That's quite a collection up there d. And also because of time limits, I'll have to try and find a WEEK to set aside to take 'em all in.

LARRY---one of the reasons( another being that it still RUNS like new) I'm holding on to my '05 Equinox is that it has a CD player, and newer vehicles don't include them in their radio/players. And as I've accumulated a TON of CDs(both bought and "burned") that I rely on in case there's nothing on the radio (which is often) I can somewhat relate to and understand your cassette quandary.
Whitefang

@ Fang, By the time we buy into the new technology going from vinyl to tape(s) to discs to put in our autos, they come up with something different and you have to hold on to that Equinox LOL! I'm beginning to think it would be cheaper to just pay $10 bucks a month for Sirus. I could find an old cassette player and play some old tapes but I really don't have any others besides the Beatles to play as I didn't fall prey in a big way to the cassettes! It would be cheaper just to buy it on CD for at home playing...I'm into DVD's now so I will probably never bother with conversion or I could just learn more about downloading/streaming some day LOL!

Know what ya mean. just about ALL of the cassettes I used to play in my car(pre-CD) were tapes of LPs I copied on my old TEAC home untit, and compilations made on it too.

My wife's '97 Cutlass had a cassette/CD combo, but that car's long gone, and my Equinox just has a CD player/radio. And as I said, most of THOSE CDs are compilatios I burned, or my daughter burned for me.

That Beatle Anthology is no doubt on DVD. I bought it back BEFORE the advent of DVD, so still have it on VHS. I AM intending to soon though, get the DVDs. On VHS it came in 8 two hour tapes. I'm thinking it's on fewer discs. Anyway....

Once a year I set aside a week to watch a tape a day.

NEVER get tired of it. (And besides...that would make it an EIGHT DAY WEEK! )
Whitefang

Thanks for that info Fang, I'm putting the Anthology on my list of DVD's to look for, along with some Chuck Berry!

I still have a few old cassettes in my truck that I'm afraid to put in the player as they've been out there in the sun and dust since 2004 LOL! I haven't listened to them in so long I could care less if they get eaten up in the player like many a Cassette and 8 track and 4 track have done in decades past LOL! I used to yell at my son for taking my CD's out to his car. As they never played well when they came back due to our old country dirt roads that he loved to drive fast on...I too had a Teac and other recorders and made my own compilation tapes for my vehicles. The cassettes took up a lot less room than those 8 tracks (which I could convert on my Sony record/8track recorder from vinyl)...used to spend hours on making those tapes. You can bet that Chuck Berry made the list many many times...

Back in the early '90's I bought a three disc "box" set of Chuck's work that covers from 1955 to 1973.

So I'VE got some catchin' up to do too.

8-TRACK? Man! Never had one in the car, just in a "home streo reciever/player" I got rid of over FORTY YEARS ago! And I just used it for the SOUND w/ a turntable connected to it. Never had any of the 8-track tapes.
Whitefang

8 tracks were pretty popular back in '71. I had one in my 69 Z28 that someone broke into and stole after I got out of the Army. They also took my 8 track tapes of Joe Cocker, James Taylor, Donovan and Santana which really pissed me off LOL!

Good memories of my high school ride, which was a mid 60s Greenbrier (the van version of a Corvair) which I installed a Realistic 8 track machine in. Did a lot of listening to Jethro Tull, Zeppelin, Traffic & the few others I had tapes of. All very long gone.

I remember back in '66 I had a 60 Ford and my buddies had 56, 57 and 58 Chevy's. We would load up our vinyl records and take them down to the tape conversion store on the corner when tape players came out for car stereos. They would make us 4 track compilations of our favorite songs for about 10cents a song. Then it went to 8 tracks. They had whole rooms full of recorders on the walls so they could handle a dozen or so guys at a time. I think the record companies may have shut the taping store pirates down or started charging them LOL! It was cool having your own favorite tunes to cruze to and doing away with all those commercials and the AM station fade outs...

How many of y'all remember those "under the dash" devices that you could play your 45s on? My step sister had one of those, and it fascinated me in the fact that somehow they were designed so that the record WOULDN'T "skip" whenever you hit a bump!

She ordered it from one of them JC WHITNEY catalogs.

The first cassette player I ever saw was one of those little personal recorder/players 'bout the size of a KLEENEX box. A buddy of mine worked in a place that dealt with HAM and CB radios, and they got a few in their store when they came out. This was in '68.
Whitefang

I remember a 12 volt 45 record player that sat on the hump and plugged into the cigarette lighter but it was only used when the car was sitting still. I don't remember the "under dash" one, but I don't doubt that it was out there. The 1st under dash thing that came out that I remember putting in my car, was a little reverb unit...

Wasn't that how Sol Marantz got his start, making those car 45 players, before deciding to get into the grown up hifi biz.

Wow memories. I once visited the JC Whitney store in Chicago and bought some car parts and test gauges.

I did have a 69 Pontiac that had a special reverb unit housed in the truck that was hooked to the radio. Sometimes when I hit some rough roads it would rumble. Never heard about record players for a car.
For Larry man they got some sweet 8 tracks when they stole your stuff. My favorite 8 track was likely Machine Head or a Guess Who that I had in the mid 70's. Jim

Memories -

Just AM radio in the car (if you were lucky)..and if you wanted to get "Lucky". Late night at the local Drive in Movie, watching "Blackboard Jungle" as we got exposed to that new stuff - Rock and Roll.

+1 Jim, I remember every time I hit any kind of bump that reverb unit would rumble through the speakers LOL!

+1 on JC Whitney...back in the early 70's I had a 53 Willeys Jeep High Hood with a 307V8 and did a lot of business with them on mail order. Then I bought a '77 Chevy 4WD Stepside and did a whole lot more LOL! They were a great company while they lasted!

+1 Yeah, those were some good old days for 8track cruzen material!

JIMMAC!

By the mid '70's, I thought EVERYBODY quit using 8-tracks! I put a Lear Jet AM/FM/CASSETTE player in my new '75 Omega!

With JENSEN 6"-ers in the doors and 6x9 BIG BRUTES in the package rack! Heh! Remember THOSE days?
Whitefang

I had a home stereo 8 track, from Radio Shack. The tape player with a built in amp & some cheap speakers. That was my stereo in college. I think I left it behind, with my collection of tapes, when I moved out of a big house with many room mates to go live with my girlfriend, who had a very badass stereo.



I got some cheap speaker boxes with generic 8" speakers, & screwed them into the sidewalls in the back of my Greenbrier van, powered by the mighty Realistic 8 track.
The 2 big problems with 8 tracks: the tracks were so thin & the machining of the parts so loose that you often got audible crosstalk from other tracks, & then there were the random switches from track 1 to 2 to 3 then 4 when you got to the end of the tape, often in the middle of a song. Ultimately, it was an utter crap format, but cassette was still a few years in the future.

My biggest problem with 8 track is they would bind up inside normally that was the end of them although I did try to fix some usually did not work for long.

So, what you're all saying is you were....

"Boldly going where everyone else QUIT going YEARS earlier"?
Whitefang

Nah, even before I knew any better, in terms of having pro audio career, I knew the 8 track format was complete crap. When I got in, late 60's, the choice was between 4 track & 8 track. Cassette, which was vastly superior in every regard, didn't come along until a few years later.

And what's sad about THAT is the investment many people made in THEM, only to have the compact disc come along and botch things up. Already, many of us with huge VINYL collections were sticking it out through the cassette "revolution" since they still released vinyl recordings and sold turntables along side cassette "decks".

But when the CD came along, both cassette and vinyl shortly faded away along with the players and turntables. My daughter and her husband had a veritable WALL of cassettes( both self made and "store bought") that took them nearly FIVE YEARS during their spare time to convert to CD. It seemed the ONLY turntables being sold were to kids who attempted to become Hip-Hop "DJs" to "scratch" record on!
Whitefang

Don't forget, Chuck Berry lived through all of these changes and upgrades and his new album will come out in multiple formats...My buddy is buying a new Dodge pickup and he told me that they have some sort of new player that works off of a chip...no vinyl, CD, MP3, cassette, etc., (according to his description). I'll have to check it out when he takes delivery next week!

Oh, GREAT! MORE new technology CRAMMED down our throats!
Whitefang

It's probably a pre-loaded chip with tons of music on it for just $10 bucks LOL!

There are several alternatives to mp3 format being developed or marketed .
Tidal (the JayZ, etc, streaming system) uses one.
Also Neil Young's got one (Pono) in some stage of marketing.


Though I didn't have one til abt '69 or 70, photos seem to show the Beatles using them in studio to take tracks home for study (apparently faster to run tape copies than make acetates).

Neil Young's PONO system, a welcome relief from the compresssed MP3 format hit the general public a couple of years ago. I'll have to hear and learn more about it, but initially, it sounds like something I COULD get into.

And I'm pretty sure cassettes have been around a lot longer than WE'VE been familiar with them. Y'know, like TV stations have been using video tape long before availability for public use, the same with radio using tape cartridges long before we got to use them too.
Whitefang

Well, for Christmas I asked my sister to find me a good cassette Walkman, because the only ones for sale around here are cheap ones that don't work right. It took her a few months, but she got me one.
This is because I have about 1000+ cassettes purchased over the years, and see no reason not to enjoy them. Sure, I've replaced a few of them with CDs...... Some of them are irreplaceable, actually. At least, not EASILY replaceable.

Well, for Christmas I asked my sister to find me a good cassette Walkman, because the only ones for sale around here are cheap ones that don't work right. It took her a few months, but she got me one.
This is because I have about 1000+ cassettes purchased over the years, and see no reason not to enjoy them. Sure, I've replaced a few of them with CDs...... Some of them are irreplaceable, actually. At least, not EASILY replaceable.

Sure, and transferring them to CD isn't all that easy either. Especially if you lack both the equipment AND know-how. Which I DO

Like I said, my daughter did have both, and spent a long time transferring all HER cassettes to CD Finding an old but still working cassette walkman is probably both cheaper and time saving.
Whitefang

The one I got appeared to new and unused, actually. Sony no longer makes them, because it's not cost effective, but they made millions of them back in the day, and some of them still survive.

I had a Sony CD Walkman which came in very handy when I flew back to Oklahoma every year for about 8 years or so. You could tune out those cry baby and other cabin sounds and talkers, which made flying much more comfortable listening to the Stray Cats instead LOL!

I used to spend hours converting vinyl to cassette on my recorder(s) but then I went to CD's. Now I am buying DVD's of musical interest (the sound is really cool on my blue ray player coming through my TV sound system).

There are quite a few Chuck Berry DVD's to choose from and I'm looking to add one to my collection. Hate to waste money on one that isn't all that great. It does not have to be on blue ray. If any of you guys can recommend one, I would really appreciate it. I'm interested in the greatest hits kind of thing. Has to have Johnny B. Goode, Roll Over and Memphis on it...any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!