8-track tapes/players

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cfz2882

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Got my newest 8-track tape today:Randy Travis"old 8x10"-1988 :) for years i had thought 1982 was the last year for 8-tracks as that was the last year i had seen them for sale in stores and the last year i had bought a new one(Steve Miller band"abracadabra")Later i found out record clubs offered many titles well into the mid '80s with a few offerings into 1988...Lear jet introduced 8-track around 65 or '66 but my oldest ones are ~1969. I have quite a few players,but my most interesting ones are:
-1974 Akai CR-81D massivly built with a 2 speed induction motor,high speed for fast-forward
-1974 BSR:mid-grade quality and performance made in England
-1969 mid-grade craig-pioneer-has induction motor.
the players are usually very reliable,but the tapes often suffer age-related problems:foam pressure pads go bad,felt pressure pads fall off,foil splice seperates,pinch roller spindle wears...
i like the car players too,have quite a few of those,especially GM...
 
8 Tracks were convenient.  So were Cassettes.  These were used by manufactures to attract a crowd that wanted portable sound of course.  I never liked Cassettes nor 8 Tracks.  The sound was terrible.  Although I think they did sound better than what the majority of the world is listening to today with their Ipads and Ipods, whatever else is out there.  Sounds like a tin can.

If you like 8 tracks...start looking around at Quadraphonic equipment.  Amazing stuff out there.  Quad 8 Tracks were amazing in sound!  There was no bleed through of the tracks and it was the first discreet 4 channel sound for this type of cartridge.  Of course there was also Discreet Reel to Reel, CD-4 Albums, and SQ and RM Quadraphonic Vinyl.  It is fun to collect the recordings and the equipment.  This all opened the door to Dolby.  I feel he totally ripped off CBS and RCA with "His Idea" for Dolby.  Sadly Quadraphonic was introduced too soon after Stereo.  Manufactures had a hard time getting folks to buy Stereo Equipment and ditching their Mono Equipment.  A few years later here they come with not 2 channels but 4!  It was a hard time to sell after most consumers were still paying off their expensive stereo equipment on time.  It is a great part of recording history.  In fact for years....most recordings were all recording with multi channel and mixed down for two channels.  Decoders were able to pick up this matrix.  The reason they did it was because even though it was being played through two channels, the "headroom" of the recording was still there.  This type of recording continued into the digital age until "Dolby" made it "Dolby Surround".    The first Dolby Surround was Center and Stereo front left / right, surround rear mono.  Quadraphonic was either 4 discreet channels or Matrix Surround.  All 4 speakers were in both formats were independent..meaning both your front and rear were never mono.   It is fun to listen to most CD's, Quadraphonic Recording etc. through Original Dolby and Advanced Dolby.  Best to listen on original Quadraphonic equipment.
 
What a blast from the past! Surprised to learn they were still being sold in the mid 1980s.

A number of friends had these either in their cars or as stand-alones at home when I was a teen in the 1970s. One came with the Magnavox console my parents bought while I was in college.

Memories: The mid-song fade-out as the mechanism jumped to the next "track" and very slow rewind/fast-forward speeds. Still, they were more convenient than reel-to-reel tapes and provided a great alternative to AM radio in the car.

Can you post photos of some of your tapes and players? It would be fun to see them.
 
I loved my last 8-Track tape player that I got at Radio Shack more than 25-years-ago, and it was pretty sad that I got rid of it...

 

What I didn't love were the tapes always breaking, but what did work & liked in that format, I loved to play...

 

Even more enjoyable were some of the songs re-arranged to fit that format (though some were pretty 'out there' and made the original albums sound "unfinished", others made the track-listings completely better their vinyl/cassette counterparts) and I even enjoyed the songs going from a "Part 1", to "Part 2", when the tape/player switched Programs or Channels (though there were the songs or a song that I wish that HADN'T had to have been done with)...

 

 

-- Dave
 
missed my calling, but I had surround sound way before the term or system ever came out....

I had my TV piped through the Stereo VCR...RCA cabled to the Stereo, and back.....for one, I could record on a VHS tape up to 8 hours of music....second, was playing TV or Video, through all the stereo speakers.....4 book shelf versions at ceiling level, and of course those huge 15 inch woofer monsters on the floor in each corner......it was beyond the sound of a Theatre....

I was never, and still are not big on what they consider Surround Sound of today, I always wanted full sound from all speakers, not this reverb and echo effect that the have.....

of course I also tapped into the rec-out from the main amp, and added on other amps to power speakers in other parts of the house........what I liked was one level of music playing through out, not blasting in one room to hear in another....

I have two 8 track players, one that records......but yeah, 8 tracks don't withstand the test of time, not without some rebuilding.....probably me favorite is Donna Summer "On the Radio"......the only thing with 8 tracks, is if you wanted to hear the song again, you had to wait until it came around again......but then again, it was non stop playing, it would just play over and over....
 
My grandmother had a 8 Track player on both of her stereos, and it was--when I was young and foolish--the Neatest Thing Ever. My parents never had such a gadget. Indeed, my mother never had a tape player of any kind except a small portable Panasonic portable cassette recorder.

While a part of me still finds 8 Track interesting, my interest is more a historical/nostalgia. Sound quality (based on a very limited sampling) is just not good enough for me to take seriously as an audio medium, as opposed to other tape formats, LPs, or even 78RPM records. Plus there is the inability to easily zero in on one thing one wants to hear on the 8 Track. Plus there is the tape breakage issue.

Someplace I have a Radio Shack 8 Track player I picked up for amusement. Complete with fake wood veneer sides. Sound quality as I recall makes MP3 sound like an audiophile approved LP in comparison.

>8 Tracks were convenient. So were Cassettes. These were used by manufactures to attract a crowd that wanted portable sound of course. I never liked Cassettes nor 8 Tracks.

As far as I can tell, both formats were about--and seemingly ONLY about--convenience... Cassette wasn't even intended for music; it started out as a dictation medium. Later, someone came up with the idea of using cassette for home audio.

That said, cassette did evolve quite a bit. The best cassette can sound surprisingly good.
 
we still have a Panasonic stereo from the late 70's that can record them. It has a BSR changer with a Pickering magnetic cart.

My Grandmother's old Morse Electrophonic console (which I have)from the early 80's also has a 8 track.
 
I had an 8 track in my Corvair Corsa. It was a Craig Powerplay unit. It hung under the dash. I drilled some decent holes in the front and rear of the door so it had two speakers on each channel. I believe they were 5 inch speakers. I had a roommate in college who had a LearJet brand 8 track recorder, so I could make my own tapes and time the content so nothing would be playing during the track switch.

I had a summer job at the airport and on my second day on the job someone broke into my car and stole not only the 8 track, but a case full of my self made cartridges. That was the end of my flirtation with 8 tracks and car stereo. On my next car I replaced the factory AM radio with a AM/FM Cassette unit that fit in the same hole in the dash. Looked factory installed. Nobody swiped that one.
 
1-7/8 inch/sec

just doesn't cut it for music. Any MP3 over 128Kbps will win easily.

Even with the advent of the Nakamichi Dragon cassette deck, with metal tape, advanced head design, servo azimuth control, Dolby HX active bias and the flavor of the month noise reduction, they only started to approach true LP quality at such slow tape speeds.

Years ago I had a loaner ADS (Braun) C3 cassette deck that was a dual speed machine. At 3-3/4 inch/second there was a marked difference in performance.

An 8-track machine would be a neat historical piece to own though(as would an Elcasete or an 8mm DAT etc).
 
DAT

I have a couple of DAT Machines.  One is a Sony EX Model.  The other is a Tascam.

I find the sound of DAT Machines was the best for Digital Recordings at the time. 

I used my DAT machines to convert all of my Pre-Recorded Reel to Reel tapes.  Then made Compact Discs from the DAT Tapes.

Sony wanted to issue Pre-Recorded DAT Tapes.  I don't know of any that they brought to consumer market besides the "Sample" Pre-Recorded tapes.

I also like MD.  (Mini-Disc)  I love the sound of the Pre-Recorded MD's.

B
 
I believe my mom had a player in her 66 Mustang.

I remember playing the tapes a lot as a child, mid to late 70's. We had the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack on 8 track. The program change, ka-chunk is unfogettable.

I also remember buying a stereo for myself in 1982/83. For some reason I was fixated that I wanted an 8 track player in it also. Wards had an AM/FM, phono, cassette and 8 track model. I recall the 8 track never got used much. It was almost impossible to find a tape.

I never liked cassettes. I stuck with vinyl until they were gone. Now, I have gone back to 45's in a jukebox. Nothing beats the sound of tubes!
 
ford first

I think that is correct that ford was the first with a car 8-track as an option in the '66 thunderbird-GM had 8-track by ~68,i tried to find an original player for my '69 camaro(back around 1989)but only found the seperate tape player in fair shape-could not find the correct AM/FM radio the player was hooked to.My '82 camaro had 8-track as an option,the last year it was avalible in the camaro.
 

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