought a car with an 8-track! We went from AM only to AM/FM with 8-track to boot. Dang those were good times, even if we were stuck driving a fucking Ford LTD station wagon around.
I’m trying to remember if I ever had a car with a cassette player. By the time I finished school and could finally buy a new truck, CD’s were already a thing. I went from driving a 1960’s truck to a 1990’s truck in one purchase.