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Blank cassettes lifecycle

L

Late Boomer

Super Member
Pre-recorded cassettes were meant to be purchased and listened as is, never to be erased, maybe used as a source for making mixtapes. Functionally, they are not different from LPs or CDs.

Blank cassettes, on the other hand, always had this feature of being able recorded to. Hence, I am curious how people use this feature. Do you (or did you) record things to yourself or for others? Recording for others means you need a constant stream of new blank cassettes, hence the questions about new blanks come up. But if you record for yourself, what do you do next? Do you make "that one" super-duper great playlist and keep it forever? How often do you re-play it? If you don't re-play it often, how do you feel about re-recording over it?

Back in the 1990s, especially in the first half of the 1990s, I used blank cassettes as a sort of a temporary medium for albums and playlists recorded off LPs and CDs and other cassettes, and listened to them during my commute to college and then to work, it was by bus and subway. Some of those recordings I got really attached to and did not want to erase, but others were like the popular stuff of the day, and I would erase it in six month or a year. For a long time I was able to survive with less than thirty "blank"/re-recordable cassettes.

After portable CD players became affordable, and CD prices went down, I stopped copying full albums and started listening CDs directly, no need for an intermediate medium for my subway commute. So cassettes became strictly for my own playlists and mixtapes. And here is the thing: not being a professional DJ or composer or whatever, I don't have that many mixtapes. Maybe a couple dozen. Which means that I personally don't need hundreds of blank tapes, and I don't need new tapes right now when I can make mixes as files not as tapes. I guess, there is a warm fuzzy feeling among many of us to have a mix recorded on tape, gives a feel of completing something. I did record three or four mixtapes in the last year. But even with this, I still don't need hundreds of blanks.

TL;DR:

- I wonder what do you do with your blanks
- Do you re-record over your old tapes
 
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made dozens of mix tapes in the mid 80's. still have them all, no erasures as of yet. unfortunate thing is/was I was seduced bu the lady singing the praises of : is it real or is it memorex
 
My main use was to preserve original vinyl while also allowing play of the recorded material in cars or on other's home systems.

Yes, prerecorded cassettes were capable of being recorded over (simply put clear tape over the safety detent), but the quality was not as good as purchased blanks, esp the aforementioned "Chrome" or 'Metal".

Being close to the abject poverty line when I was young, I had to be very conscious of costs.
My "go to" blank was the Maxell UDS II chrome. it was less expensive than their much more widely hyped UDXL II, but for me recorded just as well.
If those were not available TDK SA were acceptable but I found de-lamination of the oxide from the mylar was more prone to happen on these.

I had no real issues re-recording over previously recorded blanks.

I found heat cycling (left in the car in the summer) to be a greater factor to diminished sound quality.
 
I pretty much would use a fresh tape any time I made a recording, because my logic was that if I was taking the time to make a recording, I didn't want it to be on an old worn out tape which might have drop outs or stretched portions. I guess the only exception to this is when I was young enough that buying a new blank tape would take money that I would rather use for something else. I hated doing that though, because it would make a mess of the J card, since I would always make a list of everything on the tape, note the date it was recorded and if it used Dolby, etc.

I actually always preferred pre-recorded tapes over anything else, because they are exactly the same length as albums, and they usually had a nice crisp sound to them. These days, I'm finding my pre-recorded tapes haven't aged well, so I seldom play them anymore, instead sticking to LPs and CDs of the same music.
 
So, you guys still have your tapes that you recorded ONCE, and you don't feel like recording over. Do you listen to them often? I am trying to understand the logic of people who buy new tapes now, what are they going to do with it? Recording off a CD does not make sense anymore. Record off an LP instead of ripping into a file? Make a mixtape and then what, give it to a friend or keep and listen from time to time?

As I said, for the last year I recorded three or four tapes last year, they were mixtapes, not just dubs of an album. For this rate of my output, I don't really need any new cassettes anymore, I have about three dozen NOS ones. Hence, I wonder about the workflow of the people who still want to buy new cassettes: how many do you record and what do you do with them?
 
I love playing the old tapes and seeing how they've aged, which in most cases is pretty darn good. My oldest is a Partridge Family Tape from 1972 and it still plays fine. When I get some shop time I'll usually try to do a belt change on one of the millions of boomboxes/walkman/tape decks I own, its a very rewarding activity if you have the time.

I buy nice NOS tapes when I see them but very rarely use them, I just haven't had the time to do proper recordings. The good news is they've went up in value exponentially so hanging on to a box isn't all that bad.

So now a days we're starting to see tape collectors popping up, check out Kent's Threads over on Stereo2go http://stereo2go.com/forums/forums/recording-media-cassettes/ He's from China and has an amazing collection of tapes, portable players and decks, he also takes very nice photos. Nakamichi Tapes have always been the holy grail, he's got a ton of them. He has several threads, check out all of them, I think they're all stickied.
 
In my experience in the mid to late 70's, pre recorded cassette tapes didn't have very good fidelity, for the most part. We got much better recordings by transferring records to blank tapes like Maxell UDXLII on midfi cassette decks.

We transferred records to cassette for convenience of play, preservation of the records, and for use in the auto in my good old Pioneer KP500. We only got the records out and played them when we were doing serious listening, to get the highest fidelity.
 
Every time a Fleetwood Mac (or whatever) album came out, it was off to the store for a new tape. Carefully take the new record out, run the Memorex record cleaner over it once, do a quick level set, and put that baby on tape. Put the record up, hoping to never have to open it again. Then, bought a couple of RtRs....uh oh, have to get the F.M. record out again, do the same procedure. Through all these steps of course, favorite mixes also had to be made.

Then.....recordable CD came out. Here we go again. So I ended up having to play many of my valuable records 8 or 9 times.
Almost shed tears every time after the first play.
So, yes...after all that, most of those tapes eventually got recorded over, or lost. I kept some and get the itch once in awhile to record some mix tapes, but now I record from the CDs I made. :idea: Kinda dumb, but something to do. And, my wife's jeep CD player quit working, but the cassette tape still works, so she still gets some mix tapes.
 
I started out with the original Maxell UD and progressed as technology advanced staying with Maxell UD ending using their metal tapes. I use to make my own cassettes to be used in cars with a little EQ tune up and in some cases some dynamic expansion. When dubbing CD's I used compression and limiting. But in all those years I only had two Maxell tapes fail me out of hundreds. I was using Nakamichi cassette machines 90% of the time. But even using the cassette player from the factory in my Dodge Ram for 18 years I never lost a tape. The Odysseys never ate tapes either. The Marquis ate a few tapes by other manufactures. The only pre-recorded tapes I ever bought were by Telarc.
 
@twiiii, so you still have and regularly use all your recorded tapes? Have you been recording tapes after CDs took over? Because you can play a CD in a car... just wondering :)
 
No all the tapes are gone as are the machines to make the tapes and the vehicles that could play them. In fact the current autos I use blue tooth from my iPhone 10 X. They won't even play CD's. I will wait to get a new iPhone when my town get 5G. Maybe in another couple of years. We were the first to get High speed internet in the country and I suppose we will be the last major city to get 5G.
 
I was another who used cassettes to record albums to preserve the album quality. I still have all my tapes from the early 80s. I have played some on my Pioneer Deck CTF-950 that I had pustelniakr rebuild. They still sound great. They have been kept in an indoor environment for all these years. I used Sony tapes as Maxells always became muddy sounding after a year or so. All my music has been transferred to my computer; so anymore I don't use CDs or cassettes.
 
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