Another 8 track bugaboo...magnetization

The more I explore the 8 track medium, the more fault I find. Sure,
everyone's aware of the cheesy cart designs, the lousy original
splices, crumbling pressure pads and molten pinch rollers, but these
things, for the most part, can be overcome with due diligence. What
****es me off now is that fully 30% of the incoming carts I get off of
sleazebay or other sources are noticeably magnetized. Thus, you just
cannot get good fidelity, plus you also have the annoying maintenance
headache of demagnetizing your head and capstan every time you wind up
stuffing a magnetized tape into your deck.

What brought me to this conclusion was that I'd tried to find a decent
copy of CSN&Y's "Deja Vu" on 8 track, mostly for reference purposes,
and so far have not been able to find a decent one. The first one I
got was a car floor denizen, played way too much on a worn out/dirty
deck and its cart full of debris and dirt. I threw that one away
forthwith after a brief inspection and salvaging a couple of parts.
Candidate #2 showed up in very nice shape, but with buffed oxide on
the tape, a sign of high usage and possibly screwed up heads. I did
the usual service to it, but a trip to the Wollensak proved that there
was virtually no top end and overall levels were down a lot. Another
one came in from a garage sale giveaway with a bad cart and label, but
dark oxide tape in good (visual) condition. So, I just blew out the
tape with clean air and transferred it, reel and all, to the nice
looking cart. Similar results, though...low levels, crappy top end.
I know my head azimuth is right on (per a real alignment tape, not a
NudoFraud® ripoff or an Audiotex wannabe), and the pads are
good...what's up?

Obviously, 8 track owners were probably the worst when it came to
proper equipment maintenance, of which a big part is head, guide and
capstan demagnetization. Sure enough, borrowing a trusty Nortronics
magnetometer, both these CSN&Y (and a ****load of other carts I've
got) are definitely magnetized. This doesn't affect my Wollensak's
head, since it is made of alloys resistant to permanent magnetization,
but it can be a problem with my car decks. A magnetometer is useful
in determining if a head, guide or other metal part is magnetized, so
I took the worst sounding cart (in terms of top end and level loss)
and shoved it into the Panasonic car deck for a complete loop, then
stuck the probe in there to check. Sure as hell, that damned tape had
magnetized my head! A demagging of everything ensued, and the
magnetometer showed virtually zero. (It's important to note that
getting an absolute zero in terms of permanent magnetization can be
tough to do, even using the best techniques, due to hysteresis
properties of various ferrous alloys. Best one can hope for is just a
slight residual on the playback head or metal guide or capstan.)

So, finished with demagging this deck, I shoved the same cart back in
for another trip around, pulled it and measured again. Back to the
same flux level it was before! This was the "burnished oxide" tape I
had rejected earlier, so its cart got stripped for parts and the tape
went in the trash, where it belongs. I selected a couple of other of
the worst carts I've got in terms of this kind of loss, and each duly
magnetized the head on that Panasonic, one really badly. That
particular cart, a 3 Dog Night on a later GRT, sounded as if it were
being played underwater...not a whiff of top end anywhere, and the
midrange was noticeably distorted on peaks. Wanting to see what this
would do to a "good" cart, I left the head and everything else
magnetized and made a test cart on the Wollensak, using references at
400 and 10K Hz. Back out to the car for a few minutes' worth of
playback and then back to the Wollensak for measurements, it was
immediately obvious that the magnetization caused by the previous cart
knocked down the 10 KHz tone a whopping 15 dB, and the 400 reference
was down by 4...a partial erasure for sure. A look at the test tape
after exposure to the magnetized deck showed the tape was definitely
magnetized. Demagging the deck, bulk erasing the cart, cutting a new
test tone sequence and playing back showed that there was NO loss this
time. OK, now I know...the odds of getting a magnetized, screwed up 8
track cart that won't damage all your other good carts is about 1 in
3...NOT good odds, unless you demag your deck before each and every
playback...something even I refuse to do.

What caused this? Neglect and/or non-caring by original owners, most
likely due to ignorance of the need for routine demagnetization. I do
remember a fellow saying that 8 tracks lose something in each turn
around, as if it were a natural occurrence. Sure, large amounts of
flexing of tape due to many plays will cause some self-erasure, but
nothing that would cause these kinds of erasure. Ferrous playback
heads will naturally build up polar magnetic strength playing back
anything other than a symmetrical waveform; that is to say, if one
only played back sinusoidal test tones, the heads would theoretically
never need demagging. However, complex musical waveforms are, by
nature, asymmetrical in most places. If a program contained
asymmetrical waveforms that balanced each other out in terms of
polarity, no harm, no foul is done. However, that rarely happens, and
over time, magnetization builds up with each exposure to an
asymmetrical recorded waveform. Over time, this can become
considerable, which causes polar erasure of any tape that comes across
the face of the head, the guides, the capstan...anything ferrous in
the tape path.

The only way to protect against this kind of destruction of your
library is to do two things: 1.) CAREFULLY demagnetize your decks,
and 2.) throw out or bulk erase any carts you have which are obviously
magnetized. Years ago, dB Magazine did a survey on deck maintenance
in various big name studios in the LA area, with some surprising
results. Not only did only a couple of them have any sort of
magnetometer in their tool inventory, but 6 out of 10 techs proved
they didn't know how to properly demagnetize a deck! Most could get
the tape path and gaps nice and clean using the proper 96%
isopropanol, but many would rush doing the demag, and would leave the
heads as magnetized or even worse than when they started. It's most
important, when using an AC demagger, that the probe or gap be moved
slowly, in a circular motion, with gradual movement from one part to
another and away from a deck. Slowness is the key here; withdraw a
demagger too quickly, and you've just magnetized the heads all over
again. Same thing applies to bulk erasure of tape...slowly, in a
circular fashion, with a SLOW withdrawal of the reel, cart or pancake
away from the coil. I've seen amateur really muck up a reel or cart
of tape by not doing this...many just shut the thing off while it's
still in proximity to the tape!

A poorly magnetized tape is easy to hear when played back blank.
You'll hear strange bass "pumping" noises down in the noise floor, and
the tape will seem inordinately "hissy." Detecting a heavily
magnetized prerecorded tape is easy, too...loss of top end and
excessive hiss both tell the tale. What can be done to undo this
damage? Zero...either bulk erase it or throw it out. You don't
really need a purpose-built magnetometer calibrated in gauss,
either...a good quality pocket compass will easily find cases of
heavily magnetized heads, guide and other stuff...IF you can get it
into your machine. RTR decks are easy (generally) for this; cart and
cassette machines require lots of disassembly and "fiddling." Finding
a magnetized tape in this fashion is easy, but beware...the net
magnetic field put out by any music tape will generally show at least
a touch of permanent magnetization, since the recorded waveforms are
mostly asymmetrical, unless there's a sinusoid or other symmetrical
waveform present. However, a heavily magnetized cart will easily
swing the needle right toward it. A test listen will confirm the
damage, if all the highs are gone and there's a big load of hiss with
it.

So what did I do with the CSN&T tape? Bulk erased it and redubbed it
from CD, with some judicious compression added by my old UREI
compressor. Now, it sounds much better than any of the three I got!
Which tapes WEREN'T magnetized? Almost everything in my collection
with "low miles" on it didn't have a problem, and sounds fine,
especially the "unpopular" tapes, like that Reader's Digest
compilation of Harry James that Noodles was calling "junk." Turns
out, that compilation sounded excellent and has many cuts that are
long out of print. The later GRT carts work flawlessly, too, although
they tend to be a bit mechanically noisy, due to using two more guides
inside than most other carts. A quick look at Amazon and EMI web
sites proved that to get most of this material on CD, I'd spend around
$50 minimum...and still not get about 10 of these cuts, including the
live cuts done at various venues in the '60s and '70s. My new rule of
thumb? The more popular the rock tape, the higher the probability
that it's worn out, magnetized, and dumpster food. None of the "still
sealed" carts I've gotten showed any signs of magnetization, although
it's still possible to get a "brand new" tape that's been around a
magnet.

What about "demagnetization" carts and cassettes? A joke, generally.
I've seen two kinds...one that has a cord that plugs into the ciggie
lighter, which powers an oscillator, and other ones that have a
fanciful mechanism inside driven by the capstan that twirls a bar
magnet around. The former sorta works, since there's not really
enough current provided to the coil to do a really good job of
demagnetizing the head, but it will knock down a badly magnetized
head. The other is funny, because, although the alternating polarity
of the bar magnet will knock out residual magnetism, all that goes to
hell when the magnet stops spinning or if the cartridge or cassette is
removed quickly...always the case with cartridges. I've seen these
spinning magnet things make a mess out of a deck just by using it
according to instructions. In either event, neither will do anything
to help a magnetized capstan or leading tape guide. Contact blocks
aren't (usually) ferrous, so no problem there. Best thing? An AC
demagnetizer probe designed for the purpose. Even Rat Shack years ago
sold a pretty good one that'll fit into the opening on a cart machine
and yet give enough mobility to properly demagnetize the necessary
parts in the tape path. I still use an old Robins "Gibson Girl" probe
unit on cart and cassette machines...works great.

From the "did you know?" department: When demagging a three head
deck, do you demag the erase and record heads too? If so, why? If
the bias current to both is symmetrical (always the case for both
erase and record, unless there's trouble in the bias oscillator
circuit), all you need to do to demag both heads is put the machine in
record mode...that's all there is to it. The playback head, however,
needs the full treatment, as do guides and capstan.

Well, there's today's tech post. It's obviously more informative than
"shut the **** up, Noodles!" I can't wait for that moron to weigh in
on this subject. What am I going to do with the good musical programs
on all my 8 tracks? Why, dub them to CD-Rs, of course! 8 track's
reaching the end of the line with me...too much hassle, too much
maintenance, too many frauds, too ****ty a format. 8 tracks, IMNSHO,
deserve that place on the "20 worst ideas of the 20th century" list!

dB

8 track's
reaching the end of the line with me...too much hassle, too much
maintenance, too many frauds, too ****ty a format. 8 tracks, IMNSHO,
deserve that place on the "20 worst ideas of the 20th century" list!
Bob, I am getting the uneasy feeling you are about to abandon us and
leave us at the mercy of this Trippin' character. When you came on the scene
it sounded like you would polish him off in short order but he appears to be
made of sterner stuff than you anticipated. I am also puzzling how this last
post of yours will affect your proposal to turn this forum over to moderated
status, or why you would continue soldiering on in behalf of a newsgroup
dedicated to a format that "deserve that place on the "20 worst ideas of the
20th century" list" anyway.
Also, and I admit to being non-technical, if a cut on an 8 track
sounds bad how will dubbing it to a CD make it sound any better?
WWW

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 05:33:03 GMT, "William W Western"
wrote:

Bob, I am getting the uneasy feeling you are about to abandon us and
leave us at the mercy of this Trippin' character. snip

It's becoming an attractive option. Life's too short to spend time
dealing with toads like him on a daily basis.

When you came on the scene
it sounded like you would polish him off in short order but he appears to be
made of sterner stuff than you anticipated. snip

Paranoid delusionals like Noodles are single minded of purpose...they
never quit. Whether he's off his meds or refuses any treatment, I
have no idea, but I do know he has serious mental problems which do
require treatment. Life's too short to try to treat a mental case
over Usenet, and I'll have none of it. It's quite obvious, by looking
at the record, that Noodles has no moral compass and an infantile
personality disorder, possibly brought on by heavy usage of THC in his
youth. There was a seeming dead ringer to Noodles on Judge Judy's
show just the other day...38 years old, still living with Mom, a
scofflaw with no moral compass, and his mother and sister both
testified to his drug usage. That pretty much describes Noodles to a
"t."

and I am also puzzling how this last
post of yours will affect your proposal to turn this forum over to moderated
status, or why you would continue soldiering on in behalf of a newsgroup
dedicated to a format that "deserve that place on the "20 worst ideas of the
20th century" list" anyway. snip

Exactly, it's a case of diminishing returns. I had come in here
initially to chastise Noodles for defrauding me, not once, but twice,
and found out he had been defrauding people left and right ever since
he started fooling around with 8 tracks in or around 2002. I've
pretty much satisfied myself as to the format itself, and have tried
in various ways to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. I got some
pretty decent results, when taken in the context of the times, but a
good cassette deck is always better overall, and a CD player blows
away both tape formats. Note how Noodles, when confronted with facts
and data from measurements, scoffs at reality and tries to emote his
own psychotic view on things technical. He also scans my messages and
uses bits and pieces of knowledge that fit his purposes when he posts
about 8 tracks orlaunches yet another scam auction. He's a thief,
plain and simple. Why should I continue to wisen up a chump?

Also, and I admit to being non-technical, if a cut on an 8 track
sounds bad how will dubbing it to a CD make it sound any better? snip

Let's review, shall we? I typed:

"What am I going to do with the good musical programs
on all my 8 tracks? Why, dub them to CD-Rs, of course! 8 track's
reaching the end of the line with me...too much hassle, too much
maintenance, too many frauds, too ****ty a format"

Note the word "good" in the first sentence. About 60% of the carts
I've collected are worth hearing, the other 40% being hopelessly
magnetized, crinkled, or both. I've already started burning a number
of my top condition carts to CD-ROM, and what I wind up with is a
CD-ROM that sounds like an 8 track...the CD technology is transparent.
Not all that good, really, but for a buck for the cart and some
pennies for the CD-ROM, it's a "cost effective" way to get lots of
music cheap and legally. I've also decided to sell one of my 8 track
equipped vehicles, and its replacement will have CD/cassette only, so
having tons of carts to drag around in Lebo cases doesn't make a
helluva lot of sense to me.

There's the "retro" factor to 8 track collecting, which is about its
only saving grace, but that's hardly getting to be "the next big
thing" in retro crazes. With people like Noodles into 8 tracks, if
there is any mass popularity of 8 tracks forthcoming, it'll die
quickly as people get scammed and screwed by him and his ilk. Also,
let's face it...most people aren't technically competent enough to
keep 8 track running very well for any length of time...they goof with
it for awhile, then, after several jams and tubby sounding tunes, they
chuck the format for other interests. My background with analog tape
makes me able to keep the format running for me as long as I want to,
but the question is, how long do I want to keep opening up carts,
cleaning, lubing and fixing them, while not having enough time to
actually just listen to the music they contain? It's simply not worth
my time, seeings how I have other more pressing issues to deal with on
a day to day basis. I get my analog tape fix now by rebuilding my
Ampexes, of which one is complete and sounding as new or better. Now,
if Quantegy would start making tape again, I'd be in business!

As to the moderation thing, the ball's in Malcolm's court. I did a
lot of digging as to how to get it going, but a crew of moderators
with modbots has to be put in place, and I haven't seen anything
happen to that end as of yet. This isn't my newsgroup, it's his. If
he wants to make it work, he's going to have to get off his duff and
do some of the work. Otherwise, it'll just continue to decline, and
Noodles will continue to drive people off. I think I did more than my
share of getting the moderation conversion teed up; now it's up to him
to take charge, ban Noodles for life, and get the moderator crew up
and running. Once Noodles is gone, of course, I'm pretty sure that
the group will pick back up again, but the owner of the group has to
do the work to get it going again. Failing that, I think this group
will be abolished soon due to lack of interest.

dB

"DeserTBoB" wrote in message
...
The more I explore the 8 track medium, the more fault I find. Sure,
everyone's aware of the cheesy cart designs, the lousy original
splices,

snip

8 tracks, IMNSHO,
deserve that place on the "20 worst ideas of the 20th century" list!

dB

Jeez Bob...

You're preaching to the wrong flock there... We understand all the drawbacks
of the medium, media and players. We love them in spite of all that and
BECAUSE of all that. Not more than a few years ago, I recall posters being
chased-off of this group for posts not nearly as blasphemous as the one
above. (we love carts and their ugly-duckling status)

I love 8-track tapes because they take me back to the glory of my childhood.
Even then I knew that other media worked and sounded better most of the
time...but the players and tapes were (are) just so f-in' cool!. I do not
fool myself into thinking that an 8-track cartridge is the finest play-back
media ever conceived - I simply like collecting, possessing and occasionally
playing a cart on a cool player for old time's sake. The tapes and players
are truly fun to collect and fix, because of their random availability...

I used to like selling them...and I once sold them by the gross on eBay, but
in the last five-years or so eBay sales of 8-tracks have gone in the toilet
because every garage-saler on eBay thinks they can get rich on their stash
of 8's.

I admire your industrious attack on the technical aspects, but really feel
it's wasted time.

BUT- The biggest waste of time you've perpetuated has been the constant
rapport you've jumped into with and against a certain troll. Anyone with a
brain was able to killfile him a long time ago, and that was that. You've
poked it with a hot stick and made the troll flare-up like a wildfire...and
your constant retorts to the moron have polluted this forum as much or more
than the troll has. As gallant as your effort to tell the truth about it
(the troll) it's still s#!++ing on the hobby and probably always will. Oh
well...not worth my time chasing around Usenet, that's for sure. I think
siccing the FEDs and Post office on him for postal fraud and reporting him
to eBay is all you can do, if it's really worth the time.

A moderated forum would be nice... and very welcome... It would rededicate
this group to the subject at hand...collecting and playing with a bunch of
old tapes and the players we use with them.

TC8trax

I Do Believe. . . 8-Tracks Are COOL! That's it. . . no analysis needed.

"DeserTBoB" wrote in message
...
The more I explore the 8 track medium, the more fault I find.

snip

8 track's reaching the end of the line with me...too much hassle, too much
maintenance, too many frauds, too ****ty a format. 8 tracks, IMNSHO,
deserve that place on the "20 worst ideas of the 20th century" list!

dB

Jeez Bob...

You're preaching to the wrong flock there... We understand all the drawbacks
of the medium, media and players. We love them in spite of all that and
BECAUSE of all that. Not more than a few years ago, I recall posters being
chased-off of this group for posts not nearly as blasphemous as the one
above. (we love carts and their ugly-duckling status)

I love 8-track tapes because they take me back to the glory of my childhood.
Even then I knew that other media worked and sounded better most of the
time...but the players and tapes were (are) just so f-in' cool!. I do not
fool myself into thinking that an 8-track cartridge is the finest play-back
media ever conceived - I simply like collecting, possessing and occasionally
playing a cart on a cool player for old time's sake. The tapes and players
are truly fun to collect and fix, because of their random availability...

I used to like selling them...and I once sold them by the gross on eBay, but
in the last five-years or so eBay sales of 8-tracks have gone in the toilet
because every garage-saler on eBay thinks they can get rich on their stash
of 8's.

I admire your industrious attack on the technical aspects, but really feel
it's wasted time.

BUT- The biggest waste of time you've perpetuated has been the constant
rapport you've jumped into with and against a certain troll. Anyone with a
brain was able to killfile him a long time ago, and that was that. You've
poked it with a hot stick and made the troll flare-up like a wildfire...and
your constant retorts to the moron have polluted this forum as much or more
than the troll has. As gallant as your effort to tell the truth about it
(the troll) it's still s#!++ing on the hobby and probably always will. Oh
well...not worth my time chasing around Usenet, that's for sure. I think
siccing the FEDs and Post office on him for postal fraud and reporting him
to eBay is all you can do, if it's really worth the time.

A moderated forum would be nice... and very welcome... It would rededicate
this group to the subject at hand...collecting and playing with a bunch of
old tapes and the players we use with them.

TC8trax

I Do Believe. . . 8-Tracks Are COOL! That's it. . . no analysis needed.

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 13:21:43 -0500, "TC8trax" wrote:

You're preaching to the wrong flock there... snip

Not really "preaching"...just stating the facts.

We understand all the drawbacks
of the medium, media and players. We love them in spite of all that and
BECAUSE of all that. Not more than a few years ago, I recall posters being
chased-off of this group for posts not nearly as blasphemous as the one
above. (we love carts and their ugly-duckling status) snip

This goes to my point that there's a cachet of collectability based on
issues other than technical merit, which seems to be the case.

I love 8-track tapes because they take me back to the glory of my childhood.
Even then I knew that other media worked and sounded better most of the
time...but the players and tapes were (are) just so f-in' cool!. I do not
fool myself into thinking that an 8-track cartridge is the finest play-back
media ever conceived snip

That's Noodles' premise, and one I'm sick of seeing, since he espouses
that faulty belief to separate clueless people from their dollars. If
one takes 8 track at face value for being a cheesy piece of **** from
the '60s, all is well. Once you start expecting any modicum of
performance from them, things start falling apart rapidly.

I simply like collecting, possessing and occasionally
playing a cart on a cool player for old time's sake. The tapes and players
are truly fun to collect and fix, because of their random availability... snip

Well, that's all changed, for better or worse, due to ebay providing
"what you want when you want it." Prior to ebay and the extension of
Internet access to toads like Charlie Nudo, there was a definite
underground subculture attached to 8 track collecting, as Russ' movie
clearly depicts. Ebay has pretty much wiped that out, and now 8
tracks are as available as LPs, cassettes, or any other media, as are
the players/recorders. There's no rarity factor with 8 track; people
are more than willing to either give this stuff away or toss it in the
dumpster. Also, I believe there was an illusion of rarity with the 8
track subculture for a long time; the Internet proved that not to be
the case, and collectability and prices dropped like a rock. For me,
at least, the "fun factor" for 8 track has worn thin, as lots of time
is lost to labor in opening, servicing and repairing carts just to get
them to play...and even after that, there's about a 40% chance the
cart's screwed up due to crinkled tape or magnetization or both.
Thus, 8 track is a "toy"...not a reliable "music medium."

I used to like selling them...and I once sold them by the gross on eBay, but
in the last five-years or so eBay sales of 8-tracks have gone in the toilet
because every garage-saler on eBay thinks they can get rich on their stash
of 8's. snip

Exactly...Charlie Nudo and his like minded ****tards, having no other
source of income in a declining America, turn to ebay as a means to
scam people out of their money. I'm sure if someone told Noodles that
"pet rocks are cool again," he'd start making frauds of those,
too...just to make a buck.

I admire your industrious attack on the technical aspects, but really feel
it's wasted time. snip

Not really. I felt there needed to be some quantization of what the
format could do, if for no other reason, to dispel the notion that 8
track WAS a viable medium. Surely, I do have some carts that do sound
pretty good...emphasis on "pretty"...and a lot of others that barely
compete with AM radio, and some that are unusable due to
aforementioned problems. No one else did it, but I did. Sure, I
could go into aspects of every deck and every tape ever made, but it
truly would be a waste of time, money and effort. I've covered the
bases well enough to give a technical baseline of the medium, what it
can do, what it can't, and what to expect in terms of problems. I'm
really not interested in doing much more other than maybe fool around
with recording on the Wollensaks for fun and experimentation, as well
as providing food for my one remaining car deck, and I will probably
give away all the carts and recorders sometime in the near future.
Compare that with the evil pandering of crap done by Noodles and his
ilk on ebay...my goals seem altruistic in comparison.

BUT- The biggest waste of time you've perpetuated has been the constant
rapport you've jumped into with and against a certain troll. Anyone with a
brain was able to killfile him a long time ago, and that was that. You've
poked it with a hot stick and made the troll flare-up like a wildfire...and
your constant retorts to the moron have polluted this forum as much or more
than the troll has. As gallant as your effort to tell the truth about it
(the troll) it's still s#!++ing on the hobby and probably always will. snip

You are correct...Noodles DOES "**** on the hobby." Don't blame me
for helping to expose a fraudster and con man...it's the right thing
to do. Rational people see Noodles, and figure that all 8 track
people must be flakes and morons, and the field of interest dies.
It's up to those who really like this format for what it is to get rid
of this troll. I did more than my part; if Malcolm is serious about
getting rid of him, let him do so. Otherwise, I'm out.

Oh
well...not worth my time chasing around Usenet, that's for sure. I think
siccing the FEDs and Post office on him for postal fraud and reporting him
to eBay is all you can do, if it's really worth the time. snip

It's not, but it woke him up to the fact that people are on to his
scams. His sales have been slipping, so he declared a "vacation" from
ebay, trying to wait me out. Then, when the scams started again, I
chased him all over the place, further impinging upon his income. You
can tell that his income has been truncated, as the ripoffs are
getting bolder pricewise...$125 for some piece of **** Jap Fisher he
found at a garage sale or the Salvation Army is larceny, plain and
simple, but a larceny that's aided and abetted by a clueless ebay
population. Oh well, mass stupidity cannot be cured by me or anyone
else; a look at the '04 election proves that. Caveat emptor!

A moderated forum would be nice... and very welcome... It would rededicate
this group to the subject at hand...collecting and playing with a bunch of
old tapes and the players we use with them. snip

GOOD! Send a note to Malcolm, tell him to either get his ass in gear
and set up the moderators, or close the newsgroup. The way it is is
untenable.

I Do Believe. . . 8-Tracks Are COOL! That's it. . . no analysis needed. snip

How does one define "cool?" If you're definition would include a
reference to original Lava Lamps being cool, so much the better. I
still have one from 1968, and there's an interesting story behind
those things, too! That oddly shaped bottle started out life as a
"decorator decanter" for Listerine products. The idea flopped in the
marketplace, and Warner-Lambert (now part of Pfizer) wound up with
literally tons tall, volumetrically inefficient glass containers.
Meanwhile, over at a Chicago novelty concern called Lava Company, some
guys got the bottles for next to nothing, filled the surplus bottles
with the emulsified goo pioneered by Englishman Craven Walker, stuck
them in a base with an incandescent lamp, and the Lava Lamp was born,
a craze that defined the '60s from 1963 onward. I must admit, that a
stack of 8 track cartridges placed next to a Lava Lamp makes for a
truly "period" visual effect! You may remember many cheesy imported
pendulum clocks sold in the late '70s and into the '80s bearing the
"Lava" brand. That was the Lava Lamp firm again, now owned by a
shrinking Simplex Time Corporation and called "Lava-Simplex."
Simplex, makers of centralized clock systems since the '40s, had a
drastically shrinking market for industrial sales due to the
introduction of cheap, fairly accurate battery clocks in the '70s, and
was looking for alternatives for income. They used Lava to market
their cheap Korean import clocks to consumers.

In that context, 8 track is truly a valid piece of '60s
memorabilia...complete with "moon goon" ceiling lamps, sideburns,
Nehru jackets, 5000 pound cars spewing particulate tetraethyl lead and
phony gold medallions. However, if you just want to get to the music
contained within, it's a royal pain in the ass, although an
attractively priced one. Not surprisingly, cassettes outprice 8
tracks routinely on ebay for sought after releases. GEMM doesn't even
mess with 8 track listings, but they do list cassettes...thousands of
them. If I really wanted to explore "packaged" analog tape to its
farthest development, I'd get into Elcaset from Sony. Now THERE'S an
arcane format, and probably the best ever attempt to get RTR fidelity
from a cartridge of any sort.

Unforunately, Sony screwed up the marketing (a Sony hallmark) and it
completely bombed in the US, with some sales in Japan and Europe. By
this time, consumers were enamored by the Philips AudioCassette for
its reliability (which 8 track totally lacked), small portable size,
and reasonable fidelity, which improved markedly after about 1975.
Elcaset was a "home" format, too large for car players. Most people
into hi-fi in those days who were serious about good tape sound opted
instead for a full blown RTR, of which there were many good offerings
in the '70s at a comparable price to Sony's high priced Elcaset. It
disappeared within 6 months on the US market, and I wisely avoided it.
I did use consumer Beta, probably longer than anyone else I know,
simply because it outperformed JVC's inferior VHS format, and the 1984
introduction of "Beta Hi-Fi" FM audio gave another very good audio
recording format. As an experiment, I even mastered a guy's studio
work on a Sony SL-5200, and it worked out great, with an even lower
noise floor than dbx encoded audio tape! Later improvements to VHS,
like VHS-HQ and S-VHS, as well as the 1986 introduction of "VHS Hi-Fi"
audio, made the performance advantage moot, but I still didn't convert
to VHS until the mid-90s. So, if 8 track is "'70s coolness," what of
Beta? I still have a working Sony Beta deck with fresh heads.
That'll go to ebay soon (for large bucks, I've found out), as I've
just about finished transcribing all my old Beta movies and Betacam
footage over to DVD-R.

Enough of this! I have to get out to the shop and finish that Ampex
transport!

dB

Good points, Bob. You are to be congratulated for putting thought and
effort into your posts. The "banter" between you and Trippin' has often been
amusing (from both perspectives) as well. Of course, since you are in the
thick of it the amusement factor is probably on the thin side for you.
I have not burned a lot of stuff to CD from other formats but am
generally more pleased with 8 track transfers than LP. Even what looks like
pristine vinyl has a fair amount of popping and sputtering. I use DePopper
but (and I may not be fully using it properly) still prefer the lack of
surface noise found on the 8 track.
WWW

Bob,

The reason you are having such lousy results from your tapes, is you
have a lousy deck. I gave up on Wollensak long time ago (I've had 3 of
them here), when a quick comparison to Telex Viking, Akai, Sony, JVC,
Zenith, Pioneer, showed all of the latter decks to be superior to the
Wollensak. Even an old Lear Jet, Muntz, or Automatic Radio would
improve over a Wollensak. Hell, I just serviced a Craig AM/FM 8-track
today with AC motor, that would make mincemeat of any Wolly in
reliability and stable operation. So there, I just weighed in- and in
ernest- not flaming you. You are crippling yourself with that Wolly
deck, and listening to 8-tracks with one hand tied behind your back in
a sense- esp. since a Wolly has tons of wow/flutter due to an
engineering design oversight with the speed regulator on the DC motor.
Even the Wolly 8050 with AC motor can't hold a candle to an Akai
80-81-series deck.

Your tech posts are interesting. Where you go astray is lacing them
with political rants and diatribe, and personal attacks. And there's
no way I (or anyone else) will stand still and let you attack auctions
and reputations without putting up a vehement defense. You have to
give respect, to get respect- and since you came onto this NG in Sept.
you have done nothing but attack. What do you expect ??

The self-destructive crusade you have gone on here since September
2004, is definitely not worth the damage you did to your own reputation
on Usenet- all over an alignment tape you paid $40 for, and got all
your money back with no problems. What are you thinking, man ?? How
is that worth it ?? You lost no money, then destroyed your own rep.

If you continued to post constructively like above, you could easily be
amongst the top 10 contributors here of all time. The problem is, your
posts quickly degenerate to the flame war level- which then disrupts
the entire NG- and also undermines your own reputation and credibility.
I believe you may have been hoodwinked into fighting Dan Gibson's
8-track war for him, while he sits on the sidelines and watches. If so,
stop being his toadie. It's not worth it, as any "war" takes
tremendous effort and cost to fight- flame wars included. You get the
**** kicked out of you, while he just keeps selling tapes and pads and
8-track supplies.

Either that, or you took that last presidential election WAY too
serious...

You are right on the dub over aspect- it is possible to trump the
recording quality of some factory authorized 8-tracks by dubbing them
over from a vinyl record ! I've been recording via 8-track since circa
1976. On the other hand, some factory 8-tracks have stellar sound
quality that will simply destroy the comparable CD, SACD or DVD-audio
copy- due to the newer ones being re-mixed and screwed with during the
process.

But I've found that dubbing from CD to 8-track, ends up being tinny and
thin sounding just like the CD- and inferior to anything but the worst
worn out original 8-track, or bootleg 8-track. An original pristine
cart will still sound better than a CD, I back to backed them with
headphones and that is obvious.

Reel to reel tapes degrade over time, heck so do studio master tapes.
So that is a characteristic of analog tape, not a deficiency of the
8-track format. If you are giving up on 8-tracks after trying them
again for 6 months- you never were really into them to begin
with...just my gut feeling intuition.

FWIW,

Trippin'

ps- the more you attack me, the more lumps and black eyes you give
yourself- I read all your replies to this thread- anyone coming into
this NG would see, you are sounding like a broken record already. Give
it a rest and things will definitely improve for you. If you're done
with the format, then move on to another hobby or pursuit. This NG was
here long before you or I, and it will be here long after we both stop
posting here. No one person makes the 8-track hobby.

Bob-

I do mean this in as friendly way as possible...but you are definitely a bag
o' hot air...

More power to ya...

Hope you can accept 8-tracks for what they are and what group members have
always accepted them to be...

Cool Tapes...Cool Toys . . . Cheap Toys! nothing more, nothing less...
Audiophiles please shop elsewhere...

TC8trax

TC8trax wrote:
Bob-

I do mean this in as friendly way as possible...but you are
definitely a bag
o' hot air...

More power to ya...

Hope you can accept 8-tracks for what they are and what group members
have
always accepted them to be...

Cool Tapes...Cool Toys . . . Cheap Toys! nothing more, nothing
less...
Audiophiles please shop elsewhere...

TC8trax


Get a Telex Viking or carousel deck, and input it into a good tube amp-
8-tracks are more "audiophile" than any digital format going. There's
just the maintenance issue to deal with.