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Vintage Tape (Audio), Cassette, Wire and Magnetic Disc Recorders and Players Open-reel tape recorders, cassette recorders, 8-track players etc.

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Old 12th Dec 2022, 4:36 pm   #161
Richardgr
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

I always thought that Phillips received a tiny license fee for each trademarked 'Compact Cassette' sold, but they did not, and Googling the reason is quite interesting ...

It was a competition between the German company Grundig and the Dutch company Philips. They both developed a certain type of compact cassette and it was combat between these two companies to get the world standard. ...
Why-did-Philips-choose-to-license-casette-tapes-for-free

The reason is that Philips was determined to keep its market share, but paragraph linked has a but of detail.
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Old 12th Dec 2022, 9:30 pm   #162
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

Just watched the Scotch Cassette advert on YouTube....

It's the one where the skeleton says "Rerecord, not fade away".

Must have been a lot of profits in cassette sales at the time for them to be advertised on prime time TV let alone the cost of making the advert.

Still brilliant & can't will see what the grand kids make of it next time they visit.

Rog
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Old 12th Dec 2022, 11:42 pm   #163
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Roger Ramjet View Post
Just watched the Scotch Cassette advert on YouTube....

It's the one where the skeleton says "Rerecord, not fade away".

Must have been a lot of profits in cassette sales at the time for them to be advertised on prime time TV let alone the cost of making the advert.

Still brilliant & can't will see what the grand kids make of it next time they visit.

Rog
I used to like them, with Derek Guyler as the voice of the Skeleton. I wonder when they last honoured their lifetime guarantee?
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Old 14th Dec 2022, 10:49 am   #164
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Richardgr View Post
I always thought that Phillips received a tiny license fee for each trademarked 'Compact Cassette' sold, but they did not, and Googling the reason is quite interesting ...

It was a competition between the German company Grundig and the Dutch company Philips. They both developed a certain type of compact cassette and it was combat between these two companies to get the world standard. ...
Why-did-Philips-choose-to-license-casette-tapes-for-free

Interesting. I once read that that was a general strategy of Philips, but perhaps that was just the official version at the time.
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Old 14th Dec 2022, 11:06 am   #165
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

Philips made the Compact Cassette specification available for free use, but insisted on strict compliance. BIC's use of 9.5cm/s on stereo decks was frowned upon, and the decks weren't on sale for long. I think the Portastudios came out after the patent had expired.
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Old 14th Dec 2022, 11:51 am   #166
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

Rather like JVC licenced VHS cassettes, I suppose.
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Old 15th Dec 2022, 10:54 am   #167
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

Philips and Sony had many competing tape formats over the years. We should mention Elcaset. Never tried one myself. Like the idea, although I guess the size and high bias cassette formulations conspired against it.
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Old 15th Dec 2022, 5:00 pm   #168
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

Wasn't the Scotch lifetime guarantee for videotapes?

We had some trouble with these when they came out. We had several complaints about brand new Hitachi VT63 series giving very poor picures. A house visit proved the pictures were quite 'plasticky' and with very poor definition - not what you'd expect from a new Hitachi.

Back to the workshop with a machine out of the box and it was up to the usual Hitachi standard. Puzzling until I tried a Scotch tape - terrible.

No idea why the Hitachi machines should react so badly to Scotch tapes - no other machine did, but close inspection did reveal they weren't quite as good as other premium brands, and I seemed to feel they caused more headwear than I'd expect.

Eventually Hitachi suggested we recommend and supply other makes of tape.
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Old 15th Dec 2022, 8:24 pm   #169
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Wasn't the Scotch lifetime guarantee for videotapes?

We had some trouble with these when they came out. We had several complaints about brand new Hitachi VT63 series giving very poor picures. A house visit proved the pictures were quite 'plasticky' and with very poor definition - not what you'd expect from a new Hitachi.

Back to the workshop with a machine out of the box and it was up to the usual Hitachi standard. Puzzling until I tried a Scotch tape - terrible.

No idea why the Hitachi machines should react so badly to Scotch tapes - no other machine did, but close inspection did reveal they weren't quite as good as other premium brands, and I seemed to feel they caused more headwear than I'd expect.

Eventually Hitachi suggested we recommend and supply other makes of tape.
Hi Glyn,

Yes the Scotch lifetime guarantee was for their video tapes, as were the skeleton adverts as per my previous post. Mindful that most of the post's relate to cassette tapes so sorry for the confusion.

Rog
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Old 16th Dec 2022, 1:15 am   #170
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Must have been a lot of profits in cassette sales at the time for them to be advertised on prime time TV let alone the cost of making the advert.
One of the ads voted best Australiasian ad of the 1980s was the NZ-produced BASF "Dear John" commercial - https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/dea...-1981/overview
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Old 16th Dec 2022, 6:45 pm   #171
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

Sure I remember that advert in the UK.
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Old 23rd Dec 2022, 10:13 am   #172
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard_FM View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by Roger Ramjet View Post
Just watched the Scotch Cassette advert on YouTube....

It's the one where the skeleton says "Rerecord, not fade away".

Must have been a lot of profits in cassette sales at the time for them to be advertised on prime time TV let alone the cost of making the advert.

Still brilliant & can't will see what the grand kids make of it next time they visit.

Rog
I used to like them, with Derek Guyler as the voice of the Skeleton. I wonder when they last honoured their lifetime guarantee?
When Scotch/3M ceased production of VHS video cassettes they reached a deal with BASF to honour the warranty. I am unsure if this passed onto EMTEC though. BASF would have honoured the warranty until 2002 at least, when their involvement with the domestic magnetic media ceased and the EMTEC spin-off was completed.

Though to be fair, I don't think I ever saw a single VHS cassette which faded away. I've got some 40 years old now.
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Old 23rd Dec 2022, 10:25 am   #173
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I was born in 1982 and cassettes were the only sensible portable media when I was younger. I don't really use it nowadays except for a few old cassettes I have in my likewise old car and that is more for the fun of it than any rational reason.

Audio cassettes is often poked fun at nowadays which I don't think is fair. It was a marvellous systems for it's time. To be able to bring your music everywhere and to be able to choose the repertoire yourself may be taken for granted now but that hasn't always been the case. The same can be said about video cassettes.

Unfortunately I believe many individuals opinions on cassette was based on their experiences from cheap cassettes and players in combination with no maintenance.

Regarding Dolby I don't think it was that well understood by the public, I guess many did like me when playing a tape - tried it with and without Dolby switched on and picked what sounded best. My idea of the Dolby button back then was that if you pressed it it just made the sound a bit muffled. In fact, playing a Dolby recorded tape without Dolby applied gave a treble boost that was benificial in noisy environments like cars.
I think you're right. While the info on what Dolby did and how to use it was out there, most end users ignored it. And while it may not be what the artists or record producers intended, artificially boosting the treble does lead to a sound that many people find more "pleasing" especially in an environment where there is external noise as the high frequencies are more easily lost in such an environment. But also look at how many people got a graphic equaliser and made the "smiley face" with it, boosting low and high frequencies rather than have it flat.

Cassette was the only viable portable music format for nearly 30 years unless one wanted to listen to the radio. Reel to reel tape was either too big or the run time too short for 3" reels that could be fitted in a reasonably portable machine. While portable record players exist (the Sound Burger is making a comeback) they're not as practical as a device which fits in your pocket, and which takes cassettes that fit in your other pocket. A reasonable backpack, school bag, handbag, car glovebox or decent pair of pockets could hold a Walkman and several cassettes. Even the CD couldn't quite match that for convenience but we were all told it was "better", even "perfect".

As you also point out, the cassette's reputation for getting mangled in the mechanism is down to people buying cheap machines and not maintaining them. People didn't typically RTFM.
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Old 23rd Dec 2022, 12:54 pm   #174
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

The evolution of cassettes from cheap 'n' cheerful to a credible hi fi medium was a feat of engineering ingenuity and dogged persistence, even if the problems of high speed duplication were never satisfactorily solved. There was no other user-friendly portable music medium until CD Walkmans started to appear in the mid-80s.

Dolby themselves eventually had an attack of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em", marketing a modified SR encoder as a "spectral enhancer" when they saw how many A301s were being tweaked as vocal processors...
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Old 23rd Dec 2022, 1:30 pm   #175
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

After years of remarkable improvements, it was sad to see the format downgraded in
the last generation of radiocassettes and mini hi fi systems, including;
Flimsy decks with tiny capstans and pinch rollers
Mechanisms using noisy plastic gears
Permanent magnet erase
Yuk !
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Old 23rd Dec 2022, 2:36 pm   #176
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Too true...I tried to fix a dual cassette deck of reputable Japanese brand a while back, and could scarcely believe the "value engineering" which had taken place. BER...

Last edited by Ted Kendall; 23rd Dec 2022 at 2:46 pm.
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Old 23rd Dec 2022, 9:11 pm   #177
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

Touched on by Paul, the sound quality on 8 Tracks, was far better, the tape speed I recall being lot quicker, at about 9 cms a second I think .
In about 1978 I swapped the the cheap unbranded 8 Track bought from a Market Stool for a top or the range Panasonic Radio Cassette, which I am sure retailed round the £79 mark and despite being matched with Pioneer door speakers, driving home to Dark side of the Moon did not sound as good.
On the subject of 8 Tracks, I am sure that Tesco`s sold a own branded Music Centre that had the ability to record on 8 Track, but I never remember seeing Blank 8 Track cassettes, or was it me ?
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Old 23rd Dec 2022, 9:32 pm   #178
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

True, 8 track ran at 9.5 cm/s...until the lubricant wore off. The track width was the same as cassette, give or take not much, but the format didn't benefit from many of the innovations applied to cassette. There were blanks available, although not widely distributed, but the general lack of fast wind and the inevitable silence-clunk-BANG-signal sequence every few minutes as the track changed made it next to useless as a home recorder.
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Old 23rd Dec 2022, 10:25 pm   #179
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

Not a domestic format, but NAB Carts used in broadcast ran at 7.5 ips and sounded
great, with good tape longevity. Initial format was 2 track mono (audio+cue) then 3 track
stereo (L+R+cue) and unlike 8-track the pinch roller was part of the deck on a hinge
and moved into a cutout on the underside of the cart. I think maximum time was 30 min.
I have an ITC triple-stack recorder, the option is for the end of one jingle to start the
next. Exceptional build quality, and instant start.
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Old 23rd Dec 2022, 10:55 pm   #180
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Default Re: What's good about tape?

In the early 1970's, I remember seeing a large Philips advert in my newspaper comparing 8 track with compact cassette. It said that the life of an 8 track was only 500 hrs, against cassette's 1500 hours, but that 8 track did offer a continuous play facility. This must have been before auto-reverse cassette decks were introduced.
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