8 Tracks?

[Scotty Hutto]

Vinyl has been making a comeback. Are 8-tracks next?

[RustyTools]

HA!   As smooth as our coaches ride, we just may see turntables again.   I tossed my record collection when we went fulltime for several years  😩 .

I can vaguely remember seeing a record player in one of my uncles' cars, many years ago.   I think it played 45's. 

[Sjholt12]

If you want an 8 track recorder, I still have one I bought in 1966, it's a Roberts 8 track and tape recorder. It still works! Kinda hard to get 8 track tapes tho.

[Tom Cherry]

Record players in the 60's were for watching the submarine races.  They did NOT work whilst driving....or maybe when one's cousin was tooling around and popping the gears in his souped up 1963 Impala 409....

I would NOT bet on 8 tracks coming back.  but you never know....  I think that my old record collection might take care of my next MH trade....  Based on some of the eBay prices...  Still need a few funerals to make some of them more valuable...

[birdshill123]

My BIL had a 45 player in his car. I think it was mounted on some sort of gyro. You could play them while going down the road. My wife still has a cassette player!!!

[96 EVO]

On 11/21/2019 at 10:20 PM, Scotty Hutto said:

Vinyl has been making a comeback. Are 8-tracks next?

My God, I hope not!!

Remember the song fading out, the track changing, then the song fading back in :).

[Bob Nodine]

I still remember more than once pulling out an 8 track cartridge and watching the tape trail behind still attached to the inner workings of the player. This also happen a few times with the cassette tapes that replaced the 8 track. As many my age I dabbled in most of the audio media in the past century which included a reel to reel plus 8 track and cassette recorders. I would record my LP's on the tape media and play them back in the house or car to preserve the vinyl. I remember putting Willie Nelson on the reel to reel and listening for many hours before the tape ran out. More than once I cursed the needle on my Lab 80 turntable. Unlike many I have no desire to return to vinyl or tape media and definitely not vacuum tubes.

[RustyTools]

Wow, that brings back some memories!  I worked at a high-end audio store in S Florida during high-school/junior-college. I happened to find a stray piece of packing-material stuck in the innards of a new Garrard Lab80 one day, so I became the turntable-fixer from then on.  When they worked those automatic turntables were great, but when they went out of whack, it was a terror. 

The store had maintenance contracts with a lot of the people on Palm Beach, so we got to work on some over-the-top awesome stereo equipment.  I remember going to one house where they were digging a 6' deep hole in the Great Room to install a granite pier on which to set the turntable (I think it was a Thorens) because they guy thought he was getting some stray vibration thru the floor.  Some of the cars I saw during that time were also overwhelming, especially to a kid (not to mention the women too).

Huh, guess I erased part of the above when I was correcting a typo.  I worked on a 4-track tape player too (yup, but rare!), it was in an already-antique car at the time.  I don't know what it was, but it was one of the open types with low swoopy doors - maybe like a Dusenberg.  I was almost scared to touch it, much less get in it. 

 

Edited December 15, 2019 by RustyTools