Who remembers them? Who still has them left behind?
I think most of mine split at the track change where the continuous tape was glued together and couldn't play without the connection. I may have some lying around.
Those died about 1980 I think, as the cassette became more popular due to its ability to rewind and fast forward unlike the eight track which only moved in one direction and used one reel with the tape pulled from the center and replaced on the outside. The beauty of that particular tape was no flipping over a disc and could play inside your car when driving to avoid listening to what a program director wants you to hear and most of all no commercials.
Only downside besides the lack of rewind capability was some songs had to have a break so the track could change. Songs like The Whale by ELO from Out of the Blue got interrupted during play to change from Program 1 to Program 2. Plus to fit all the songs perfectly on the four equal tracks, the order of songs had to be altered from the album. On Out of the Blue, Mr. Blue Sky was the last song on the tape before returning to Program 1. On the Album it was not the final song hence the Vocoder at the end of the song saying " Turn Me Over." As Mr. Blue Sky ended Side Three of the double album for one more turn.
Billy Joel's Glass Houses was altered on Eight Track as well. Sometimes A Fantasy was the second song on Side One of the LP, but it was not the second song on the tape. In fact the song I Don't Want To Be Alone was featured twice to fill in any long gaps with a minute of dead air still at the end of Program 4.
A piece of nostalgia that many millennials don't even know about today.
I remember my parents having 8 tracks when I was very young, but by the time I was 8, they'd all been replaced with cassette tapes.
My old sister had once the movie soundtrack of "Once Upon a Time in the West" as well as Supertramp's "Crime of the Century" on 8-tracks.
My wife and I have a few in a drawer somewhere (not sure what's on them other than one being an ABBA album), and we have a unit that's capable of playing them, but that unit is stored in my mom's basement and we haven't tried to use it in at least 20 years. I never saw any 8-tracks when I was a kid because my parents didn't have an 8-track player. We went straight to cassettes.
I remember the TV commercials for compilation albums always had the price for records and the price for 8-tracks or cassettes (always listed in that order) until CDs became common around 1985 or 1986 (roughly contemporaneous with the legendary "Freedom Rock" commercial).
Had (and still have) gobs of them. Most of them were replaced with vinyl or CD over the years. 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.
The sound quality was not great, the nature of the medium required songs to be split or ordered differently than the album, and they were prone to malfunction.
Funny -- one of the Chicago/Terry Kath Facebook groups I'm on was waxing nostalgic over 8-tracks this weekend.
We had John Denver, Billy Joel, Jim Croce, and Keith Carradine - all from the '70s.
Sometime in the '90s, my mom sold the stereo that had the 8-track player, as well as all the 8-tracks. I had no idea she was going to sell it until after she sold it. I could have rigged up something to dub all the 8-tracks to cassette, but I never had the chance.
I think we had both the 8-track and the vinyl LP of Billy Joel's 'The Stranger'. Supposedly it was because the vinyl album kept getting all scratched up, but we played it years later, and it played just fine.
One of my uncles in the late '80s was angry that you couldn't get 8-tracks anymore. He said 8-tracks were a really good format. They actually were pretty good, even by '80s or any pre-MP3 standards.
I fear my parents have all of their old tapes and their old busted 8-track stereo, which has been busted for literally 40 years and they won't get rid of it because they paid so much for it...
Anyone remember Playtape? It was a portable tape player from the 1960s that used tapes that were sort of like 8-tracks, only much smaller and they only fit a few songs.
I don't remember anyone getting CD's until the early '90s when my brother got a CD player. I was actually very surprised when he got it. That was unheard of back then. I still kept buying vinyl, usually 45's, though I was disappointed at how hard it was getting to find those.
Also, our stereo that had the 8-track player also had a turntable that allowed you to stack up 6 records at a time. One time, my brother had a stack of 10 records he was about to play, and he was thankful that I warned him it could only play 6.
Apparently, these stackable turntables actually damaged records. Maybe not as bad as some other features of some later turntables did, but it was still risky.
Quote from: bandit957 on July 11, 2022, 12:25:38 PM
Anyone remember Playtape? It was a portable tape player from the 1960s that used tapes that were sort of like 8-tracks, only much smaller and they only fit a few songs.
I don't remember anyone getting CD's until the early '90s when my brother got a CD player. I was actually very surprised when he got it. That was unheard of back then. I still kept buying vinyl, usually 45's, though I was disappointed at how hard it was getting to find those.
Those sound like old radio station carts. The biggest drawbacks to the continuous loop 8-track tape systems that I remember is their lack of capacity (and related bulkiness) and short lives. The tape cartridges did not last all that long. Their only advantage was that they were handy for the driver to use in a car.
Mike
I never cared for 8 Track and used cassettes even in the early 70s. My cousin had 8 tracks of the James Gang and Steppenwolf; I hated that it switched tracks mid-song so I never considered buying one even though they were far more popular than cassettes in 1972.
I still have 2 stereos that can play 8-tracks. They are in a closet and haven't been hooked up in 20+ years.
When my siblings & I were kids, we wore out ABBA Gold & the soundtrack to "The Muppet Movie."
As somebody who spent most of the 70's divided between High School and College, I remember 8 track tapes very well. I had very few of them, since I didn't have an 8 Track player in my car. (by choice). One of the many differences between me and my brother is that he was big into 8 tracks, while I had gone for cassettes from a very early period. I could record my own tapes, they could rewind and they were smaller and easier to carry. I would say where long term popularity and longevity of audio formats are concerned, I was more right than my brother, and BTW, I hated and still hate 8-tracks with a passion, I feel no nostalgia for them.
I never had any 8-track players or carts, but most my friends did.
I worked at my college radio station from 1969 to 1972 and the station made heavy use of Collins cartridge machines to play commercials, PSAs, and some songs that were in heavy rotation. These carts were prone to failure (some might say "designed to fail") and we all got weary of repairing them.
The 8-track format was derived from the Collins cartridge (AKA "Fidelipac"), and was just as unreliable due to the single-spool design, but since most of the carts were glued together repairs were difficult if not impossible. My experiences with the Collins carts steered me away, and I used cassettes instead (which were also much easier to make mix tapes with).
Back in the early 70's, we rented a motorhome that had an 8-track player. There were a few tapes that came in the RV. I think I remember listening to a lot of The Lettermen.
I worked at our college radio station in 1993-94, and we had those cartridges for some of the music. But we used some vinyl too.
Somebody kept stealing those little round hubs you would put on the spindle to play 45's.
Quote from: bandit957 on July 11, 2022, 12:29:49 PM
Also, our stereo that had the 8-track player also had a turntable that allowed you to stack up 6 records at a time. One time, my brother had a stack of 10 records he was about to play, and he was thankful that I warned him it could only play 6.
Apparently, these stackable turntables actually damaged records. Maybe not as bad as some other features of some later turntables did, but it was still risky.
That's why they eliminated them eventually.
What I liked best about 8-tracks was that they were easier to switch out when driving than cassettes or CD's. Later on I would use CD cartridge holders for ease of switching in my car.
Rick
I only remember that the 8-track buttons on my dad's old stereo made fun sounds. Sort of like a mechanical, springy robot noise, and I found it entertaining when I was like 5 to push the buttons in rapid order so it would make that sound.
I don't remember actually using the 8 track player on that stereo or there being any 8 tracks laying around. I think it was broken. I hope not because some dumbass little kid was mashing buttons on it. :-D
The record player was still fine, so my parents had that thing until the end of the 90's.
I remember my grandparents having a stereo, but it broke when I was about 6 and then it just sat there for another 15 years or so. I do remember my grandmother playing some old big band record on it before it broke, but that's about it.
Also, the turntable on our stereo had 33, 45, and 78. I remember my mom selling a portable record player we had when I was about 4, and supposedly it could also play at 78 as well. Along with the record player, she sold a perfectly good Monkees album for something like 25 cents. Years later, when the Monkees had their big comeback, we found out that album was worth a ton of money.
I think the stereo we had was a Magnavox. It was a big, wooden console-style 1970s stereo.
^^^^
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.
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.
Quote from: hbelkins on July 11, 2022, 11:17:03 AM
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.
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.
Quote from: bandit957 on July 19, 2022, 06:13:25 PM
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.
I've only ever heard the 16 speed was for future vinyl development. I've never seen a 16 rpm record. We did have a Zenith phonograph that could play at that speed though in the 60s when I was a kid. It was in a console which included fabric-covered speakers with a tweeter and a good-sized (10" or so) woofer on each side. The phonograph could stack 5-6 records and the console also had an AM/FM radio. I remember thinking I was a badass playing my parents Herb Alpert and Ventures albums really loud when I was stuck babysitting my little brothers. I started buying 45s about 1968. I remember buying
Hey Jude and
Time is Tight along with crap like the Cowsills and bubblegum singles.
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.
Quote from: bandit957 on July 19, 2022, 06:28:49 PM
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.
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.
I remember one evening I was watching 'The Simpsons' while I spliced a cassette that had been eaten in the car cassette player.
Quote from: bandit957 on July 19, 2022, 06:13:25 PM
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
Quote from: 1995hoo on July 19, 2022, 06:09:30 PM
^^^^
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.
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.
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.
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.
Quote from: roadman65 on July 19, 2022, 07:55:22 PM
Quote from: bandit957 on July 19, 2022, 06:28:49 PM
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.
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.
Quote from: ce929wax on July 19, 2022, 06:21:39 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on July 11, 2022, 11:17:03 AM
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.
Quote from: bandit957 on July 20, 2022, 10:33:00 AM
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.
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.
Quote from: bandit957 on July 13, 2022, 12:01:26 PM
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?
Quote from: zachary_amaryllis on July 20, 2022, 03:06:44 PM
Quote from: bandit957 on July 13, 2022, 12:01:26 PM
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.)
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.