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In Reply to: RE: Watching old 8mm movies at Christmas... posted by E-Stat on December 15, 2015 at 10:33:50
...the reel I am holding is not a movie but a 3 1/2 inch audio tape from my first little tape recorder--a $30 rim drive unit. The reason you don't see the tape recorder is that it was already sent back to Montgomery Wards as it did not work right. Come to think of it, ALL rim drive tape recorders did not work right even in the best of times.
We always took Christmas photos several days AFTER Christmas. You can see my brother already has his Allied 2-tube 4-band Span Master Radio assembled and running. He got a new radio nearly every Christmas with each one fancier than the last. The first one was a crystal radio; the second a one-transistor radio. This Christmas was 2 tubes and short wave.
I still have the tape recorder tho it hasn't worked in a long time. It went through C-cells quickly and as battery power deteriorated the speed of the rim drive sold. Of course, without a capstan the speed of the tape across the head varied a lot, gradually speeding up as the tape was taken up.
I soon modded the battery compartment to use wires from two big 1.5 v dry cells, which lasted a lot longer, but rim drive was not the greatest idea ever. A couple years later I got my first capstan-drive unit, the Mayfair brand. I still have that one too.
Cassettes were a long way off, like 7 or 8 years away....
Follow Ups:
I had a Midland Rim drive back in the day.
I used to tape Hogans Hero's using a telephone transponder, you know, they had a coil affixed to a suction cup for telephones. I put it close to the speaker, and it worked way better than the cheap microphone included.
Proudly serving content-free posts since 1984.
The cassette deck came out in 1963. We had a Norelco around 1965.
The original cassette was designed for low-fi voice recording of things like meetings, with high frequencies tapering off at about 4000 Hz. It was not until 1970 that enough work had been done to make this into a possible audio medium with improved high frequency response. But then what really got this going was the introduction of Dolby Hiss reduction, supported by the ever improving tape materials. This didn't really get going as a widely-marketed item until 72-73. Phillips never designed the cassette to be a hi fi medium...the tape was too narrow and the tape speed too slow at 1 7/8 ips. But, with part of the capstan built into the cassette, cheap cassette recorders could be made with a steady tape speed, a great improvement over the rim drive units.
In 1965, the Christmas I got my first capstan recorder ($40), cassettes were not a viable alternative option. I got my first non-dolby hi fi cassette recorder, a Realistic brand, in 1971 ($130).
David
Thanks for the info. I guess the one we had was low- fi!
The historical view was that the laws of physics determined the quality of a musical audio tape. The wider the magnetic tape track and the faster the tape moved across the head, the better the high frequencies would be recorded and the lower the noise or hiss level.That meant that the big tape units in recording students typically ran at 15 inches per second employing up to one-inch wide tape. The wide tape was especially useful if the intent was to lay down two or more separate tracks for stereo recording.
But for home use, 10-inch reals running at 15 ips were impractical for a host of reasons. That home reel-to-reel market settled into 7 1/2 ips running quarter inch tape. But that still meant big reels and lots of tape. The 3 3/4 inch speed obtained by taking the big capstan off to reveal a smaller capstan, was ok but for "noncritical" recording but not considered as high quality noise and high frequency wise as the higher speeds.
Tape cartridges preceded the development of cassettes as a portable audio product. The first of these were 4 track I believe running at 3 3/4 ips. Soon along came 8-track units, technically inferior from the perspective of physics, but allowing each tape to hold more music.
Cassettes were designed as a non-musical recording medium, and it was developments AFTER The format was set with narrow 1 7/8 inch tape, then researchers started working on converting the format as a hi fi audio medium. The main technologies were dolby noise reduction to reduce tape hiss and new tape formulations initially chromium dioxide and later metal tapes. Each of these new tape technologies required a different tape bias setting and the new generations of premium recorders had a switch to set the bias consistent with the tape you were using. The high-end formulations were expensive, and people generally used the chromium dioxide and metal formulations for high- end recording.
Over time, the quality improved.
Initially no one thought that cassettes would ever be able to compete with cartridge players in mobile audio given that cartridges operated in an endless loop with no need to rewind, but a new generation of audio cassette players largely resolved that and soon cartridges disappeared. Tape hiss was never as big an issue in car audio as in home audio as normal road noise while driving tended to mask it.
There were other developments worth noting that failed. Does anyone remember the short-lived Elcaset format? This was essentially a larger cassette with a wider tape going at a faster speed that supposedly resolved the issues with the original cassette format. As dolby and the tape formulations got better, the format quickly died.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elcaset
PlayTape was a short-lived cartridge format using a narrower tape in a much smaller cartridge. That quickly died too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayTape
Edits: 12/17/15
Don't forget the RCA Sound Tape Cartridge. It was kind of an overgrown cassette using 1/4 inch tape. I had one those as a teen (probably still have it if the truth be known!). It had pretty good sound, but I quickly regretted the non-standard nature of the format. All my friends had reel models. The machine was compact though, by comparison.
The ELcaset was one of Sony's biggest blunders!
I don't know. There was the mini disk, DAT and the Betamax/VHS fiasco.
Dave
Those lasted a lot longer than the few short years of the ELcaset!
My recollection is that recording tape reels were clear and had fewer "spokes" like this:
My first tape recorder was a Norelco Carry Corder 150 with the incredible "new" cassette format!
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