ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
If any of you have a “collection” of old 8-Track tapes laying about and gathering dust, I have a very helpful tip for you, your tapes NEED rebuilding.
Now before someone says “B&O never made an 8-Track player,” I know that, but in North America the 8-Track was once the tape medium of choice and if, like me, you have an 8-Track connected to a Beomaster, read on. I almost never used my very well built AKAI 8-Track recorder because the sound quality was so God awful….. so bad that I thought, on more than one occasion, “How did we ever listen to these terrible 8-Tracks?”
The problem is that by now all the pads have decomposed into a knot of worthless crap. The tape passes by the heads, but with little or no pressure, producing garbled (at best) music with NO highs and absolutely NO bass.
So I ignored my AKAI deck until I was directed to Kate’s Track Shack in Texas www.katestrackshack.com. I ordered sufficient kits to rebuild all my 8-Tracks (some have just pads divided in the center and others have metal pressure clips, so you have to look before ordering.)
Once the tapes have their new pads and a bit of sewing machine oil lubrication the transformation is remarkable! And guys, I really mean REMARKABLE.
So with a rebuild due 8-Track tapes equal LP’s and Cassettes? No, but they didn’t when new. However a good tape comes darn close to cassette in over all sound quality.
How will your tapes sound? Like all sound reproduction mediums, it has a lot to do with how the tapes were stores and more importantly, the quality of the recording when new. A cheap mass produced tape sounds exactly like that: cheap. However with a high quality duplication the sound quality is very, very good. (Just ignore the tape hiss, that’s why there was Dolby.)
Once the tapes are back to their original sound quality then the “fun” is listening to them on your 8-Track player with that loud CLICK when it changes tracks. Its old, its mechanical and the click is part of the charm.
Jeff
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