Holy Crap! Cassette Tapes weren't bad at all!! or Why Analogue Is AWESOME!

[LFF]

So a friend of mine has been bugging me to transfer some cassette tapes. I am always willing to help out but the problem holding me back was that I didn't have a cassette tape player.

Now, as far back as I can remember (1985), my father hated cassette tapes. Almost everyone I knew growing up didn't like them because 1) they jammed, 2) they didn't sound as good as the LP and 3) the art was crap. I guess I grew up with this bias (PUN!).

Anyway, I grew up dubbing some stuff to cassette on my tape deck at home. It was a Sony and I believe it cost my parents all of $20.00 or so. I was never crazy about the sound but it was all I had. So I grew up, saved some money and finally got a CD player. Good-bye cassettes!

Fast forward to 2008. I have a friend asking me to transfer some cassettes with some old demo material. I started researching a bit and purchased a professional cassette player figuring I would sell it back as soon as I finished. As a bonus, an old friend of mine gave me a free cassette player as well which weighs about 40lbs and was supposed to be quite good way back when.

Well, the cassette player I purchased came and I cleaned it following the cleaning procedure studios use on the big tape machines. I popped in an old cassette I had with tons of CD tracks I had recorded on it. The sound - RATHER GREAT!!! Wow. This is soooo not the sound I remember tapes having. Warm, detailed and lush. MMMM - that yummy analogue sound I love. Surely this was because I dubbed it from a CD with superior quality. I tossed it aside and figured that was why it sounded good.

So...this past weekend I go home to my parents house to pay them a visit. While rummaging through my room I found a commercially released tape by the title "The Best of Tommy James and The Shondells". Now, this is a commercial cassette tape which has been stored in a shoe box for about 10 years. Before that it lay in the back of my car and even in the trunk for god knows how long. Before that, it lay used for sale in a flea market. I remember I paid $2.00 for it about 12 years ago. My favorite track was the second track on side 1 - Crystal Blue Persuasion. I remember the sound was rather lackluster. Big surprise since most commercial tapes were copied at fast speeds. I figured I would take it home and try to transfer it for fun.

I got home, popped it in my "new" cassette player and then my jaw dropped. The sound is fabulous. A little hiss reduction and a tiny bit of EQ and it sounds grand. The cassette isn't perfect as it has been treated rather poorly over the years BUT the sound is still there and it sounds great. I now think it's rather funny how this old cassette sounds so good and how most of my old CD's can no longer play as they have died from CD rot or scratches.

So why the bad sound I remembered? Well, a little bit more research, reading and asking questions and it turns out both my cassette players are high end models from long ago, both retailing for over $1,000 when they originally came out. The one I got for free retailed for almost $2,000.00 over 20 years ago!!! Both are considered to be audiophile models and one is a professional model which has even been used to produce commercial recordings. I guess cassettes did sound good but you need a decent rig to produce that sound.

Still - it has been a huge shock to find out how these tapes were really supposed to sound. Analogue rocks!

So, after all this rambling I bet your curious as to how it sounds.

Listen to this! Not bad for a $2.00 cassette huh!!!!

[Grahame]

Was it a Nakamichi?

[LFF]

Was it a Nakamichi?

Nope. Not a Nak. I did look into those though but they are very expensive. A CR-7A will usually run you over $800.00 and a Dragon, even when broken and not working, will top $600.00. I saw a mint Dragon go for over $1,200.00 a few weeks ago. Way too pricey for me at the moment plus I heard from a friend of mine that they are prone to breakage.

The freebie I got is an Akai GXC-5700.

[diebenkorn]

I had a Nak and big shocker, it broke.

[aardvark baguette]

I always thought my Guns N Roses Use Your Illusion II tape sounded very good. Of course I was using a cheap walkman and sony earbuds/headphones at the time.

[Pars]

I had a Nak LX-5 that I bought new in the '80s for years... finally sold it a few years ago. It never broke (while I had it).

[boomana]

I still have a bunch of cassette tapes lying around somewhere, but haven't had a cassette player for years. Don't even know what I have.

[Jeepster]

Sometimes if you get a warped cassette thats been laying around in the heat or whatever you can buy a blank and put the reels in the new cassette, provided its a good blank with screws in the case. I remember changing spools too, just because I was too lazy to put them away or take them out of the car in the summertime.

[Jeepster]

I still have a bunch of cassette tapes lying around somewhere, but haven't had a cassette player for years. Don't even know what I have.

Anything worth transferring?

[GPH]

Cassette FOTM?

If anyone's interested, I have a Nakamichi BX-1 cassette deck that I'm willing to give away to anyone who pays the shipping. I believe it sold for around 400$ back in the day.

[deepak]

I'd definitely take you up on that but we threw away a lot of our cassettes when we made the big move :'(

I remember that ill fated day when my friend and I walked into a HMV in the West Edmonton Mall only to hear that the new Tragically Hip album wouldn't be released on cassette only on CD. My friend had just plunked down the cash on a Panasonic Shockwave portable cassette player too

[Upstateguy]

Wow, cassette decks.... now there's a blast from the past.

I went down in the basement and found this old dusty thing....

Probably still works....

USG

[boomana]

Anything worth transferring?

No idea. They're stashed in boxes somewhere, though I'm not sure where that may be.

[grawk]

I have a lot of tapes, but most of them are in DBX

I think at this point, I'll leave them for the historically interested. One day, someone will want to hear the master tape for the first bootleg dave mathews cd. I recorded it, gave a copy to someone at a record store, and 4 weeks later, it was for sale. When I found out, I called dave's manager and told him who I gave copies to...

[LFF]

I have a lot of tapes, but most of them are in DBX

I think at this point, I'll leave them for the historically interested. One day, someone will want to hear the master tape for the first bootleg dave mathews cd. I recorded it, gave a copy to someone at a record store, and 4 weeks later, it was for sale. When I found out, I called dave's manager and told him who I gave copies to...

My cassette player has dbx. I find that recording with dbx is great as well.

My only question, and it has been asked here before, is what is worth transferring? So far, I can think of only a few cassettes. One of them is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tape that was given away at Pizza Hut when the TMNT were at the height of their popularity. I know a friend of mine has one or two MFSL tapes that might be fun to transfer as well. I'll have to keep an eye out for good cassettes.