Cassette Tape Chassis

There is no point in re-inventing the wheel (especially the wagon wheel):-

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/aiwa-Cassette-Tape-Walkman-Music-Stereo-Personal-Portable-Player-Boxed-GS272-/271086270771?pt=UK_CE_Cassette_RL&hash=item3f1e003933

Surely you could find something better to do with your time. These were mass produced at on time on such a scale that no one would could compete by assembling one from scratch.

Nearly all of the audio cassette tape devices have been thrown away or recycled as trash. You might pick one up at a garage sale for next to nothing. The good news is that they will probably still work if you can find a cassette tape.

I went to use my Sony dual cassette player the other day, after 10 years of sitting, and the drive belts are bad.

I posted it below, but you might miss it. If you want to get it up and running again, try MCM Electronics.

Just buy a second-hand one, you should still be able to find these online or in the second-hand shop.

There are some good ones around that allow you to convert all your old tapes into audio files, MP3 for example and connect to a PC/Laptop via USB. Just buy one of those from ebay.....problem solved!

Search on ebay using "cassette player mp3", you will find dozens of them under US$20.

See here:-

http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-Cassette-Tape-To-PC-Digital-MP3-Converter-Adapter-and-Audio-Music-Player-/280946582678?pt=UK_AudioVideoElectronics_PortableAudio_MP3PlayerCarKits&hash=item4169b8a496

http://www.ebay.com/itm/EZCAP-USB-Cassette-Capture-convert-old-tapes-voice-to-MP3-Plug-Play-USB-/290872087450?pt=Cassette_Players&hash=item43b953d39a

I hope that inspires you to simply purchase, also it will work better than anything "homebrewed", getting the tape speed constant will be a problem even if you build one.....

My 8 Track still works!

Can I bring over my Steppenwolf greatest hits so we can listen to it?

Those were the days, weren't they?

KISS Double Platinum...on a two volume set!

sure!

Another place is to check thrift shops, like Goodwill (although their prices have become high, to me). We had a local, privately run, mostly volunteer, thrift shop where I used to live. Between it and Goodwill, I bought 3 nice stereo cassette decks to go along with the one I already owned. I think I paid no more than $20 for any of them, and I do remember paying $10 for one. They easily cost around $200 when sold new. I had/have so many cassette tapes, I didn't want to just toss them. So to ensure I would have something to play them on for the rest of my life, and because they were good decks, I bought them. They used to have the Walkman size, too. I don't see either very often at the Goodwill's I've visited in the last few months. Maybe the supply has dried up in this venue. Ebay may be the best bet in that case. I bought a portable CD/MP3 player at the Goodwill here a few years back for $3.

Now, in the last few years, a used book shop I frequent sells cassette tapes for 25¢ ea., 20¢ ea. if you buy more than 5. I have bought hundreds of tapes in that period. At those prices, you can buy albums you might never have bought before or could afford in those numbers. If there is one song that I find enjoyable, it is cheaper than buying an MP3 and, in most cases, better quality too boot. Transferring them to computer and burning to CD isn't difficult, either.

I know. I'm crazy. That goes along with getting old, doesn't it?

(I, too, still have an 8-track deck. But it's been more than 20 years since I used it. The belt has probably bitten the dust by now. But those can be purchased from MCM Electronics. I still have few 8-track tapes, too.)

I wonder if I could find one of those 12V 8-track players and put it in the glove box or mount it under the dash on the passenger side? I can see it now, when guests ride in my car, I would whip out that Steppenwolf greatest hits and jam it in my deck. OK, track 3 gets a little warbly at times, but . . . .

Might be fun for shock value if nothing else.

Shock/humor value, YES! And one hates to admit it but all the hiss was part of the charm, too -- not to mention the inter-track crosstalk.

Never had a 8 track, but someone gave me a cassette because they got a Muntz Blue Light (4/8 Combo?). I never had one, but I knew a couple of guys that had 45 RPM players in their cars, too. -- JHF

The 45 was almost certainly for stationary situations... possibly romantic. Then it would also serve to gauge "tremors" in the vicinity.

Yeah, I'm afraid to say I remember adjusting/aligning the head height to at least reduce the cross talk so you wouldn't hear other songs in the background during the quiet parts in Dark Side of the Moon.

Just for a moment, have you ever looked at the tape path of an 8 track cassette? Its easy to see why the format is as good as forgotten today (except for a couple of people here maybe!), its immediately obvious a) why its "warbly" (also called "wow-and-flutter") and b) why its lifespan was so short....

If you are interested there is a reasonable article here:-

8-track tape & it's problems

Here is a picture from that article showing just what a crap idea it was mechanically:-

The whole tape is not only passing over the read heads too slowly to build up an air cushion (which would reduce both tape and head wear), but almost the whole length of the tape is rubbing against the layer under it and the layer above it as it is played (whereas any sort of "reel-to-reel" system, the layers sit on each other with as good as no relative movement except tightening), removing oxide particles of the extremely thin coating (which contains the music!!) each and every time the tape is played.

The removed particles often stayed on the playback head (changing its magnetic "signature) and on the rubber pinch roller. This is simply because the tape is played from the middle of the spool, passing through a technically bad half fold as it leaves the middle of the spool, then going around a fixed post with no roller and the resistance of being pulled from the middle of the spool stretches the tape, being read by a metal head and then it's rewound on the outside of the spool.....tape is VERY sensitive to such misuse of rubbing and folding.

Modern tape coatings are usually around 3 microns thick (that is 3 millionths of a meter if I remember correctly), the ones used on 8 track were probably thicker, but the same principles apply. (The coating is carried on a backing strip which has changed thickness over the years, usually getting thinner and thinner....don't confuse the tape thickness and the coating thickness, they are two different things!)

Furthermore the "end-of-track" is a metal strip, which over time erodes the heads a little each time it passes through.

The format was a disaster from day one, but some people liked in, mostly in the USA & the UK, Europeans seemingly had more sense.....I bought one once, but due to the price of the prerecorded cartridges and that a recorder was expensive, I sold it on quite quickly....

In radio studios the 8 Track had a better and longer life for short jingles, advertisements and the like that could be re-recorded if the quality dropped or another new jingle was required as they allowed a disk jockey to easily reset the tape to the start due to the metal band sensor for the BOT (Beginning Of Tape), without having to spend a lot of time searching for the right position.......

Hell yeah, I've looked at the inside of these things. I would open them up to fix them when they would start spewing their guts into the into the player.

And no, I don't think they are any good either. Just a little nostalgia for really crappy things that someone thought would be a good idea at one point of time.

That is a very honest point of view if I may say so!!!

At least they provided quadrophonic sound.

Where would The Who be without that!?!

Cassettes never really made it there for the general population...since we could flip the tape over you only got two tracks per side.

Many years ago I used a great cassette deck for copying CDs (before there were blank CDs!) and LPs, it would play or copy both sides without the need to flip, from Teac if I remember correctly.....but no promises....

It had all the usual noise reducing systems and playing back the CD or LP as well as the audio cassette and switching between the cassette copy and the original made it impossible for anyone listening to reliably guess which copy was actually playing.....!!!!

I did use good quality tapes, better than any normal Musicassette tapes.....that helped.....

I still have my Teac double-deck...just cannot seem to part with it.

I wish I still had mine.....but I gave it to a friend in need with no money....so it went to a good cause.

Speaking of radio stations...

My first job in my electronics career was as a "transmitter operator," at the radio station in our town. It had both an AM and FM frequency assigned. The FM station was considered the "sister" station. It was semi-automated and the equipment was located at the transmitter. So being a transmitter operator, besides logging transmitter parameters, also entailed baby-sitting the automated equipment, which meant patching different signals in at the right time (sports, news, church services on Sunday) and recording weather reports that would then be played just like the banks of 8-track tapes that got pulled in to be played, and then released, which emulated a disc jockey playing songs successively. There was a "programming" console that controlled the timing and switching to the different sources. My recollection was that it was a Gates 55. It was very much an "elevator" music station. I remember making some tapes of "other" music, some classical and one time the Moody Blues. (I only did that once for fear that the station manager would catch me doing it. But I usually did it late at night. And surprisingly, I got a couple of phone calls from listeners when I substituted the classical music - approving the "change.") I did screw up a church service on Sunday, too.

I was surprised to find any kind of info. at all about the equipment, but I found a Gates catalog online that has a Criterion 55. So I guess Criterion was the model name.

If anyone is interested in old broadcast equipment the catalog can be found here. I enlarged the caption so it's readable. It implies that each "system" could be custom designed. And the one pictured doesn't look exactly like what we had. Ours had a couple more 8-track banks.

One of the things I incorporated into my life from the experience was becoming aware of the WWV time standard and feeling a nerdy need to make sure I kept my watch set to it on a regular basis. We had to keep the wall clock synchronized with WWV, for patching purposes.

It was also when, as suggested to me by electronics instructors I had, that I get a copy of "Audio Cyclopedia." I still have it packed away somewhere. I was not nerdy enough to read it all, but certainly enjoyed browsing it. It had good detailed descriptions of all types of audio equipment, from tube to solid state. And good coverage of turntables and cartridges.

You surely could, and while youre at it, please give Aqualung a try ! for the the good old days; make sure to grasp some grass first.

Buy an AKAI GXC-39D second sale. This mechanism is good but the best part is the head which is glass crystal and is unbitten for its performance and life.

Gajanan Phadte