OT: analogue recording uncovered at a jumble sale

Cassettes were just crap, weren't they? .... :-)

Well, I've just gained a glorious hifi cassette deck from an audio enthusiast's 'jumble sale' - one of the Technics three head variety - and armed with a stash of new Sony 'Chrome class' UX-S cassettes snagged from Poundland, I'm currently recording a few tasty compilation tapes for the car.

While recording and doing a live comparision of source and playback (the benefits of having independant replay and recording heads) and me fiddling with bias settings, record level, choosing various NR systems- and also having an unlimited internet streaming catalogue of music available to select choice tracks from to record (something I never had as a teenager in the eighties - it was FM radio back then), I've come to the conclusion that a little bit of geeky enjoyment has just come back home. It sounds fine and these being new tapes are less likely to fall apart ....

There are lots of things a time ago ye could have never played with, either the technology was financially out of reach or your priorities were different. However now, there is a glut of reasonably high end articles in audio, video, photographic and other technical interests going for next to nothing. The current advertising is saying all this is outmoded by developments in technology, and it's not so cool to admit even enjoying the old kit. It should be in the skip. Baahhh....

So three weeks ago I went to this here audio jumble sale in Tonbridge, Kent, and assisted a friend putting together a video of the event. It's on youtube and yes, well, we all look like geeks...

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sits back for a long thread of speaker wire construction techniques ...

Reply to
Adrian C
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Find a nakamichi deck :-)

Reply to
js.b1

In article , js.b1 scribeth thus

Yes :) had one of they a while ago now but that could make cassettes do as much as they were ever capable of .. and a bit more;))..

Reply to
tony sayer

There's several on Ebay, but they do seem to fetch quite high prices still

Reply to
Dr Zoidberg

Never mind that, I expect Sainsbury want their trollies back.

Reply to
Huge

If you can't bear to wait for the next audiojumble:

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GF & I have been talking about buying into vintage cinema equipment.

Nicely made youtube vid BTW.

Reply to
dom

the people interviewed are out of focus. The focus seems to be on the background.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Wright

In message , " snipped-for-privacy@gglz.com" writes

buy components from RS AND sell with a mark up

BTW, while I think of it - what valves do I need for my Vox AC 50 / AC100 amp?

Reply to
geoff

They are now

Hisssssssssss...........

Steve Terry

Reply to
Steve Terry

For 25 years or so, (from about 1975-2000) , the cost of mid range audio cassettes remained remarkably constant at about 1p per minute.

How many do you now get for £1?

Reply to
OG

That's interesting. Have you got a reference for that please?

I'm not disputing your figures/argument, but just like to discuss this sort of thing with an ex-colleague.

Reply to
Frank Erskine

Depends which charity shop you shop at

Steve Terry

Reply to
Steve Terry

There really is nothing wrong with old ways of doing things. One of the saving graces of cassettes is the hardware bookmarking feature built in, which takes no power at all and can work with the media in any deck or player. Show me a currently available format that has this?

Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

Yes very nice decks, but they do now need some tlc I gther to keep them going. I was shocked a while back when a friend had to replace a belt in a very old but faithful horizontal Amstrad to hear tht the word Nakamichi was on the mechanism. Kind of makes you think.

Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

well, someone has to make them. Texas Instruments used to make chips for Clive Sinclair - but didn't readily admit it.

Reply to
charles

That's just it though, with the latter decks even with no dolby you got very little hiss as they can reall record very loud recordings. The min drawbacks were the spooling back and forth and the slight head alignment troubles between machines. However I've converted some dbx encoded material over to cd and nobody believes they were originally cassettes. They chose the wrong horse with Dolby.

Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

That's certainly my recollection of the prices I paid from the mid 80s until I stopped using tape. I was quite a cassette nerd and got quite a good collection of unusual tape lengths [1] and makes.

[1] Tapes were available as 60, 70 , 74 ,75 , 80 , 90 , 100 and 110 minute versions for example.

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brought back some good memories, though I'm sure I have some they are missing.

Reply to
Dr Zoidberg

which still isn't much...

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Four. 60 minutes each.

This bunch now on resale.

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pricing on sealed unused blank cassettes is admittedly a little bit crazy, watching some of the completed prices. However decent tapes I've picked up recently have not only been the main branded sort, but tapes rebranded for high street shops - Boots and the like. And Poundland, the

99p store and other £1 offering suspects occasionally get stocks of those. And funnilly other interesting things like S-VHS and D-VHS tapes if ye have the exotic things that use them.
Reply to
Adrian C
[Snip]

I've still got a lot of C5s - useful for sound effects. For one show I had over 40!

Reply to
charles

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