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Are there many 8 track cartridges and their players still around? A friend of mine who is a bit of a collector is after one.
Thanks for that, I'll give them a try.
I sold all my 8 tracks last year. I had such a nice collection a guy came from another state to buy them as well as all my players and recorders. The problem is they all dry up and get brittle; so you have to keep splicing them and thats very time consuming. I had a guy who would do it for 50c a piece but he disapeared. Thats when I said this is too much work. But don't let anyone tell you they sounded bad; they sounded pretty darned good; better than the early CD's.
Yes - that's the problem - they always need repairing. What do you think to the standard of CD's nowadays?
And way better than those horrible cassette tapes, even after Dolby, metal tape and hype.
Yes - I have found that most of my cassette tapes have deteriorated over time. Either got twisted, or unaligned so they are scraping at the sides, or some other problem.
Cassette had a lot to overcome - slow tape speed, thin media, etc. It was initially intended as a voice range recorder like might be used for dictation. But by the time compact disks became popular, the highest quality cassette tape media and the decks, transports and electronics were capable of very good quality reproduction. I have many cassette tapes that have extremely high fidelity recordings on them.
But would you say generally that tape is definitely on the way out?
Of course. But there are likely to be tape enthusiasts for a long time, just like there are turntable and tube amp enthusiasts.
Yes, that's true. There's usually an enthusiast for everything. Esp when it goes out of date!
I remember that brittleness problem. And the splicing... and the frustration when the machine gave a grinding sound and I knew that when I'd pull the tape out, there would be a string of it still wrapped up inside the player. That's one part I *don't* miss!
I'd find 8 tracks nostalgic now, but they were my least favourite music format, personally. I did like being able to navigate through the songs with the four "channels" though.