Well, I don’t have any betamax tapes (never did), and I gave up on 8-tracks about 1980, but I still have my beloved Motorola Teleplayer. And a decent collection of Edison Diamond Discs.
Anyone who still owns and plays an 8 track player gets Snood's vote!!!
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But way back when I always made a point to buy quality like Nakamichi cassette tape decks and utilize all those exotic formulations like metal/chromium dioxide blanks, DBX NR and even switched from VHS HiFi to Beta HiFi for that itty bitty extra 'writing speed' then on to Laserdisc [still have hundreds of discs, mostly Japanese pressings, stashed away] and even had my Theta Laserdisc player upgraded to Dolby Digital for that extra discrete 'thrill' for a pretty penny. And of course, eschewed the common receiver by upgrading to separate components as far back as I can remember!
And when I switched to Perfect Sound Forever with the compact disc I must've switched players like underwear. Almost laughable how many high end hardware manufacturers came up with exotic designs like Krell's MD~1 top loader with their ridiculous [but GORGEOUS] solid plexiglas 'damped' dustcover which was $10K at the time ...... made from a solid block of brushed aluminum! Even had a substantial metal weight on top of the CD to 'keep it flat" [LOL!]
I would have figured Ralphie to be a Nakamichi Dragon kind of guy!
My son inherited my sister’s Victrola and my parents’s 78’s.
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When I get in the mood and into listing them all down, before I went discrete Quad reel to reel, SQ Prologic / albums OK but never really happy with the carrier noise of CD-4, I was into Quad 8's, collected about 60, have a great player even has a pitch control if the cartridges were dragging a little, some Dolby B, had out board Dolby B units and DBX noise gates, got rid tape hiss between songs, have to use it sparingly so no "pumping". They won't compete with the Quadios now a days but were very enjoyable back then. Reel To Reels for majority all were 7 1/2 ips with Dolby "B" sounded great.
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Doug G.
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
I was involved in the engineering/manufacture/technical liaison of both stereo and quad 8-track decks for the Ford Motor Company.
Doug
Doug
ICYMI, there was a brief attempt at an 8 track revival in 2020. A Dolly Parton Christmas album.
https://www.discogs.com/release/16250582-Dolly-A-Holly-Dolly-Christmas
https://www.discogs.com/release/16250582-Dolly-A-Holly-Dolly-Christmas
Cheap Trick did an 8-track in 2009.
Their last album with Bun E. Carlos.
Their last album with Bun E. Carlos.
audiomaster
Well-known Member
I'll admit to being "one of those guys" that never throws anything away.
This talk about 8 tracks reminds me when I threw a box of 8tracks cartridges from the 70's, out. It hurt sooooo bad, especially when a friend bought an old Pontiac Catalina w/ factory 8 track. He was asking everyone if they had any old 8 tracks sitting in the basement.
That solidify my hoarding
Now I force myself to throw 1 thing a day away.
Thanks for the memories, Now back on topic
audiomaster
Well-known Member
Sorry. Flushing the commode doesn't count!
8-tracks were the worst medium ever developed for music, imo. But, Q8's were my discrete option for quad and I had all of them I could get back in the day. And they were great as a teenager with a quad setup in the car that I could go out with friends, park in the desert and listen as loud as we wanted without having our parents yell at us to turn it down while we were rockin' out. I had a setup in a little Toyota Corolla that actually sounded great. For that alone, they will always have a place in my heart. But, I would never want to go back to that era.
I don't know about 8 track cartridges ( and we have a few of them here), but I have a couple of 8 channel multi-track recorders here...one Fostex 1/4 in and a Tascam 1/2 in tape....and I have a few 4 track cassette multi-track recorders here as well.....there is an 8-track player here that also records....never knew they existed until somebody gave me one that they were tossing out.....Well, cassettes have been back for awhile now so you never know.
That imagery of you and your friends blasting those Q8's out in the desert is priceless!
I had an Akai X1800SD reel-to-reel / 8-track combo deck that would record 8-tracks from open reels. While it worked, there were inherent issues with how long the tape actually was (I did shorten a few, but what a pain) and the fact that the carts needed to be bulk erased. Cueing up the metal splice so the tracks would change at the right time was also not a trivial exercise, often having to wait up to ten minutes while the tape ran up to the track change.
Parts were unobtanium, and we parted ways in the late 70s.
I picked one up at a "ham fest". It had a few issues but I managed to use it to make (DTS CD) copies of many of my Q8s. One channel kept cutting out on playback, punching the monitor button in and out would fix it for awhile. I sprayed the heck out of the switch to no avail.
What I love about that unit is it has a massive drive motor, not a toy motor like regular Q8 decks.
His own private Burning Man.
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