Cassette Fetish

[ColdFireYYZ]

QUOTE (ghostworks @ Jan 9 2012, 12:21 PM)

and, oh boy... remember these? http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e129/4WAT/CASSETTE/cas_EMEMC1435.jpg Emerson MC1435 ^ yep - the old everything-in-one box a record player, dual well tape deck, am/fm stereo... really, these machines were my 'gateway drug' into my studio production hobby/career with a brick of blank tapes I could create anything - grab a track from an LP, another from a tape, record live from the radio (I still have tons of 'Rush' interview specials), even your own voice/music (if the stereo had a mic/aux in... and most did) I used to make my own radio shows - I'd act as the DJ, introduce the tracks etc. later, I got into 'sound collage', cutting pieces of tracks together with quick edits of am radio evangelists, children's stories 45's etc.

I have that same exact one. I found it in my grandmother's basement a few years ago and it still works extremely well. The sound from the speakers that it came with is actually not that bad.

[ghostworks]

^ awesome!

 

tell you what, CF

 

if you find a yard sale/pawn shop/flea market and come across a decent set of speakers, treat yourself to a pair

 

the original Emerson 'tissue box' speakers are OK, but wait until you hear that thing pushing a chrome cassette out of a pair of JBL L112's!

 

http://www.audioassembly.com/jbl/JBL%20L112.jpg

 

[metaldad]

I have a shitload of these. I remember the first time i bought a tape and the Cassette was Clear I thought i won a prize

[sullysue]

Here's some stuff from my box o' tapes. (These pictures are huge. Sorry.)

 

This is David Live: David Bowie at the Tower Philadelphia. It's literally like new, since all I did was unwrap it. I never had the chance to listen to it.

 

http://i958.photobucket.com/albums/ae62/Sullysue67/BowieattheTower2.jpg

 

http://i958.photobucket.com/albums/ae62/Sullysue67/BowieattheTower1.jpg

 

Some I'd listen to right away:

 

http://i958.photobucket.com/albums/ae62/Sullysue67/Tapes2.jpg

 

http://i958.photobucket.com/albums/ae62/Sullysue67/Tapes1.jpg

 

^^^ The green one is There Ain't No Bugs on Me by Jerry Garcia! I LOVE that song, and we have the book that goes with it.

[goose]

QUOTE (ghostworks @ Dec 11 2011, 07:40 PM)

QUOTE (Hatchetaxe&saw @ Dec 11 2011, 03:52 PM) ...my Aiwa walkman(how pissed must Sony have been when we all called our many-branded portable cassette players "walkmen". Ah, the chauvinism! No walkwomen! Up the '80's!). What type of walkman did you guys have? I loved Aiwa. And it had a rewind button. My earlier ones hadn't, just FF....FFS. I had many, but my pride and joy was the Sharp CJ-520(GY)   no surprise, I still own it:   http://i.imgur.com/ADAEo.jpg   ^ not only did it have auto reverse (endless cassettes!) and an anti-rolling mechanism (meaning that if you were walking fast/jogging, it wouldn't warble) - it had a THREE-BAND GRAPHIC EQ right on the front panel   as a teenager, there was nothing cooler to me than being able to fine-tune a mix on the fly My original walkman lasted 25 years before finally breaking down.   My daughter's two-year-old I-pod just bit the dust.

[rushgoober]

QUOTE (ghostworks @ Jan 9 2012, 10:09 AM)

nothing earth-shattering here, just a few Rush tapes that I picked out of the crates: http://i.imgur.com/jme0W.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/jROq0.jpg ^ the original printing of ESL cassette contains the unimportant but slightly irritating misspelling of Xanadu ('Zanadu') an odd p/g cover - the original title has been whited out (with the original 'Rush' logo enlarged but the title typed in generically) by '84, many record companies were starting to design specifically to the dimensions of the full cassette cover rather than just cropping a tiny 2.5" x 2.5" copy of the LP cover (they started getting it right by '87)

ah, those pictures sure do bring back memories.

 

i always seemed to have technics cassette decks that were part of technics stereo systems. i always pined for a nakamichi cassette deck, but never got one...

[Invisible To Telescopic Eye]

One of my friends had this bad boy here. When a tape finished, the door would automatically open, spin the tape around, close back up and start to play again.

 

http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff76/audiobucket/Emotiva%20Lounge/NAKRX-505.jpg

Edited January 10, 2012 by Invisible To Telescopic Eye

[apetersvt]

I threw away all of my tapes about a year ago. I realized that I hadn't listened to a tape in over 5 years and probably never would again.

 

To this day, I am still uterly confused as to why on the Caress Of Steel tape they:

Switched I Think I'm Going Bald with Didacts And Narpets.

 

It just wasn't right not hearing drums after 'In The Valley'. I'm guessing it was to balance out the lengths of the tape sides, but somebody should have been fired over that.

 

Having Archives on vinyl, I quickly made my own proper tape with songs in the right spot.

[Hatchetaxe&saw]

Repairing snapped spools......that was always fun....relooping with the nib of a pen....trying to play Stairway backwards....reusing by covering the holes with sellotape....taping your favourite Top 40/Hot 100 tunes onto a blank...as GW mentioned earlier, being your own DJ! Good times!

 

 

And then, CrO2, Chromium Dioxide!!!!!! I nearly had an accident when they came out. Reduced hiss baby!

 

I was a TDK man, occasionally lapsing into BASF or Maxell.

[tjtull]

Unlike their predecessor, vinyl, tapes don't hold much allure for me. Sure, I still have a ton of them but everything about them was high maintenance. From the hiss, to cleaning the heads, to the double tracking, to the tapes getting eaten/breaking (more so with 8-tracks than cassettes)...just too much trouble for the inferior sound.