#8 track tape player

[forlath]

Long live vintage…

[goshyesvintageads]

Motorola Inc, 1971

[stone-cold-groove]

The now sound of 8 track profit. Telex 811R 8 Track Stereo Cartridge Recorder ad - 1969.

[friend-crow]

I have an old console record player which I love, but a lot of my records are hip hop and if you turn the bass up to an appropriate hip hop level the built-in speakers make the needle skip. Every so often I look into getting a receiver (I'd also like to be able to play my digital music on nice speakers) and external speakers to solve this problem, but the prices are terrifying and I don't know shit about stereo equipment.

Anyway, I'm now in a new cycle of this. Maybe next week I'll go check out stores that carry used gear.

In somewhat related news, I have learned that there is a record store/pub near my house.

[sspacegodd]

This is an antique from biblical times. People used it to play 8-track tapes.

[relatedtangent]

There's good reasons why people are still nitpicky about emulation of C64/Mega Drive audio. Or even variations of original hardware.

But what I find the most charming sometimes is non-pal optimised hardware with whatever video cables I can find.

that Brian Eno quote about how whatever you find most repulsive about a medium (film grain, record scratches/fuzz, CDs skipping) will be the first thing you try and emulate once that medium is obsolete because it's "the sign of a moment too powerful for the medium assigned to contain it".... man.......

[qupritsuvwix]

[joehaupt]

Vintage Advertising For The Aquatron Model VX-33 AM-FM 8 Track Stereo By Brother In The Detroit Free Press Newspaper, October 7, 1973 by Joe Haupt

[uniteds]

stuff that happened in the 2022/2023 football season that should send us into a coma but we’re too desensitized:

1. the whole ass world cup in the middle of the season. what was that

2. manchester united sacking ronaldo and announcing a sale of the club in the middle of the world cup

3. ronaldo getting dropped at the world cup and his replacement scoring a hattrick immediately after

4. keeping up with the belgians (world cup edition)

5. keeping up with the belgians (courtois saying he doesn’t respect kdb after stealing his missus)

6. ronaldo stans beefing with a little moroccan girl

7. the kingdom of saudi arabia buying newcastle united and then telling the premier league that they didn’t and the premier league going “oh okay if you say so”

8. megan thee stallion being romelu lukaku’s date to lautaro martinez’s wedding

9. pique cheating on shakira and then shakira releasing a diss track about it

10. shakira figuring out pique cheated on her because someone ate her strawberry jam and pique doesn’t eat strawberry jam

11. apparently the girl pique cheated on shakira with (clara) cheating on pique with pep

12. wagatha christie libel case

13. real madrid dropping a video accusing barcelona of fascism and the government of cataluyna getting involved

14. the pope coming out as a manchester united fan

15. the one napoli fan that basically made zielinski strip on the pitch

16. mount vesuvius park shutting down because napoli fans wanted to fake an eruption as a celebration

17. frank lampard taking everton into a relegation battle, getting sacked, and then taking chelsea into a relegation battle

18. on that note: chelsea were in a relegation scrap and finished 12th

19. mourinho lost his first ever european final to sevilla europa league black magic

20. whatever the fuck borussia dortmund did on the last day of the bundesliga season

21. anthony martial’s ex wife chasing his first wife down a french motorway with a baby in the passenger seat

22. psg suspending messi because he took an unsanctioned trip to saudi arabia and then unsuspending him two days later because they didn’t want people talking about geopolitics

23. the absolutely bizarre messi apology video released by psg

24. spurs refunding their fans’ tickets after being embarrassing

25. pep’s heartbreak over the fact julia roberts is a manchester united fan

26. chelsea scored one goal in the month of april

27. chelsea and spurs had six managers between them and won one match combined between march and april

28. mourinho fighting anthony taylor after the europa league final

29. milan derby in the ucl for the first time since 2005

30. luis enrique saying he’s cool with the spanish players having sex during the world cup as long as they’re not having orgies

31. luis enrique saying he doesn’t have sex anymore unless his wife wants to

32. man city charged with 115 counts of financial doping and trying to get the barrister in charge disqualified because he’s an arsenal fan

33. mourinho wire-taping himself to catch referees being corrupt

34. ryan reynolds and mac from it’s always sunny in philadelphia buying a football club and that football club getting promoted

35. pele died rip

36. women football awards sponsored by shein and klarna having a category for “male football ally of the year” and it’s just random men that went to one (1) women’s game

37. barcelona negreia case (how do you say calciopoli in catalan?)

38. infantino saying he feels gay, african, like a migrant worker, disabled, arab, and qatari

39. infantino saying he was oppressed as a child because he was ginger and italy is not safe for gingers

40. david alaba’s father in law getting arrested for being one the leaders of a far right group plotting to overthrow the german government

41. richarlison being tumblr’s it girl for a month and then not scoring a goal for the next four

42. juventus being in the middle of another corruption scandal and being docked points because of it

43. two teams getting investigated by the british government for playing football the weekend the queen died

44. gavi getting a yellow card in the first minute of a football match

45. pogba’s brother was arrested by french authorities for being part of a group-organized extortion attempt against pogba

46. richarlison getting a tattoo of neymar’s face and neymar paying him 30k to get it removed

47. iker casillas coming out, puyol implying they had a thing, and both of them retracting it in the most misha collins way possible.

48. sane and mane fight

49. zlatan retired from football

50. barca withholding about 50 million in wages from their players and somehow frenkie still didn’t want to join manchester united

[estrellami-1]

If I Should Stay

Part 1 | . . . | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10

“So,” Nancy says, all business. Steve knows her, knows she’s pushing down whatever feelings she has. Knows it won’t last. Appreciates it anyways. “Barb?”

Steve nods, leading her back down the hall. “Listen up,” he says. “Our top priority right now is saving Barb and Will from the Upside Down.” He looks around. “Jonathan’s already out looking for Will. We’ll need to read him in before we go, but he deserves to be part of the rescue mission for his own brother. First things first, though, we’re going to need weapons.”

“They’re vulnerable to fire,” Robin continues. “So Molotov cocktails, and lots of them. Nancy, you had a gun last time. Any idea where that would be?”

Nancy frowns, shakes her head. “I don’t have one.”

“It’s Jonathan’s.” Steve runs a hand through his hair. “So we’ll need to bring him in soon. He also had a bat filled with nails, which I ended up taking. Dustin, Mike, Lucas, I need you to think up ideas on flamethrowers. If nothing else, lighters and cans of hairspray. Let one of us know what you need, and we’ll find a way to get it for you.”

“And me?” Eddie asks.

Steve grins. “Oh, you’re gonna love this.” He tosses a tape at Eddie. “Metallica, Master of Puppets. 1986.”

Eddie looks down at the tape, then up at Steve, open-mouthed. “Holy shit,” he whispers.

“I’ve got a player in my room. How fast can you learn the second track?”

“Oh, my guitar!” Eddie says, scrambling up. “Holy shit. Uh, depends on how hard the song is. I’ll let you know once I’ve listened to it a few times.”

“Eddie,” Steve says before he can leave. He freezes in the doorway. “If you want to back out…”

“You’re a distraction,” Robin says softly. “The bats follow the sound. The first time around, you die because you weren’t willing to let them get to Dustin.”

“Which we’ll fix this time,” Steve says firmly. “We know what went wrong. We’ll make sure to close the vents this time.” He works his jaw. “I’m not losing anyone.”

Eddie looks at them. Robin, to Steve, to everyone else. “I’m in,” he says quietly.

Steve nods. Eddie leaves. They hear his footsteps heading upstairs. Steve’s door closes, and a few seconds later the song starts up.

Steve tenses. “I’m never gonna not think of that.”

“Steve,” Robin says, and nods to the couch beside her, inviting him to sit down.

He does, taking her hand and squeezing it, breathing out harshly. “Okay,” he says. “Boys, start brainstorming. Nance, can you go find Jon? We need him and his gun.” She nods and walks out.

El approaches Steve. “You gave me a hug,” she says seriously. “When they were being loud. Your head is being loud. Will a hug help?”

Inexplicable tears burn at the corners of his eyes. “Y’know what? I think it just might.”

She smiles and hugs him, and he hugs her back, pulling her to sit beside him. “Y’know what?” He whispers.

“What?” She whispers back.

“Your hair grows out, and it looks so pretty.”

She looks excited at the prospect. “It does?”

“Mhm. Right, Robs?”

“Oh, yeah,” she agrees. “Bitchin’, even.”

“What is ‘bitchin’?” El asks as Steve slaps at Robin.

“Something Robin shouldn’t’ve said,” he says, pretend-glaring at her. “Timeline, Robs, c’mon.”

She snorts. “Okay, nerd.”

“Band geek.”

She squawks and launches herself at him, and Steve laughs as he curls over El, who’s giggling.

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[sw1tchbackli]

This Day In Music Sept 15 1965 - First Automotive 8-Track Player

The Ford Motor Company became the first automaker to offer an 8-track tape player as an option for their entire line of vehicles on sale in the US. Tapes were initially only available at auto parts stores, as home 8-track equipment was still a year away.

[onsomekindofstartrek]

It’s also worth noting that the commercial availability of 8-tracks was roughly 65-88, with prerecorded music from 1970, so it wasn’t like… strictly a 70’s thing.

Cassette tapes having a modern-day revival a little after the vinyl revival is so funny because outside of the context of a very specific moment in history, cassette SUCKS. The reasons to want to revive it aren’t worth bringing back the worst popular music medium of the 20th century.

Like, you hear about 8-track as a byword for someone who’s stuck in the seventies, but do you realize that 8-track was, at least at first, better in all ways than cassette?

Cassette was actually older and not meant for music in the first place, but when pre-recorded music was introduced on it and cassette players were first put in vehicles and hi-fi stereos and portable tape recorders were simplified into the first walkmans, cassette tape won on portability, the ease of recording and the existence of longer playing (but inferior) blank cassettes.

But 8-track had the better sound quality until later on, 8-track didn’t need to be rewound and 8-track wasn’t as hard to find an individual track on. 8-track was a thoroughly practical, music-oriented format and its only flaw was that it was about eight times the size of cassette.

Cassette has two sides and if you listen to the whole thing, yes, you’re back at the beginning and you can eject it there and have it ready for next time. But if it’s a homemade tape, especially on one of the longer formats, you might have to fast forward past a bunch of blank space to get to the end. 8-track is a continuous loop with four tracks (of stereo, hence eight) that play in sequence whenever the white part passes back under the tape head. A quarter of the album is on each track (and yes, they would edit the album down just slightly for it to fit, hence why there are some albums you can still listen to the 8-track version on YouTube today) so to find a song you would just hit the button for whichever track it was on and maybe have to listen to one or two other songs first. And whenever it came to the end of the track and you were done listening, you could eject the tape and it was ready to play again with no rewinding.

And like, yeah, 8-track’s era was so short that there isn’t like, some great library of albums on 8-track. Cassette was improved by Dolby and had a long lifetime comparatively. People have really fond memories of cassette.

But cassette only won on the fact that it was pocketable, recordable and cheap. It still sounds like ass even with Dolby, because it’s a compact format meant for dictation, not music. It wears out fast, has more moving parts in the player that can break, and sometimes you had to wind it back up in the cassette with a pencil, which sucked.

Genuinely I wish a compact version of 8-track had won. Imagine how much better that would have been for home computers, where instead of a datacasette tape that you have to flip and rewind and split programs across both sides, the computer could actually randomly seek data on a multitrack tape?

[cravinganescape]

💥 Dynamite 8 Track Tape Player by Panasonic (1974) 💥 | Portable 8 track player with AM radio. Just push the "plunger" at the top to change the song!

[readyforevolution]

DID YOU KNOW THAT? Muhammad Ali had a record player that played 45 rpm records built into his automobile. In the 60s, Norelco "Auto Mignon" only held one 45 rpm record at a time, for 4½ minutes of play, potentially distracting the driver with the need for multiple record changes.

Norelco players were able to keep the needle on the record while driving. The needle performance was unaffected by rough roads, car sway, and sharp braking. However, there was nowhere to put the vinyl since the Norelco didn't store any records, as the RCA model did.

Car record players soon made way for the eight-track tape deck. In September 1965, the Ford Motor Company introduced factory-installed and dealer-installed eight-track tape players as an option on three of its 1966 models (the sporty Mustang, luxurious Thunderbird, and high-end Lincoln), and RCA Victor introduced 175 Stereo-8 Cartridges from its RCA Victor and RCA Camden labels of recording artists catalogs.

[mitchipedia]

Outstanding viral campaign video from Tim Walz, where he demonstrates how to maintain a 1979 International Harvester pickup truck and contrasts the Harris-Walz economic policy with Trump-Vance:

Look, they didn’t give me a manual for this if you didn’t plan on using it to fix your truck. They didn’t create that Project 2025 just to have it sit around as a doorstop.

Note the 8-Track player with the Cars tape.

[harrisonarchive]

George Harrison, backstage in Philadelphia, PA, on August 16, 1966; photo by Bob Bonis.

“[George showed us] his music room, which has one wall covered with the famous Harrison guitars, his collection of Indian instruments and a small jukebox standing just by the door. I looked at the titles on the jukebox and there were very few Beatle songs amongst them. The Beach Boys, Mamas and Papas, Lovin’ Spoonful, the Stones were all well represented.” - The Beatles Monthly, January 1967

“George Harrison’s Fab Forty… George — like all the Beatles, incidentally — has his own juke box at his Esher home. It’s in his ‘den.’ Along with tape recorder, radio and record player. […] But back to the juke box. It’s a KB. Maybe you saw it in the film ‘Help’? Says George: ‘It’s so much easier to have all my favorite records on the juke box at once. It saves me going through piles of records to find the ones I want. Then when I get sick of them, I just throw them out and put some new ones in.” - Tony Hall, Record Mirror, January 1, 1966

George’s Top Ten… 1 “Harlem Shuffle” — Bob and Earl 2 “Good Things Come To Those Who Wait” — Chuck Jackson 3 “Be My Lady”/“Red Beans and Rice” — Booker T and the MGs 4 “Please Crawl Out Your Window” — Bob Dylan 5 “Baby, You’re My Everything” — Little Jerry Williams 6 “Back Street” — Edwin Starr 7 “Work, Work, Work” — Lee Dorsey 8 “The Little Girl I Once Knew” — The Beach Boys 9 “My Girl Has Gone” — The Miracles 10 “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got /But It’s Got Me)” — Little Richard (“[P]arts one and two — the second is George’s favorite.”)

The rest… 11 “I Can’t Turn You Loose” — Otis Redding 12 “My Girl” — Otis Redding 13 “I Believe I’ll Love On” — Jackie Wilson 14 “Plum Nellie” — Booker T and the MGs 15 “Everything Is Gonna Be Alright” — Willie Mitchell 16 “A Sweet Woman Like You” — Joe Tex 17 “Something About You” — The Four Tops 18 “I Got You” — James Brown 19 “Ain’t That Peculiar” — Marvin Gaye 20 “Turn, Turn, Turn” — The Byrds 21 “See Saw” — Don Covay 22 “I’m Comin’ Through” — Sounds Incorporated 23 “Don’t Fight It” — Wilson Pickett 24 “Bootleg” — Booker T and the MGs 25 “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore” — The Young Rascals 26 “Respect” — Otis Redding 27 “Try Me”/“Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” — James Brown (“instrumentals”) 28 “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” — Otis Redding 29 “All Or Nothing” — Patty Labelle and her Belles 30 “Pretty Little Baby” — Marvin Gaye 31 “Oowee Baby, I Love You” — Fred Hughes 32 “The Tracks of My Tears” — The Miracles 33 “Yum Yum” — Joe Tex 34 “Agent 00 Soul” — Edwin Starr 35 “Money” — Barrett Strong 36 “Some Other Guy” — Ritchie Barrett (“George’s ‘Revived 45’ list — he’s dug these since they first came out.”) 37 “It Wasn’t Me” — Chuck Berry 38 “Mohair Sam” — Charlie Rich 39 “Let Him Run Wild” — The Beach Boys 40 “Do You Believe In Magic” — The Lovin’ Spoonful

“George really knows his records. It’s always a pleasure to talk to him about them.” - Tony Hall, Record Mirror, January 1, 1966 (x)

George's "Fab Forty" playlist: on YouTube, and on Spotify.