Old Technology

the_jaffa

Nitefly said:

the_jaffa said:

My LP12, which I bought used in 94 and is still in daily use, is actually older than my wife. I'm about to change the tonearm and stylus and service it for a bit of a pep up

@the_jaffa so much for your wife, what will you do with the LP12?

Ha, nice one, LOL awarded

Phil_aka_Pip

@ICBM what do you (would you) use for cleaning a cassette machine? Cotton buds? Surgical spirit?

boogieman

Phil_aka_Pip said:

@ICBM what do you (would you) use for cleaning a cassette machine? Cotton buds? Surgical spirit?

For the heads and rollers? I always used cotton buds and meths. Actually the best stuff was a dry cleaning solution called Thawpit but I don't think you can get it any more (There was a similar thing called Dabitoff...think they were both basically a version of carbon tetrachloride)

Phil_aka_Pip

@boogieman meths is odd stuff. Even after evaporation it still leaves its own residue. I once bought a Copicat whose heads had been "cleaned" with meths and they were pitted as hell!

boogieman

  Phil_aka_Pip said:

@boogieman meths is odd stuff. Even after evaporation it still leaves its own residue. I once bought a Copicat whose heads had been "cleaned" with meths and they were pitted as hell!

Really? I didn't know that, I always thought it evaporated completely. I used it on cassette heads for years.

I once cleaned a VHS player head with vodka, thinking it's alcohol, what harm can it do? Ummm, well apparently.... a lot. Luckily it was rented.

impmann

What you want is Isopropryl Alcohol to clean the heads and the capstan/pinch roller. Cotton buds work well, but beware of cheap ones that break up and deposit fluff on the capstan.

For full effect, a head demag and azimouth alignment will bring it back to rude health - assuming all the internal belts are OK.

Phil_aka_Pip

@boogieman I once had to re-fit a rear view mirror to a windscreen. Glue instructions said thoroughly de-grease, so I used meths to clean the windscreen and the plate that glues to it. Didn't work. Used surgical spirit, then it worked. Conclusion: meths leaves a residue, surgical spirit doesn't.

ICBM

Phil_aka_Pip said:

@ICBM what do you (would you) use for cleaning a cassette machine? Cotton buds? Surgical spirit?

I *did* use isopropyl alcohol, but I haven't cleaned any in years... I don't have any cassettes left and I don't service 4-tracks any more.

I honestly have no interest in reviving technology that wasn't actually very good in the first place. It seems to be a bit of a 'thing' at the moment.

Phil_aka_Pip

@ICBM thanks ... me, I can still find a use for cassettes, and open reel tape even. Cassettes are cheap, cheerful, easy to use, and are quite capable of exceeding MP3 performance, so while I still have piles of them, I'd like to keep the capability of using them.

ICBM

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Cassettes are cheap, cheerful, easy to use, and are quite capable of exceeding MP3 performance

I think that's untrue if you're talking about 320kbps, which is more or less indistinguishable from CD under normal listening conditions. Even 128kbps is better than the average cassette once it's got a bit worn, and mp3 never suffers from wow, flutter or tangles up .

I also have a device which is roughly the size of a cassette that holds about 40,000 songs or well over 100 days of continuous music...

boogieman

ICBM said

I honestly have no interest in reviving technology that wasn't actually very good in the first place. It seems to be a bit of a 'thing' at the moment.

I can understand the revival of interest in vinyl. It sounds good still, crackles, clicks and pops notwithstanding, and the covers are works of art in some cases, certainly way better than any cd jewel case. Cassettes though, I just don’t get it. It’s a clunky medium at best, you can’t find a track easily and the sound quality is usually pretty crap. I still have a few classic albums on cassette stored away, I should get on and flog them while the hipsters want them. 

thermionic

I still have my Tascam Portastudio, but I only have one SA90 left!

I think the weak point in all the recordings I made with these kinds of machine was the microphones - usually cheap dynamics, though my friend had a Tandy PZM, which was great. If it had phantom power to take advantage of the cheap Chinese condensers we have today it would be great.

https://i.imgur.com/g9SOf7C.jpg

Phil_aka_Pip

@ICBM true cassettes can get tangled up, and the transport can suffer from wow & flutter. but they don't require expensive equipment to record or play back, and my own experience of MP3 is that the sound quality is often worse than that of an old cassette. Plus (as I alluded to before) I have a lot of them and while they are still useable I'd like to continue to have the capability to play and record them

Cassettes beat CDs in the car - the music doesn't stop when you go over a bump

ICBM

Phil_aka_Pip said:

@ICBM true cassettes can get tangled up, and the transport can suffer from wow & flutter. but they don't require expensive equipment to record or play back, and my own experience of MP3 is that the sound quality is often worse than that of an old cassette.

No, it really isn't. Or not unless you're using some ancient encoder or at 64kbps or something...

mp3 doesn't take expensive equipment to record or play back. Any computer will do it, and you can get really cheap mp3 players even if you don't have an iPod or a phone. Actually 128kpbs AAC is a lot better than mp3 too, and doesn't take up any more space.

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Cassettes beat CDs in the car - the music doesn't stop when you go over a bump

Mine don't. And the roads round here are terrible...

Really, cassettes were always crap - it's true that there were some very high-end machines which were good, but they still can't compensate for tape wear. I replaced all my cassette albums with CDs and downloads - apart from the ones I couldn't get, which I manually recorded into the computer, cleaned up and converted (now that *was* time-consuming!) - and got rid of the lot. I just don't see the point.

thermionic

Cassettes are on the whole, crap. I have some that I played to death and are still ok, but several treasured albums have become unplayable, or even suffered from the tape snapping. Even the best suffer from wow and flutter, print-through, and poor signal-to-noise. I won’t ditch them though, many albums have been replaced with CDs, but some can’t be (small labels, or stuff I’ve recorded myself - like a friend’s Peel Session).

Phil_aka_Pip

ICBM said:

mp3 doesn't take expensive equipment to record or play back. Any computer will do it

I rest my case. Time was you didn't need a computer to play back and record music. Cassette machines are often cheaper than computers. However I grant you that I paid a lot more for my Teac V-8030S than some people pay for PCs.

The cd player in your car must be better than the one in mine. Mine (Ford Fusion 2010) has a Sony sound system and it sounds really good but bumps do interrupt the music.

Cassettes ARE crap when compared with some other kinds of HiFi, or even open-reel tape. But I insist that I've heard MP3 that makes me think the old Phillips portable cassette machines of the early 1970s were higher-Fi!

ICBM

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Cassettes ARE crap when compared with some other kinds of HiFi, or even open-reel tape. But I insist that I've heard MP3 that makes me think the old Phillips portable cassette machines of the early 1970s were higher-Fi!

You might have done, back in the early days. Most of the encoding algorithms were poor, and 128kbps was considered 'good quality'! Listen to some done with a modern encoder at 256 or 320kbps and I guarantee you won't think cassette is better. 320 is more or less indistinguishable from CD to most people under typical listening conditions.

Open reel is a different thing entirely - it's actually the highest quality analogue format, above vinyl once you get to at least 1/4" 2-track at 15ips. I just can't see the point in cassette, because it's not remotely comparable.

To be honest I'm even sceptical about the benefits of resurrecting vinyl. I know that makes me a philistine, but in truth at least as much of the 'sound of vinyl' is down to the playback equipment as the medium itself. Put a decent CD player through a nice hi-fi and it will also sound stunning, albeit not 'the same' as vinyl.

And I'm really happy that my music will now not wow, flutter, hiss, pop, crackle, or wear out. Once it's transferred to a pure data format and backed up it's more or less immune to anything short of nuclear war or a large space rock.

midlifecrisis

anyone here remember or have 8 track cartridges? the size of slightly smaller vhs cassetes. a friend of mine bought hundreds of them in the 70s,  i think woolworths were selling them off super cheap. he had a player in his car and a hifi player at home.

Clashman

I have a pioneer PL12D Turntable that sounds ace and an old Nakamichi BX-150 cassette recorder that sounds superb. They both needed repairing but I don't mind fixing old things up.£30 AND £20 they both cost me.

prowla

I've got an LP12/Ittok/K18, which I bought new in the 80s; it's somewhere in my loft.
I've got a Naim Nait 2 and Linn Kans sitting around, which really need to either be used or let go.
I've also got a Sony Pro Walkman cassette (with Dolby); it lives on my hi-fi rack, but hasn't been used in yonks.