Garage sale wonders

One fun thing about 8 tracks is how cheaply you can get well sounding
copies of stuff for sometimes nothing, except a little labor.
Yesterday, after doing my errands around town, I spied a garage sale
close to home and stopped by. Over in a box of the usual garbage were
some cartridges...a LOT of them. I became interested!

In the end, I wound up with 12 8 tracks of various "classic rock" and
5 4 tracks of mostly '60s Top 40 pop...Association, Buckinghams, etc.
I asked the gal what she wanted for them, she quoted me a buck apiece,
whereupon I gingerly put them back in the box, which elicited the
response, "Oh, go ahead and take 'em...no one wants those things,
anyway." Har!

They were all in pretty good shape, with the usual fried pads and one
molten Ampex pinch roller, but all with near-new labels. Complete
CCR, 2 Dire Straits, a couple of Yesses, the INFAMOUS Lou Reed "Metal
Machine Music" (yech!), 3 Joni Mitchells...most with correct sleeves.
I got back home and get out my supply of Win-Gibs, cleaner, wipes,
PTFE lube and various cart tools and set about bringing them all back
to life. First out was a "Cosmo's Factory," which was conspicuously
jammed. Upon popping the Ampex cart open, horror of horrors, the
splice had gummed up and stuck onto the hub as it was coming out, thus
doing the usual wrap around the top of the hub flange, jamming the
cart and making some nasty "crinkles" of the Ampex tape. I decided to
apply the old flatiron trick, using a piece of tempered glass and a
new addition: a temp controlled soldering iron with a flat tip,
intended for using on RF cans and other soldered enclosures.

The idea was to heat the glass to about 180° with the flatiron so the
tape would nicely ahere to it, and then run over it with the soldering
iron flat tip set to 220° in one quick pass. This tape was badly
creased in every way possible, but inspection of unmarred sections of
the tape and the guides inside told me that this tape had probably
jammed up on the first few runs, and was otherwise in like-new shape.
So I set about this procedure, and within minutes, all the creases and
crinkles of that Ampex tape were completely gone. Satisfied, I wound
everything back up, did my usual two-sided splice, cleaned, lubed and
snapped together. Sure enough, I found that the factory splice wasn't
cut properly, leaving excess adhesive for which to grab the hub,
causing the mess inside. Into the Wollie it went after rehab, and I
must say, I couldn't tell audibly where the creases were! High end on
all 4 tracks was pristine (such as it was on ANY CCR release; Fnntasy
wasn't really big on buying big-name studio time, and it showed.)
But, I just got a near-new, though repaired, copy of "Cosmo's
Factory," which I haven't had on LP for at least 20 years. Only
investment: ½" of foil tape, 1" of Quantegy blue, some PTFE, and my
time for about a half hour. This was paid for easily by my fun in
listening to an album I hadn't heard in its entirety in 20+ years. To
get all this music on CD (if you COULD get it all) would've set me
back a good $175. Even on E to NM LP's I would've been out at least a
hundred bucks. I even popped in the Lou Reed cart...for a few
minutes...until I couldn't take anymore. However, it's GREAT to have
in the car when some asshole is blasting ghetto crap out of his Honda
Civic or Escalade at a red signal, and I can crank that Reed thing up
with all 80 watts and scare the holy bejeezus out of him.

Most of the other carts just needed a pad change, or, with the felt
pad Ampexes, just some cleaning and lube, and they all played very
nicely. My buddy with an old Muntz I got going for him was ecstatic
that I'd snagged some new 4 track stuff for him, and will pick it up
Monday. Yes, there ARE fun parts to this hobby, and this was one of
them!

dB