The cassette player is back!

fretfinder

Dunno if this has been posted before but WTF?! Is it April 1st? 

https://www.wearerewind.com/en-gb/pages/a-propos

strumjoughlamps

I have a Loros Charity shop nearby which is dedicated to music and gaming.. cassettes used to be .50p-£2, now they are £6-£12.

english_bob

Not in my house it isn't. Cassette has none of the "ritual" appeal of vinyl, or the huge space for artwork, or the sound quality, or the ease of locating a single track. 

The only thing I miss about cassettes is the ability to make mixtapes for road trips, but it's been a lot of years since I had a cassette player in my car.

£133 isn't completely ridiculous, but I won't be buying one.

TTony

"We were able to count on the know-how of French engineers"


I'm out.

mudslide73

I liked them when they were current but there's no reason to now. Azimuth afjustment, Head cleaners, tape noise and random chews are things I don't miss. I liked my Tascam and Fostex machines but Reaper has a few more features

Penn

I’m sure they will sell some. I won’t buy it though. 

monquixote

The youtube channel Tech Moan sometimes talks about cassette players and other retro Hi Fi

He said that there is only one factory left in the world that makes cassette player transports and it makes very budget ones so these types of products however expensive they are tend to sound really bad.

So unless something significant has changed these won't be very good.

Tannin

More than you ever wanted to know about certain particular short-lived cassette and tape recorders, episode 1:

Offset

Just... why?!

CHRISB50

Last weekend we had dinner at my mum and dad's. My eldest daughter found an old Aiwa walkman. 

She was extremely excited, until she found I had no cassettes to go with it.

As a DJ, I loved cassettes.

maltingsaudio

I’ve still got a Tascam CDA 500 https://tascam.com/downloads/tascam/344/CD-A500_techdoc.pdf for sale in the classifieds from way back https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/42638/processing-rack-some-bits-sold 

Might have to think again about the price!

Sassafras

I've still got Tascam and Fostex 4 tracks - which I don't use.

steer

As a kid I would spend ages choosing what cassette albums to buy with my meagre pocket money. When one of the cassettes got chewed up I would painstakingly try to repair it by untangling and manually rewinding. The sound was never as good, and often it would get chewed up again.

Really some thing are best consigned to history, even if I do get a wave of nostalgia every now and then when I see anything cassette related.  

Recording songs off the radio and trying to "edit" out the DJ at the beginning and end of the song was an under-appreciated art form though. 

Grunfeld

steer said:

I... get a wave of nostalgia every now and then when I see anything cassette related.  

Recording songs off the radio and trying to "edit" out the DJ at the beginning and end of the song was an under-appreciated art form though.

Not long ago I saw long fluttering streamers of cassette tape wrapped around the rubbish in my neighbour's garden, a broken red winding spool nearby.  The light catches the tape in a certain way, maybe a shiny side and a matte side?  (I couldn't remember and didn't investigate), and I realised I hadn't seen this once-common sight for decades. 

EDIT John Peel would generously avoid talking over the intros and outros.  This would make it easy to tape his shows but it was a pity the music was so variable.

ElectricXII

Grunfeld said:

EDIT John Peel would generously avoid talking over the intros and outros.  This would make it easy to tape his shows but it was a pity the music was so variable.

Unlike Tony Blackburn on the Sunday evening Top 40 countdown. W*nker!

alalalkasar

The cool kids have been into tape cassettes for quite a while in the same way that they used to get into vinyl. Some kind of strange nostalgia for something you never knew. I was going to get rid of my CDs but now I think I'll sit on them for a few years until they are cool again.

axisus

TTony said:

"We were able to count on one hand the know-how of French engineers"

richardhomer

fretfinder said:

Dunno if this has been posted before but WTF?! Is it April 1st? 

https://www.wearerewind.com/en-gb/pages/a-propos

I’ve awarded you a ‘Wow’ - hopefully the mods will add a ‘Flutter’ button as well…

ewal

alalalkasar said:

The cool kids have been into tape cassettes for quite a while in the same way that they used to get into vinyl. Some kind of strange nostalgia for something you never knew. I was going to get rid of my CDs but now I think I'll sit on them for a few years until they are cool again.

Was going to take the opportunity to mention my daughter's band's recent EP cassette release, available on Bandcamp and their merch stall at gigs. But then thought better of it - I've already mentioned it elsewhere on the forum 

I've paid well over the odds for all their releases, but I haven't as of yet bought their cassette!

TTony

Grunfeld said:

EDIT John Peel would generously avoid talking over the intros and outros.  This would make it easy to tape his shows but it was a pity the music was so variable.

I’ve still got some of those on cassette.  The early ones were recorded from MW radio via the built in mic of a cassette player/recorder.

Ahhhhh … those were the days.

p90fool

alalalkasar said:

The cool kids have been into tape cassettes for quite a while in the same way that they used to get into vinyl. Some kind of strange nostalgia for something you never knew. I was going to get rid of my CDs but now I think I'll sit on them for a few years until they are cool again.

That's already started. A couple of 20 year old ex-colleagues of mine are at Bristol Uni and they and their peers are all buying old hifi separates and scouring the charity shops for cool CDs.
To be fair they have found some gems among the Tina Turners and Phil Collinses.