the other day i was having a bit of a clean-up and came across 2 boxes of cassettes i packed away about 8yrs ago. i picked them up and took them to the red bin and put them in. 1 at a time of course. it felt really weird and i was not sure i wanted to be doing it, but they are still there and will be until the big truck comes the tuesday after next.

they go back a bit. i got my 1st cassette deck - a JVC top loader, in 1975, and started taping other people's records. Procol Harum Live with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and Mike Harrison - Smokestack Lightning were some early favourites. my brother would tape some of the stuff he thought i would like and that was fun too.  

and then you could buy a player for the car. my 1st was an AWA Clarion with twin outboard speakers  - 4" in little plastic boxes that sat on the shelf under the back window and connected by very skinny cable. really loud for the times, but not so sure of the quality.

always used c90's - maxcell ud's and you could usually get an album each side. astral weeks was several minutes longer and i still prepare myself for the sudden stop 1/2 way through the final track. it was years before i even heard how it finished.

many favourites for the car. quite a few times i would be sitting in the car before school waiting for Heroin on Rock N' Roll Animal to finish before i got out to start teaching for the day. it didn't really impress the boss that much!

it still feels really weird to just dump them all. 

Were you looking for an excuse to buy a cassette deck ?

I bet you guys had a set-up like this - or wish you had

DarkLantern blog - darklanternforowen.wordpress.com

Nice, for the right price, lol.. but happy with my fleet of nak's.. ZX-7 for recording, ZXL for Playback...

Never play Leapfrog with a Unicorn.

i still have my cassettes...

mostly diy , a few pre-recorded.

and a some nice decks to play to play them on ...



with digital podcasts etc i haven't recorded anything in years.

rocl - so don't toss em man. Go bin diving, give the neighbours something to scratch their heads at while you're at it and get the damn tapes back.

I figure a collection to be a story. Your story. Your journey. So many significant albums, and each tied directly to a certain point in your life, each stirring memories of times and places otherwise likely forgotten...

Or maybe not?

I sold all my vinyl before moving over from OZ 12yrs ago and have spent the last 6yrs buying them back. Some can't be replaced... Be sure of what you're doing before the bin man arrives says I...

I still have/had a drawer full of my recordings.
But they have been forcibly relegated by SWMBO from my custom designed drawer, to a cardboard box in the basement

One lowly Nakamichi BX-2 to play them.

DarkLantern blog - darklanternforowen.wordpress.com

hey - look what i found! 



image hosting no sign up

Apr 28, 2017 17:29:25 GMT 12 Owen Y said:

I still have/had a drawer full of my recordings.
But they have been forcibly relegated by SWMBO from my custom designed drawer, to a cardboard box in the basement

One lowly Nakamichi BX-2 to play them.

Yes... I know that feeling...most of my gear is now in the garage to keep SWMBO off my case.

 A BX-2 is still capable of 20-20 at -20 unlike the majority of it's peers.. and easy maintenance vs a 480 or the like

Never play Leapfrog with a Unicorn.

I wouldn't toss them, strangely agreeing with the Heathen.
I have 100s of old cassettes made for me over the years, mostly Peel Show stuff and mixtapes from friends. I am on a project to play them all to ensure that the tape retains its integrity and able to be played - ya gotta exercise them aye!
My issue was with my technics deck giving up the ghost and the difficulty of working on the cassette deck in general. I am currently running a Marantz pro deck, PMD 510. Apparently designed for churches and radio stations - not hifi, but sturdy. I am very pleased with it, a solid piece of gear.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Apr 29, 2017 11:41:32 GMT 12 papahemi said:

I wouldn't toss them, strangely agreeing with the Heathen.

I suspect I ought feel insulted...

I completely regret throwing my cassettes away. Not for hi fi reasons, just to clear up space and simplify life. That was careless and ignorant. The internet is not everything and never will carry the entire human knowledge.

Don't throw them out, rocl!
I still have most of my old cassettes. Some of them contain the sounds of the experiments I used to have fun with when I was almost 10. I made my own amplifier to connect directly to the tape head out of a Tandy cassette dictation machine. And tried to record with it too, only to be greeted with all sorts of squeals and major distortion. I love listening to my old cassettes from time to time. As johnnyheathen says, it's your story, your life. A bit like looking at old photos.
Yesterday I played one cassette and remembered that I recorded a particular song off the radio in about 1996. I googled the lyrics of the song to try and see what it was. After a few tries I went through iTunes and played some of their samples. And found it, brilliant!! It was the band U.K. from 1978 with John Wetton singing. (He died only last January too.)
It's great having modern technology to supplement your past.

AMR-iFi R&D

sorry colinf they went a few weeks ago. they were all tapes of albums so have been replaced by vinyl or cd if that is warranted.


i am a hoarder from a family of hoarders, so it wasn't easy. i will be moving north and seriously downsizing in a couple of years so a lot has gone but a lot more will have to!

Something reminded me, I had one of these AKAI GX-310D decks way back, my first serious cassette deck.

In my eyes at the time, it was a beaut looking piece - it still stacks up today IMHO, visually if not quite sonically.

DarkLantern blog - darklanternforowen.wordpress.com

Akai Glass + Ferrite heads that last forever ?