Eight Track Tape

[bandit957]

I remember buying new 45's in my day, but sometimes we got stacks of used 45's at yard sales, and later at a store that sold used records.

Once when I was about 8, we went to a yard sale that was selling albums with no jackets, and then it began to pour down rain, which got the records all wet. We were only there for about a minute. For years after, my mom talked about that yard sale and how it looked like it was run by a bunch of weirdos.

[roadman65]

When I was very young, we had a record player in the bedroom that played at 33 and 45. We had a lot of 45's in the bedroom, but the albums were stored in the rack in the stereo in the living room.

However, one of the 45's actually played at 33, probably because it was from back when they first came out with 7-inch singles. So we thought the height of comic genius was to play it at 45 and dance around the room to it.

It's funny how you played a 45 at 33 the sound of the vocals would be very slow. 

In fact when Hall and Oates covered the Righteous Brothers tune: You've Lost That Lovin Feeling, I had no idea of the original version until WNBC radio station in New York began playing it after Hall and Oates revived the song.  Because that was when Howard Stern was the afternoon drive DJ at the time, I thought he was being funny by playing the Hall & Oates version at a slower speed.

It was much later I discovered the original which, I have to say, sounds like a 45 single played at 33 rpm.  Bill Medley's voice is very deep, and so slow that it could pass as a record being played too slow.

[Dirt Roads]

What impressed me about 8-Track tapes is how easy they were to splice.  My folks had a family favorite break, so they asked me to see if I could fix it.  It was fairly easy to splice the sections together and reset the tension.  When we got our first VHS player, we eventually had a video tape that broke and I thought I could fix it just as easy.  It took three tries to get the splice to hold, and I probably spent three hours or more resetting the tension.  Which didn't last through an entire viewing.  Ev-bluh-vent-bluh-chually, I-bluh-got-bluh-the-bluh-ten-bluh-shun-just-bluh-right. 

[bandit957]

I remember one evening I was watching 'The Simpsons' while I spliced a cassette that had been eaten in the car cassette player.

[mgk920]

I don't know if I've ever seen a record player that had 16 RPM. I was told in my day that 16 RPM was used only for audiobooks.

It's how 'transcription' discs for pre-recorded radio shows were shipped by production companies to local radio stations in the pre-TV days.

Mike

[dlsterner]

^^^^

We had a turntable that had all four speeds: 16, 33, 45, and 78. It was also a changer (could change either LPs or 45s), though as has been noted elsewhere, using that feature wasn't good for records.

Growing up (late 60s - early 70s), my parents had a stereo with all four speeds as well.  My parents actually had a few 78s.  Never ever saw a 16 though.

[1995hoo]

We never had a 16 either. But the turntable could play them. We also never had any 78s, although my father's mother did. I don't believe my father kept them when she died, as they were in pretty sad shape.

[bandit957]

I've rarely seen 78's, because they didn't last long. They were very easily broken, so most didn't last into my lifetime.

I do have a 6-inch yellow 78 from the 1950s, but apparently it's made of more durable material like 45's. I read there were a few of these yellow 78's issued back then for children's records.

[1995hoo]

The only time we ever played records at 78 rpm was when my brother and I would play a 45 at that speed to get the Chipmunks effect.

[Henry]

When I was very young, we had a record player in the bedroom that played at 33 and 45. We had a lot of 45's in the bedroom, but the albums were stored in the rack in the stereo in the living room.

However, one of the 45's actually played at 33, probably because it was from back when they first came out with 7-inch singles. So we thought the height of comic genius was to play it at 45 and dance around the room to it.

It's funny how you played a 45 at 33 the sound of the vocals would be very slow. 

In fact when Hall and Oates covered the Righteous Brothers tune: You've Lost That Lovin Feeling, I had no idea of the original version until WNBC radio station in New York began playing it after Hall and Oates revived the song.  Because that was when Howard Stern was the afternoon drive DJ at the time, I thought he was being funny by playing the Hall & Oates version at a slower speed.

It was much later I discovered the original which, I have to say, sounds like a 45 single played at 33 rpm.  Bill Medley's voice is very deep, and so slow that it could pass as a record being played too slow.

I used to have the same feeling about The Greatest Love of All. When Whitney Houston came out with that song in 1985, and it was first played on WLS in Chicago, I thought she was the original artist (like everyone else), but then I caught a snippet of a movie covering the career of Muhammad Ali (which came out years before Houston's singing career began), and George Benson was singing the same song. My first thought was that the Houston recording was a 45 being played as a 33 in the movie, until I saw the copyright date as 1977, when Houston would've been 14 and not made her first album for another eight years. With Houston having a much higher voice than Benson's, if you played the song on Benson's album and set it on 45, you'd get a near-identical copy of the Houston version.

As for 8-tracks, my parents had a few of those in their house, but the quality was really poor, so they stuck with vinyl when they were looking to add to their collection. I had my own records too, until CDs began to dominate in sales.

[bandit957]

We had a 45 of "Love Will Keep Us Together" by Captain & Tennille. If you played it at 33, it sounded just like Rick Astley.

[hbelkins]

I actually bought a Realistic 8-track stereo tape deck to hook up to my home stereo to copy off some of those old 8-track tapes to cassette.

Any idea where I might score an 8 track player that would hook up to a modern stereo system I have my eye on?  The stereo system in question has 33/45/78 vinyl player, tape deck, cd player, and an AM/FM tuner.  I've looked on Amazon, but no dice.

Doubtful that anyone is making new ones. The nostalgia for 8-tracks is definitely not what it is for vinyl. eBay might yield some results.

[NWI_Irish96]

We had a 45 of "Love Will Keep Us Together" by Captain & Tennille. If you played it at 33, it sounded just like Rick Astley.

It's quite remarkable that a song recorded in 1975 sounded just like someone whose first album was released in 1987.

[Life in Paradise]

In the 70s, when we were trying to figure out lyrics for fast driven songs (when the lyrics weren't printed with the album or online as they are today), we would take an album or a 45 and slow it down (meaning the album set at 16) to see if the slower speed would help us figure out the lyrics, and it did!  I still have that little portable record player......somewhere.

[zachary_amaryllis]

I think the stereo we had was a Magnavox. It was a big, wooden console-style 1970s stereo.

We had one of those, with the giant (for the day) TV that made the lights hiccup when you turned it on. When it died, it became furniture and now has a 65" flatscreen sitting on it.

come to think of it.. isn't that one of those 'redneck' things?

[1995hoo]

I think the stereo we had was a Magnavox. It was a big, wooden console-style 1970s stereo.

We had one of those, with the giant (for the day) TV that made the lights hiccup when you turned it on. When it died, it became furniture and now has a 65" flatscreen sitting on it.

come to think of it.. isn't that one of those 'redneck' things?

My grandfather had one of those big "console-style" TVs where the TV looked like it was built into a wooden cabinet. When he eventually replaced it, he gutted it and turned it into a liquor cabinet. (Earlier I said "my father's mother" in reference to one of my grandmothers. I don't do the same as to my grandfather because I only ever knew one grandfather–my father's father died something like 13 or 14 years before I was born, so I never knew him. I've only ever even seen one picture of him.)

[Road Hog]

Eight-tracks were extremely flawed. You couldn't rewind them and had to punch the track changer three times and wait 10 minutes for the snippet you wanted to hear again. And if you stuck the cartridge in the slot just a little wrong, the azimuth with the head was jacked up forever and you had to stick a matchbook or something underneath to make it sound right.

Cassettes were superior but then along came the CD.