Opening & playing sealed 54-year-old cassette tapes
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- Опубликовано: 4 июл 2024
- I acquired some Ampex music cassettes that have been sealed since 1969 or 1970. Will they still be playable after sitting unopened and unused for 53 or 54 years? And how good do they sound? Let's find out!
Time flow:
0:00 50+ year old cassettes
1:17 Ray Charles
2:46 Harpers Bizarre
3:58 Peter, Paul & Mary
5:06 Mantovani (with pressure pad repair)
7:11 Solomon Burke
8:12 Don Ho
9:11 Pricing
9:40 Why didn't cassettes catch on sooner?
#cassette #tape #unboxing 
Наука
I can see why you played the Don Ho tape last. The alcohol coming off that recording would have obviated the need for head cleaning.
HA!!!! Savage ;)
Lmao
snrk
Hahahahahahahahaaa... play me some Dean Martin!
I remember his talk show back in the 70's. He couldn't get two words out without slurring at least one of them!
Wow! Hearing that Mantovani ( 5:06 )song gave me chills. Reminded me of my father who always listened to 105.1 WRFM New York, beautiful music. We kids used to call it the Daddy Station! Love you daddy!
In Seattle we had KSEA beautiful music, 100.7 and ditto to dad listening at night before lights out. The strange security in old memories.
No matter where in the world you go, if you find a collection of more than 10 old records, cassettes, 8-tracks, or open-reel tapes, at least one of them will be a Mantovani recording.
as a european, i'm wondering who is mantovani?
and I have much more than 10
Definitetly lol, also Franck Pourcel most probably and maybe Paul Mauriat
@@ivok9846 This from Wikipedia: "Annunzio Paolo Mantovani (Italian: [anˈnuntsjo ˈpaːolo mantoˈvaːni]; 15 November 1905 - 29 March 1980) was an Anglo-Italian conductor, composer and light orchestra-styled entertainer with a cascading strings musical signature." My take has always been that Mantovani was responsible for almost all the music you would hear in supermarkets, malls, and elevators in the '70's and '80's.
I also live in Europe and I can confirm this as I have bunch of Mantovani records.
@@aTrulyPowerfulSpirit I have a Mantovani LP box set and a few single records and even a reel to reel. I bought them myself in the past year. Sometimes that music hits the spot for relaxing.
It's amazing cassettes that are that old can still be found sealed today.
people hold onto 'stuff' . Ever see those storage locker shows?
@@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777 True. It's not that uncommon people do that.
Yeah, I tend to use things that I buy right away. I wouldn't have bought something if I didn't want to make use if it. I don't believe in buying things to hold onto and not use and enjoy.
@@applegal3058 I try to as well....but I have amassed stuff that I intended to sell and just haven't had time to list them. Kind of a good catch 22.. :)
You can buy a shrink wrap machine for about 30 u$s...
The audio quality of the cassettes sounded marvelous.
Whenever I hear of people claiming how audio tapes, or even home recorded video tapes, can deteriorate after 10 or 40 years, yet, I have hundreds of home-recorded tapes that still play fine of the same age, it got me thinking . . .
Is it possible that such tape deterioration, that people lament about, resulted from hundreds of replays of those tapes? I bring this up as the tapes in my collection, that have held up well for me, may have been replayed a dozen times over the many years.
With my ADHD, I don't have the temperament to enjoy replaying a tape 100 times. But, it is nice to hold onto such tapes as there are no assurances of it being replaceable in the future.
It's hilarious how so many "experts" says cassettes will only last 30 years
The sad reality is an expert in any field is ultimately only an expert in being wrong.
I love unwrapping vintage cassettes. I opened a brand new Memorex MRXI S from 1987 and it still had the new smell!
One of the best and most 'relaxing to watch' channels on the internet. Thank you so much.
Despite having been born in 81 there is always something nostalgic for me when I hear a Don Ho song, as my parents(mother, and step dad) were big into the beach/Tiki scene, and I still have my late step father's old Tiki bar setup in my game room. 👍
I'm surprised at how good they sound (age relative) - could early cassettes have been duplicated in real time? Surely not... The collector in me kept saying _"Don't open them!"_ 😜
No not real time. It was always speedy duplication but they did it well.
@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777
Very fascinating!
Thanks much!;...I'd always wondered!
@@AndrewHeller-jn7dx : Yeah, audio cassettes spent maybe a decade with universally low audio quality for the transcription & similar markets (reel-to-reel and 8-tracks were the entertainment-grade, because both ran tape much faster), so by the time they started doing music cassettes the industry had been fairly well developed.
I have a handful of these early ('68 to '72) pre-recorded cassettes in my library. Those early PRCTs sound much like these, which is to say high frequencies vanish above 10k, there's a significant amount of tape hiss, and they are basically listenable. FYI I am guessing that today's National Audio Company (founded in 1969) was one of many companies which was involved in the (then-new) business of high-speed cassette tape duplication. It's conceivable that Ampex outsourced their duplication to NAC's Springfield, Missouri facility. Who knows?
@peacearchwa5103
Thank you so much.
Highly fascinating info!
However, my memories of the ones, I'd owned back then, seemed more rosy, than you had just painted.
Now, I'm awfully confused.
I bought Back to the Egg by Wings for 50 pence from a charity shop last year. 45 years old and plays absolutely fine.
I got my first cassette recorder/player for Christmas in 1968. My dad bought me a couple of pre-recorded cassettes a few months later. One was “Diana Ross and The Supremes Live at ‘The Talk of the Town’”. It looked just like those you unwrapped here. AMPEX.
The reason for rearranging songs (or reversing sides) is to keep side 1 (A) longer than side 2 (B). this is to avoid a long blank space (break) between the sides of the tape. If there was a 2 minute blank space on side 1 (A) then you would have to fast forward to the end or flip the tape and rewind side 2 (B) to the beginning.
Thanks for the explanation. I has been wondering why.
When I made home tapes I always tried to fill side A , leaving about 20 seconds of tape before the tape turned round ( I have always had auto reverse machines ) ...At the end of side B , I didn't mind leaving a few minutes of blank tape ( if I had nothing of the same style to fill it with ) . I can't imagine not making home tapes any other way .
Mantovani!!!!🤗🤗🤗🤗 I still have that album... what a beautiful, beautiful album... "Windmills of Your Mind"... truly, so ✨epic✨
Cassettes took off here in the U.S. when cassette players became available in cars just like 8-track did before it. 8-track stuck around for as long as people still had it in their cars. Once CD players hit automobiles the Cassette slowly died. A lot of what went on in the U.S. revolved around what you had in your car.
Yes, it was all about the cars. My new (2019 😆) truck can’t even play CDs. It’s streaming or MP3’s on usb stick only.
My 1998 Passat had a cassette player.
Meanwhile in Japan, it revolved around karaoke. 8 tracks and laserdiscs were huge there (mostly) for that very reason.
It's amazing how good these old cassettes sound, especially when you consider most cassette players back in 1969 weren't capable of producing the sound quality of more modern cassette decks. You wouldn't think they would have been recorded as well as they are.
From what I recall, pre-recorded cassettes started to get _cheap,_ with its audio and the materials used for manufacturing them, by the late 1970s.
Home cassette decks were pricy back in the early 1970s; as the only people I knew that owned them were upscale enough to afford them.
When I bought my first home cassette deck in 1977, I paid $150 (US) for it, which would equal over $700 (US) in 2023 (US) dollars. So, for the standards of living in the 1970s (US), they were on the expensive side.
Thank you for posting this. I love opening old cassettes. You have a great channel :)
Back when the MJ album "Thriller" was £14 in the UK record stores, I got a quote from C.O.P.S Limited in the UK to duplicate an independent album on to chrome tape.
1000 tapes duplicated with boxes and colour inserts for £1000 (plus VAT tax which may have been 20% or less)
So someone was making a lot of money from 30 million copies of the "Thriller" tape..
There was always a rumor back in the day that "Puff the Magic Dragon" was a stoner song.
And some radio stations refused to play John Denver's song "Rocky Mountain High" because they incorrectly thought it was a reference to drug use.
True! Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff. Read the lyrics.
it is a pagan nod to getting high 100%. It's not a rumor - but it's not about any particular drug.
That scene from "Meet The Parents" when Greg mentions this to his future father-in-law........"are you a pothead Focker?"
I really love the case design of these. That Ray Charles tape would be awesome to have. I LOVE his music. That man was 150% pure talent and is still a pleasure to listen to. The tapes sound pretty well. Sure a little low on the high frequencies but that was to be expected from an older formula Type1 tape and with a few dacades of storing. But i did hear a lil bit of tape aging and slight dropouts on the "the world of Mantovani" tape. It's pretty cool they even wrote on the covers what tape stock they used. Something i NEVER saw on any pre-recorded cassette. Thanks Kevin for doing a sequel to this "50 year old cassettes" video you did a while back :)
I have the same World of Mantovani cassette from 1969, also I have a bunch of cassettes including some early ones from 1967 (AMPEX started to produce pre-recorded cassettes in 1967).
the return of Don Ho!
One reason to just flip the sides entirely might be if the leadout on side 1 was going to end up considerably longer. Better to have side 1 be longer and flip right into side 2 rather than having to fast-forward or rewind there.
Moral of the story: Ampex were really good at making tapes =P I'm impressed by the stereo separation on these (though it was 1969 so I guess they just hard-panned everything and called it a day). Also everyone had to have a crack at Proud Mary huh
I know that the 8 track format is probably the underdog of all audio formats, but I absolutely love them. I own close to 200 of them and I have a one single cartridge player and two 8 track tape changers that can play multiple tapes back to back, just like a CD changer. They can sound really good on a maintained player, with a high quality audio system. My compact cassette collection is around the 200 mark also. I'm just a huge fan of vintage audio in general.😊
Just curious Ray Williams if the 8track carousel player you have is a Qatron or Telex player. I worked at Telex when they manufactured the Telex 8 track player that held 12 tapes. The models 48H and 48D also have the TMS 101 and The last model built TMS 1000.
@mike keech Hello Mike, I have the RCA Mark 8 eight track changer ( Model VYC - 950W ) that has the removable magazine, that can play up to five 8 track tapes back to back at a time. It also has an Am and Fm turner, with a built in amplifier , so can hook up speakers directly into the player. My second 8 track changer is a Mitsubishi MGA ( Model TD-83 ) that will play up to three 8 track tapes back to back. I don't own a Telex or Qatron carousel 8 track changer, but I would absolutely love to acquire one of those players someday. 🤗
@@rwj777 I also have an RCA
YXC-950W
I remember Windmills of Your Mind from a doctors office I visited a lot when I was a kid. I guess they were playing the “easy listening” music to help calm down anxious patients.
"Boss, we accidentally reversed the sides of the tape! - Nevermind, we'll stick the labels on to match." - would be my guess for the swapped sides... 😁
Remember watching a daily Don Ho variety show mid/late 70s, middays during summer, sick days
Don Hoe SEALED!!! You are a LEGEND!!! A FREAKING LEGEND!!!
I would love to have a WAV copy from all of these cassettes, they are incredible for their age, and sound very good still. Nice video, Kevin, thank you for posting it ♥
lossless 16/44 or 24/48? I would be interested to see the sonograph results.. I bet they reach up past 18khz in some cases unless they were limited somehow.
@@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777 The maximum frequency for cassette tape "type 1" on non high-end equipement is around up to 12000 Hz, sometimes less,
for type 2 tapes you can reach 14000 Hz, and for type 4 (metal tape) probably 15000~16000 Hz, expensive equipements like Nakamichi can reach 20000 Hz if you use this equipement for recording on the tape with correct bias and azimuth.
@@techmaster-ch5yd These definitely struggle in the treble.
@@techmaster-ch5yd yes .. limited in tape formula. excellent response. I'm still interested in seeing sonograph results.
@@techmaster-ch5yd In my experience, it is really hard to hear the difference between 14khz cutoff and a 12khz cutoff or frankly an 8khz cutoff. Most musical instruments never get anywhere near 12khz. There just isn't a lot of music up high. Guitars have a frequency range up 1200hz. Violin can reach 2637hz. 4186hz for a piano. A harmonica can reach 10khz, though that is theoretical. A chart of string instruments shows most top off at a few khz.
It might be my hearing, but I can detect a 12khz tone. Apply a filter to whack anything over 8 or 10khz and I just can't hear the difference.
If stored right, audio tapes ought to last a long time, though not indefinitely owing to chemicals breaking down and plastics failing eventually, but the fact these ones were still in as-new condition with only the one needing repair, that's pretty good stuff...
The most important factor is exposure to heat, air and sunlight the plastic covers kept the content safe for a really long time.
@@Q80Warlock if stored properly cassete tapes last more than a human lifetime
I love your JVC tape deck.
It is an excellent brand.
Yes JVC can be good - Japan Victor Company. Even the middle of the road dual deck by JVC I have works like a champ - I had another one almost the same but with speed control and it had a ghost in it.
@@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777 ¿Cuál fantasma?
The oldest tape I had as a kid was Peter, Paul, and Mommy from 1969. My uncle bought it in the 1970s and handed it down. Cassettes have came a long way, I got some new cassettes albums from Record Store Day.
I used to have that record I think I sold it in a bundle collection 10 years ago.. I never actually listened to it.. just remember the AND MOMMY .. made me laugh.
@@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777 it’s my introduction to the folk music, I thought they were a Sesame Street group, because they played children’s songs in the late 1960s and throughout the 70s like “If I Had a Hammer” and “Mail Myself to You” those I listened from Peter, Paul, and Mary!
The sound of the plastics omg your video bring me memories in the 90 unboxing my first cassette album. Very nice find Kevin.
It's interesting to see those cases. They seem more robust than the standard Philips case.
Youre right, the cases seem to be made from softer plastic, so they won't break as easily. What they lack, compared to the PHILIPS ones, is the little tab that prevents the tapes from unwinding.
@@BertGrink
Absolutely, which was a real drawback!
Always loved how C-60 tapes could outperform Vinyl and sound near-CD(13bit/44.1KHz).
love the crackling sound of 50 year old shrink wrap!
One of the joy and memorable moments of my adolescence that would stay for the rest of my life is opening brand new sealed cassette tapes.
Fascinating! What you did with the pressure pad on that Mantovani cassette is exactly how I repair any of my cassettes when the pressure pads tend to fall out…
But how about perished ones? I live in a country when it is hard to import those pads. Any alternatives you can suggest?
@@stupidfanboyph Try cutting a piece of felt and glue it onto the metal bit behind the tape itself….
Some of these recordings sound really good!
I would much rather listen to any of these songs over any of today’s music. These tracks just sound so good.
Very good , most tapes still sound good if not left in damp places. Good video as usual 👍
This video is giving me techmoan vibes ✨
what's that ?
@@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777 another youtuber that reviews old tech youtube.com/@Techmoan
I have a lot of cassettes to this day, including some soundtracks that are still sealed and my tapes from the 70's and 80's still sound great today.
Generally speaking, cassette tapes survived much better than 8-track tapes, the latter of which would inevitably have the tape splice snap apart and the foam pads disintegrate, not to mention how practically every artwork sticker on an 8-track tape has bubbling due to the deterioration of the glue.
All in all, cassette tapes were generally well-made and built to last.
Thanks for sharing. This video initiated a stream of consciousness consisting of my 1968 Mustang and the cassette deck that I installed in it. Not HiFi by any stretch but boy did it leave me with many fond memories that I'll always treasure.
Gotta love that classic 1960’s/1970’s cassette casing labels!
Your channel (and Joe Collins' channel) inspired me to get back into cassettes way back like over ten years ago. It's a fun hobby. I was able to get a nice stock of blanks before the prices got ridiculous. There still isn't anything comparable to cassettes! My current project is to find a NOS cassette receiver to put in my car. Thanks for the fun videos.
Very interesting to see these tapes in action, nice to see that most didn’t even need any repairs! As long as they are stored in acceptable conditions, tapes will just keep on working!
Wow....what a find! Can't believe you got a collection like this!!!! Very Cool!
Puff the Magic Dragon hit me right in the feels. I've bought a couple tapes off eBay that snapped on the 1st play, but it's not that hard to fix, even the shells that don't have screws.
Puff (The Magic Dragon)... Hahaha, I will always remember this songs thanks to the film Meet The Parents.
Incredibly cool!
NOS media that's 54 years old.
wow I didn't know they sold cassettes in the 1960s. I figured the tech was out there but I didn't realize they were mass marketed. And yeah, as you said it is becaue of the 8 track. I figured that was the precursor.
I found a ton of old southeast asian market cassette tapes at a thrift store and they were in those clamshell-type snap cases. Though, it was mostly stuff from the late 70's to the 80's. Billy Joel, Springsteen, Michael Jackson etc. They looked legit but I'm not 100% sure they weren't bootlegs.
5:30 You can't visit a Salvation Army Thrift Store, Goodwill, Value Village, etc. on a regular basis without seeing Mantovani records and I do have a few of his albums while the one I most highly recommend is his 'Gypsy Soul' Phase 4 album on London records (also available on out-of-print CD's).
One of the best tracks is from the movie 'Villa Rides!' (starring Russian-born actor, Yul Brynner, playing Mexican revolutionary Poncho Villa. Haha!) composed by Maurice Jarre ('Lawrence of Arabia', 'Doctor Zhivago', 'Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome', etc.) which is certainly NOT a Gypsy tune, but it's great as are the Hungarian tunes on the record. :)
Delightful video! The thing about the swapped sides is not that unusual. Well into the '70s, it was common (particularly for jazz and instrumental records) to have swapped sides on vinyl vs. open reel or cassette. I'm not sure why but it's a thing I've noticed a lot. The CD releases as often as not use the cassette running order, and often even the record sleeves have the order different from the discs themselves.
10:34 In Brazil in the 70s a lot of people used something very similar here: they were called "cartuchos" (cartridges) in cars (and only in cars) though I can't say precisely if they were 8-track but they were endless loops too (my father told me when I was a child). As I was a child I can't be sure if they were 8-track, playtapes of some similar format. So it was not only there that they used this format in cars.
Some of the early 70s cassettes are not recorded at overdrive high levels like much later. So even with dolby they may be a bit noisier for hiss but the sound quality from cassettes recorded at a proper level is quite good, and enjoyable, accepting them for what they are. They slammed the tapes harder later on becuase some people demanded "louder, LOUDER!!" and also to cover up more of the tape hiss background noise, but ended up with higher distortion and more muffled highs.
Woah. I listened to it with my headphones on, and it actually sounds pretty decent. Kinda spooky even.
The fact they were cheapening out on cassettes, even in 1969 (they are glued or sonically welded) though.
Another thing I noticed is that they are very quietly recorded, likely due to the equipment used back then.
I love the quietness; &, miss the screwed together cases!
As if there wasn't a better compliment for the 8-track format, you just had to pick a dirty Certron blank. That's an aesthetic in and of itself.
The only other country the fully embraced 8 track machines was Japan where they used them in Karaoke machines up until the early 90's.
WOW!!!! It has been 54 years!!! I remember when these came in long skinny boxes with the cassette sideways at one end. Right next to the record albums! WOW!!! 54 years!!!!! 😐
Maybe I’m getting older, or my standards are getting lower, but those old tapes sounded fine to my ears.
Of course my old iPhone’s speaker probably masked quite a bit of the inherent inadequacies of ancient tape-but still, not bad at all.
All those cassettes and different styles of cassette case reminds me of my grandmothers cassette collection. Cassettes were popular not just for music of course, at home and in your car, they were used for computer games in the 1970's/80's and even in the 1990's. I used cassette tapes to store my BASIC programs for the first 6 months on my Apple ][ in early-1983 (until I purchased a floppy drive). Some cars still had cassette tape players until 2010 or thereabouts. Ahh the days of the Driving Mix Tape. A friend of mine purchased a brand new Commodore 64 in 1991 and was too cheap to get a floppy disk drive, so he ended up buying a large library of games on cassette (at $0.99 and $1.99) and loaded his games from tape ... and was still doing this well into the mid-late 1990's. On a C=64. He was happy to wait and watch the patterns on screen while the games loaded. Meanwhile, the rest of the world was playing Doom, Command and Conquer, etc ...
Very cool! I remember my parents got a stereo system with a built in cassette player in 1970. It’s cool to see those old cassette tapes.
With all of that lot being manufactured by the same company in the same year, after the initial pleasant surprise, it's not really unexpected to see them all playing ok after the first one proves to be in perfect shape, but other than that it's an amazing feat!
I like the 1969 cases they seem more durable and ruggad.
These are beautiful ❤️ and they still sound fantastic, at least as good as the technology of 1969 allows! I guess they took inspiration from 8-track with the revised running order. I wouldn’t have minded if we continued doing that.
Watching this while I work. Proud Mary by CCR just so happened to be playing on the office radio at the same time the Proud Mary tape was being tested! 😲
What are the chances!!😊👍❤️🏴
I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of collectors suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced
You are the second person this week that I have seen say the ball point pen was the official cassette tape winder, but I grew up that the 'official' was the #2 pencil. It even fits way better than bic pens. Another great video!
No, a pencil doesn't work nearly as well as a Bic pen, unless you live in Japan: ruclips.net/video/vaSN4J3a_60/видео.html
What an awesome slice of history right there. Great discovery!
I've been digitally transferring cassette tape recordings that I made in the late sixties, and the sound is still ok!
Wow! They look brand new!
I remember borrowing audiobooks on cassettes from the local library in the early to mid 80s. They came in a plastic case with a garage door style shutter which you would push to one side to open. I've never seem those again anywhere other than the library.
I found two used old tapes like this. A Black Sabbath tape and a Moody Blues tape. They both sounded horrible and the Moody Blues' felt pad came loose shortly after playing. But, I keep them as collectables cause they look kinda cool.
Yes!
I have the exact same suitcase for cassettes. I had no casette tapes that I recorded that worked that were older than around 1986-87 when I played them back last year.
Back in the early 80's I found an original 1974 cassette of Bryan Ferry's Another Time, Another Place in the discount bin at my local department store. I was a big Roxy Music fan so that totally made my day! It was in a black plastic slipcase and the cassette itself was pink! It sounded pretty good then (only about 10 years old at that point) Unfortunately I tossed it along with all my cassettes when I got into CD's in the early 90's. What a dumbass! It's probably a pretty rare tape today.
Wow 54 years. I was born 1960, 😃 know them all. Nice to revisit the past.
In the 1970s, 8-track and cassette versions of albums listed at one dollar more than the vinyl.
Excellent find! I wonder if those tapes (minus Don Ho) were part of a package given away when you purchased an Ampex stereo? The Ampex Micro 85 system we purchased in late 1968 came with four pre-recorded Ampex made tapes (including Mantovani), three blank tapes, speakers and microphones all for about $200. Ampex bundled that stuff up to get you hooked on compact cassettes.
“Tiny bubbles” keep moving soldier
Puff the Magic Dragon always makes me sad because it makes me think of my old stuffed animals and the adventures we had when I was a kid and how - at some point - I played with them for the last time. My first one is still out on a shelf but the rest are in plastic bags in my crawl space. 😢
Nice job! My dad had that Norelco portable cassette recorder.
I immediately recognized the American Pie cassette. I had it! Unfortunately, it contained an edited version of the title cut. Not as truncated as the 45 version, but missing the entire piano/vocal first verse and faded to trim a few seconds off the end. I eventually bought the LP. 🤓
@@Heike-- It was longer than the radio/45 version but shorter than the real album version. It seems to have been an edit done specifically to make the two sides of the cassette have approximately the same running time. There was also a song on side one of the cassette that was repeated on side two. I think it was “Winterwood.”
Gotta love how these old tapes feel lip sync-able but modern releases don't (unless you get on something like 439 hz to make it feel real, again). This is because some time down the line the process of up pitching audio by 10 cents A.K.A 0.1 semitones became more and more of a thing.
Oh how wonderfully satisfying it is to unwrap vintage media.
In June 2009 I found 3 boxes of cassettes at a recycling center someone left to throw away. They ranged from the 60s to the early 90s. I took them home. One was the Ray Charles tape shown here. Many of the late 60s tapes were still shrink wrapped & still are today. Conditions varied because I found them outdoors on a hot Florida day. I've been afraid to play many of them.
It seems like a lot of them still used cellophane for wrapping instead of modern plastic. I wish we could return to the more enviro friendly cellophane.
>>Agreed!
Have a few 60s cassette tapes and they sound nice. The music industry in the 60s era was wide open and produced some great stuff, that's a nice score.
my late aunt and uncle met don ho at a bar and sat next to him. he said he got tired of singing tiny bubbles. they also listened to him on the radio at 6 am in the morning for a radio program called hawaii calls .
About 8-track: i’m from the Netherlands and before ‘the internet’ i had never heard of , or ever seen an 8-track. When i heard someone talking about an 8 track recorder i thought they meant a reel to reel recorder with 8 tracks 😊
That's pretty cool that there are genuine ampex cassette tapes
I have a JVC TD-R421. Had it since 1989. Works and sounds great. A little weak with rewinding if a tape has gotten "sticky", but it plays REALLY well.
Thank you for the exciting video! 👍
$5.95 in 1969 was a lot of money for an album. According to the BLS, which very much understates inflation, that's 50 dollars and 70 cents in 2023 money! Minimum wage was $1.30/hr. You would have to work 4 and a half hours to buy one album.
I would buy the LP for $3.50 and a $1 blank tape and have both for less. The tape went in the car and the LP on the shelf until the tape expired and a new one would be made.
Yes it was very expensive but inflation scales are inaccurate for myraid of reasons. I see new tapes for around $30 today. All these inflation calculators do is try to lull the con-sumer to keep accepting price hikes. You know..the American Dream.. you have to be asleep to believe it?
The reason I believe the tapes are authentic in 1969 Warner Brothers was Warner Brothers, Seven arts and it had the logo on all of those tapes. I think Ampex had the market back then as well. They didn't sound too bad, considering they didn't have all of the electronics that the late 70s through 90s had much better sound quality with Dolby B/C HX Pro, or DBX. That was a real game changer. The frequency response got so much better with the newer tape decks, but in the late 60s I'm thinking the high frequencies didn't go much above 10 KHz.
I was just watching your older videos and this popped up in my notifications.
I was born in South Africa in 1977 and vaguely remember 8-tracks. My parents had an adaptor for playing normal cassettes in an 8-track player.
Puff the magic dragon really brought back the memories of my childhood.