In the '60's and '70's, I sold hi-fi and always demo'ed tape decks with my homebrew tapes. Quad or stereo, the tapes I made for myself or expressly for the store were used as demos, whether reels, cassettes or 8-tracks.
I was always the one that programmed, assembled and ``mastered'' the songs onto tape in the first place in our group of friends - and then got drafted to run cassette copies thereof for `em all because I always had access to the school's Language Lab - which always had the closest-to-professional tape dubbers around - and would give CONSIDERABLY better sound - even at ``high speed'' on the leftoiver ``voice-grade'' pancakes we'd always get from the duplicators - dubbing at 30 IPS reel-speed-to-7-1/2 IPS-cassette speed.
I had cassette capability in the car since '69. In the '70's, I had both Q8 and cassette capability in the car.
We had one of the strangest contraptions I ever saw - which could play 4-track Muntz, 8-track, cassette or (with a supplied caddy) Playtape, all in the same player. of course being that much of a multi-trick pony it didn't last long - but I'd still like to run across one again just for S&G's
Even though I have over 200 Q8's, it is still my most hated format. Yet, my Q8 mix tapes done on Columbia Converta-Quad cartridges still sound stellar.
Especially if you did like we did i.e. load first cobalt-doped and later Chromium loop tape for the three seconds it was available - and had the school engineer rig up one of the older QR decks with two sets of ERP heads from an equally old Q8 deck - and then have him tweak the electronics to where they would match as close as they could under the circumstances.
In the years before the Fostex was available - this was as good as it got.
We'd record one quadraphonic program from SQ broadcasts or LP's or demodulated from CD-4 or Lou Dorren's FM multiple-subcarrier quadracasting tests that was going on in a few places but never even got officially approved until CD's were already out - stopping every 22-1/2 minutes to mark the tape to cut apart later - and then rewind, flip the switch to the other set of heads and then do the same for the second program, cut them apart, load them into the Columbia carts, splice them together on the back, put the foil on the front and go about our business.
Then the reel deck broke down and the only other one we could get the school engineer to do the same installation on was a Teac 3340 HS that ran 7-1/2 and 15 instead of 3-3/4 and 7-1/2.
So - yes - after that - each single-album would take up two tapes since the speed was doubled to 7-1/2 - but Damn did they sound terriffic loaded with either the cobalt-doped tape or the graphite-backed version of BASF LPR 35 CR.
But we didn't care, because we already had one 7-1/2 IPS Q-8 I have never heard of, read about or seen since - which must have beena duplicating mistake, loading mistake or both.
It's a Canadian copy of
Patsy Cline's Greatest Hits. We found it in a truck stop when we were vacationing up in Winnipeg in about `75 or `76, I can't quite recall now.
They had four copies, and with 5 for $2 we bought all four, plus a
Guess Who Greatest Hits which played normally. So we plugged in the Patsy Cline to the Q8 player in the car - and it's the wrong speed.
So we take all four copies in the house, toss them in a box and forget about them. A couple years later, we inherit a Technics Q8 recorder that has static in one channel. My dad fixes it and it gets added to the quad setup my Great Uncle Charlie left me after he died in 1973 that my dad copped.
The following summer, we're cleaning out the attic and find the box of tapes, all four copies of Patsy Cline still in their original slipcases among them - bring them down to the basement and try to play them on the 858 or whatever it was called.
And it's still the wrong speed - about which we'd totally forgotten. Then my little baby cousin is teetering around just learning to walk, and we get distracted watching so he doesn't hurt himself.
He falls over into the stereo and his hand catches the Fast Forward button that we didn't know was there - on the Technics as he tries to catch himself. Lo and behold - the right speed - albeit muted.
So my Dad takes it apart - disables the mute circuit on the Fast Forward and we try playing it again - it sounds perfect - even better than the stereo reel-to-reel we'd worn out years earlier.
We try the other three copies - and we find out we have two copies of Side One and two copies of Side Two - both split up over two quadraphonic programs. And the ``mix'' such as it was turns out to be no better or worse than what would probably have been created for the supposedly upcoming Discrete Quad FM Radio - still in its' testing phases.
Normal stereo mix up front - albeit a little narrower stereo compared to the LP - and the rears were just tracks and ambience - which we recorded off onto stereo cassette
and used for my mom to sing karaoke for years.
Like I said - I've never seen it in any Quad discography anyplace, including record club editions - and I've never come across it anyplace else ever again.
