Hey Curbsiders of all ages – I have a question for you: Do you still play tapes in your car?
I’m about as old as you can be and still be a Millennial. I had a Speak and Spell as a kid, bought tapes in the mid-90s as an early teen, and inherited my parents’ record collection when I was about 16 or 17.
E.T. Phone Home!
Call me a nostalgic (I know there are several of us here – I’m looking at you, Joseph Dennis ;)) but I have always carried a torch for music from before my time and for old technology that harkens back to simpler times. An older Boomer buddy laughed at my record collection the other day (I have about 250 records), remarking that I was his only friend who still had records. But records are collectable! And valuable! Tapes, fragile, and very flawed in terms of sound quality and fidelity, have not been collectable in the past. But the times, they are a-changing!
Would you believe me if I told you that Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumors” on tape would net you $20 on eBay, which is probably as much as the vinyl would cost?
Lookit, I was an early adopter of the iPod, and I’m guilty of stealing all kinds of digital music during the golden age of piracy (circa 1999-2008). But even if the quality is subpar, nothing but tapes are going to do for my 1981 VW Westfalia. A CD player would be bogus. And one of those faux-retro MP3/Bluetooth single DIN units? Don’t make me ralph, man.
I still rock the tape suitcase that my mom had in the trunk of her Broughamtastic 1986 Cutlass Supreme. Mom stopped listening to tapes 25 years ago, and hers are long gone. And a good number of my own tapes have sat in hibernation in my parents’ attic for 20 years before being claimed again recently.
My actual tape collection in Mom’s vintage tape suitcase!
Some of you are going to give me guff for this, but I’ve been through five cassette decks in the last year. Three were purchased only for me to find that they were fundamentally incompatible.
The VW decks from Clarion require a Monsoon preamp.
The Blaupunkt bit the dust after I took it apart and tried to solder in a new motor.
The Panasonic kept auto reversing cassettes into oblivion (when it wasn’t straight-up eating them).
Are you old enough to remember the once common sight of a broken tape along the roadside, spewing its guts into the breeze and arching out like the bulge of a sail?
Recently, a buddy gave me a new cache of tapes to listen to. He recorded these in the ’80s from records he borrowed off of friends. You can hear the vinyl surface noise on the recordings, but the tapes sound great. As I type this, I’m listening to Hendrix’s “Rainbow Bridge” in Dolby C, dubbed by my old buddy on 7/12/87. That was a long time ago! But hearing it now, sitting in my van with a beer, is a time warp back to simpler times that I can still foggily remember.
I had a Fisher Price tape player in ’87 that I used to play the tapes that were in my collection, some of which still survive to this day. I’m an old soul, and always have been; and it’s got to be tapes in my Curbside Classic!
What about you? Are you still rocking your old tapes?
My 2007 Audi A3 had a cassette player, but I sold it in 2014. I sold my rock & roll tapes sometime ago, but my sister in law sent me some of Dad’s old cassettes. I’m having a tougher time finding anyone who wants them.
It depends on what they are. No one wants mixtapes, and anything earlier than late ’60s is not particularly collectable either. But Pink Floyd, or Beatles or Zeppelin tapes fetch a bundle.
I was astounded to see that Snoop Dogg’s “Doggystyle” on cassette is fetching between $35-45!
see image posted below
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I was born in 1989 and never got into cassettes all that much and I don’t think we own any. Sure my elementary and middle school had some cassettes to go along with lesson plans, but that was over 15 years ago. CDs a plenty my wife and I have. We do have a medium sized boom box with a cassette deck and adaptor that we plug a smart phone into so we can play our music through better speakers. Or just listen to CDs.
When I still had my 2003 Dodge Caravan I might have listened to the soundtrack from Grease on cassette a few times.
Usually used the cassete adapter so I could plug it into my smart phone and listen to Pandora. Since 2017 I’ve not had a car with a cassette player since both my vehicles had aftermarket head units when I bought them.
I do remember the sight of a broken tape along the roadside, spewing its guts into the breeze, arching out like the bulge of a sail, and lamenting the needless litter it caused.
Our last car to have a cassette player was our 2007 TL Type S. We listened to a few in the car, but my father had switched to CD’s in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, when his Supra Turbo had a CD player. (It was also the last car we had with a 6 disc changer. Oddly neither our A4 or A7 are so equipped). But I did discover my father’s Walkman Pro and a whole bunch of tapes he made when he was around my age and then some from when he was working in the music industry, including some live recordings of concerts. I still listen to those sometimes, although I will have to have some components on the Walkman fixed, since it’s sort of falling apart. Oh, and there is a whole stack of blank CrO2 tapes lying around too. (Mostly TDK, which I am informed are quite good.). TLDR: In the car, no (thank you, Spotify), but at home, yes! (For the record, I’m a University student, so I didn’t grow up with tapes – and we digitized our massive CD collection about 7 or so years ago, if my memory is correct.)
Yeah I remember when a tape strewn out on the side of the road was not an uncommon sight.
One of my Scouts still has a radio with cassette in it but I don’t think I’ve ever put a tape in it since I installed it over 20 years ago. I would be surprised if it actually worked.
The other one I finally had to break down 4 or 5 years ago and get a new unit that is an AM/FM with aux input.
My Marauders do have a cassette/CD unit with the optional CD changer and I know I haven’t put one in the Blue one and don’t think I’ve ever put one in the Black either.
My son’s GM and F-150 also have cassettes but all they have ever been used for are 3.5mm input adapters, which are getting harder and harder to find.
I often participated in the practice of flinging my eaten 8 track cartridge out the window in anger. Once my cars and I went cassette it seems that problem disappeared.
Now, thanks to Spotify, Pandora, and unlimited data on my “smart” phone, life is much better.
I do have a CD player and AUX input in my Honda Element, and I use both frequently, as the Honda is my daily driver. But I really wanted a tape deck in my ’81 Westy so I could enjoy my old tapes again; it feels right, and it’s a neat, period correct touch for a curbside classic.
I finally got a nice JVC unit on ebay and installed it last week. The harness was unlike any I’d ever seen before, with some sort of weird daisy-chained thing going on instead of your typical aftermarket setup. But I was able to get it wired in and to power it to run off of my auxiliary battery so that I can sit on the bench in the back and listen anytime without putting a key in the ignition ir running down the van’s primary battery. It’s a nice setup!
No. Gave those up long time ago. BUT…my 1996 Saturn SL2, which I got from the original owner, had the top of the line factory audio system. It had a cassette player, but she never used it because of the 12 disc CD changer that came with the high end system. I too, just did CD’s and that car went to meet it’s maker in 2013 without ever having a tape played in it. And before you bash my Saturn, bought at 79K miles, wrecked at 280K trouble free miles. Miss that car.
Last car I had with a working tape deck was my ’87 Audi 4000 quattro, which I sold 4.5 years ago. My 2003 Saturn L200 had a combination tape deck-CD player, but it didn’t work.
Not sure if I’ve ever mentioned it, but my screen name is a tip of the hat to Stax Records of Memphis, and that’s pretty much what my musical taste runs to. But at some point I picked up a cassette of Mozart’s 41st symphony. When I had my ’71 Peugeot 504, I thought that cassette somehow suited the car.
When the OEM radio-CD player in my ’05 Honda Civic died a couple years ago, I replaced it with one that can play music from a USB key. I stream a lot of radio shows from all over, save them to my hard drive as MP3s, and play them in the car.
Sorry, but a L200 isn’t a real Saturn.
What do you consider a real Saturn–an S or an Ion?
We use the tape player for a phone adapter to play in my wife’s 2005 Pilot. So, sort of.
Very much so, yes.
1995 Toyota Carina Wagon with Toyota factory installed radio and two speakers …!
I play Stevie Wonder
Elvis Presley and
Lucio Battisti and
Fleet Foxes.
I forgot to add I did install a Sanyo AM/FM cassette stereo in my ’70 Toyota Corona Mark II coupe I drove in high school, circa ’82-83. The only tape it ate was my girlfriends ABBA tape.
Haha, no big loss 😉
Both the tape and the girlfriend! 🙂
I was a kid when Cassettes seemed to get phased out, I only had two cassettes as a kid, one was the Wayne’s World 2 soundtrack, which got eaten in the player of my Mom’s Jetta, and the other a mixtape of various rock songs my Dad transferred from his and my Mom’s vinyls, which I’m also pretty sure got eaten by a deck as well.
I don’t think I have anything that plays cassettes anymore, the Cougar came with the premium sound deck but it’s long gone, first replaced with a OEM premium sound CD player, then an aftermarket Alpine Bluetooth headunit, and the Focus has a CD player
Scott, your eclectic tape collection reminds me of the variety I used to have. I gave up using tape in the car in the late 80s, for CDs. I think the last tape I kept in my car was the cassette single of Information Society’s ‘Walking Away’. lol 🙂 A #8 Billboard hit in 1989. Their big hit being, ‘What’s on Your Mind (Pure Energy)’. Which memorably sampled Leonard Nimoy’s voice saying, ‘Pure Energy’. lol
Cool video. I recently added that song to an mp4 playlist. When I was a kid in the early 70′ s , I recorded cassettes off the radio that I still have. I thought someday when I got older I would have to ” upgrade”to 8 tracks as cassettes where not for music at that point, Well that “upgrade” never happened and almost 50 years later I still use them.
I just pulled the old cassette deck out of the 1992 eurovan westfalia after I got a Blaupunkt CD deck for Christmas. It had a Heidelberg one in it that would eat tapes and the radio (usually tuned to CBC) kept cutting out even after the antenna was fixed. I still have it in the garage and would be tempted to send it to you Scott but I think it is more trouble than it is worth. The new one looks more modern but they did have CD players in 1992 so I don’t feel too bad about not having a stock unit. I now realize one of the front speakers and the back little ones in the overhead storage locker sound like crap. Of course they are some weird size that only westfalia’s seemed to have.
My Nissan Altima has both a CD and cassette deck. I picked up some cassettes at the thrift store but they sound terrible compared to the CD player. I did find a couple of mixed tapes and some albums from the nineties when I was cleaning the garage but I can only play them in the car as I gave away the old denon deck for the house stereo a long time ago.
I usually got rid of the stock tape deck and switched to CD’s in my old vw vans as soon as I bought them so not having a factory deck doesn’t bother me except when they get stolen and half the dash got wrecked in the process. That doesn’t seem to happen much any more with the advancement of gps touch screens in modern vehicles.
Those Heidelbergs were really nice, classic German stereos. I’ve taken enough tape decks apart lately to know that if it’s anything more than a bad belt, it’s probably not worth the time and heartbreak. But yeah, that would be a very nice period-correct deck for an old VW!
I didn’t know a Eurovan Westy was made in ’92 – I thought ’93 was the first year, or at least in the US. If you haven’t written yours up for CC, you should!
Yeah it looked like a really nice deck for its day but $60 for a Blaupunkt was too good to pass up and it is black and it sort of fits in with the interior.
Mine is a Canadian model called the eurovan CV. We got them a year before the USA. If I am looking for parts south of the border I have to put 1993 as the year. The interior was done by westfalia and the manual calls it a California coach. It has a short wheel base and cooler (2way ammonia based 120/12 volt.), 2 burner stove, sink, pop top, bed down below and a table that fits between the couch and both front seats swivel. They were available in Canada until 1996 I believe.
I should really write up my old vw vans some day for curbside. I am now on the 4th one and seem to keep moving up a decade with each new one. 2 70’s bay windows, a Vanagon and now the eurovan. Each have their own benefits and drawbacks. I really liked the simplicity of the early ones but really enjoy the features of the eurovan.
Funnily enough, no I don’t have a tape deck in my car. However I have been withering away the coronavirus Epidemic in a manner that involves tapes. My dad made radio transcript of shows put out by Don K Reed on WCBS FM New York and Ronnie Italiano on WNYE in the 90s, and I have been pulling Doo-Wop and R&B tunes from the 40s to 60s off of them to add to my (already extensive) collection of that type on my phones playlist.
Chet Baker ftw!
I put a cassette deck in my 68 Mustang in 1979 and listened to tapes all through the 80s in multiple cars. My 77 Chrysler had an in-dash 8 track so I needed a cassette adapter for that one. I have a big file drawer full of tapes in my basement that have not been played in years.
The last car I had with one was my 93 Crown Vic. Actually, my 94 Club Wagon got one after the radio/CD player slit its throat and I bought a factory radio/cassette inexpensively on eBay to replace it.
When we bought our new 1999 Chevy Prizm 5-speed, its only options were rear window defogger and a/c; no radio at all. We had a two-speaker radio/cassette deck installed at Circuit City; 6 years or so later, when it started eating tapes, we had it switched out for a CD player. (The car and CD player are still working; sold it to a friend in 2010.) The next year’s Prizm had a higher price but included a four-speaker AM/FM radio and a/c as standard equipment.
Our only other new-car purchase was a 2003 Subaru Legacy Special Edition 5-speed wagon, with standard stereo radio and single-CD player; if we’d gotten it the year before, it would have had a cassette deck instead. (Subaru also offered optional units through 2002 with both CD and cassette.)
We still have a working player or two in the house, but haven’t played a cassette in years; likewise we have a circa-1973 8-track player (one of these: https://radioattic.com/itemshow.htm?radio=1340119) and about 100 tapes, but they tend to break at the splice point.
When I started buying my own music in the 1990’s, I decided despite the higher cost that it was worth investing in CDs and I pretty much skipped over cassettes entirely. My first car had just the tape deck and I had a portable CD player which I used in my car with a cassette adapter, until I finally invested in a CD player for my car which was the popular thing to do among my classmates. Once the CD player was in place, I no longer had an ability to play cassettes in my car.
I did have a cassette player/recorder in the ever popular Aiwa minisystem I had, which I would use to record some of the friday night dance mixes the local pop station would play, which is about all I dabbled in cassettes, really. I never bought any music on cassettes.
At some point the CD player in the Aiwa minisystem quit (pretty common failure with those) and I replaced it with a proper Sony stereo receiver and standalone 5 disc CD player (the receiver eventually quit, still have the CD player). For a while, I thought I didn’t have a cassette player at all, but I forgot that my car has one! I did dig up some of those cassettes I recorded back in the day and listened to them in my car for old times sake, though I only could find a couple of them – no idea what happened to the rest of them. Still listen to my CDs in my car – I tried some of the cassette adapters and FM adapters to hook up a MP3 player but was never happy with the quality, and I’m not really interested in replacing the factory system so CDs it is.
You people are all babies. I remember 8-tracks turning up as roadkill all over the place, being old enough to remember when 8-tracks were everywhere! I don’t think anybody misses the way they’d cut out right in the middle of a song to switch to the next track. But we loved them just the same. The only car we’ve had that came with a cassette player is the ’96 Ford Contour, my daily driver for a lot of years. We drove it from Iowa to southern California and back once, listening to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” much of the way. We still have the car, but it’s been awhile since we used the tape player, and I have no idea whether it still works. And don’t roll your eyes at the very idea of the Ford Contour. It’s still running, with very few problems during its 187,000 miles.
Man, you have a good collection of music on those tapes! I swapped out the standard tape deck for a CD player in my Sentra, and the last car I drove with a tape deck was a Toyota Platz (Echo to you Americans) in 2005. I had a big collection of cassettes that took up two storage cases that I got off my hands in 2007 (but that’s another story) – I regret having made that decision.
My only car is a 2000 VW Golf (I bought new) and it has the non-Monsoon version of the very radio you show in the first picture. It works OK, but for some reason the bass setting can’t be altered (it is permanently on 9 which is highest setting). I’ve had other weird issues where the radio stopped working but started on its own again, but it is the original radio.
I do play tapes in it, but only in the winter, I live in the sunbelt and have had lots of tapes ruined by heat…and don’t want to have to fix a stuck tape. Like a lot of people my age I have lots of tapes that never migrated to other media, and I don’t mind listening to the whole thing (not big on searching for certain songs or material)…so I dig them out and essentially listen to only them for awhile, and they seem new to me since it is about a year since I last heard them. I don’t drive many miles but I do often drive alone so the tapes are a nice distraction. Also, I lack another tape player at home (no longer have my stereo hooked up there) so this is the only place I can currently play tapes.
Maybe a bit creepy, but I even play an answering machine tape that has my youngest sister’s voice on it…she passed away 12 years ago (today) of ovarian cancer, and it’s the only recording of her that I have.
I’m a bit odd though in other ways…I still have not just a VHS player but a Betamax…need to do a bit of work on the Beta but it still can play tapes (a bit problematic loading them). They aren’t normally hooked up to my televison but once in a while (though not necessarily in the winter) I’ll hook them up just to view the old media that I’ll probably never transfer to DVD but still enjoy viewing…some 80’s episodes of Autoweek for instance on one of them. I’ve also installed tape decks on my ’78 Scirocco (it had Jensen stereo, but no tape deck when I bought it), my Dad’s ’80 Omni (which had AM/FM but no tape player)…as a Father’s day gift in 1981 when my Dad’s childhood best friend drove up to my parent’s house in Vermont from Delaware and they went to Montreal for the weekend. He didn’t keep the Omni too long because they moved to central Texas the next year and the Omni lacked air conditioning, just as my Scirocco did when I also moved (from Massachusetts) to central Texas the next year…though I did soldier on for several more years without air conditioning in my Scirocco until I sold it when I bought an ’86 GTi (with Air Conditioning.
I have the 2000 Jetta with the same unit (single din) and the face slowly cracked apart over the years and it shattered when I pulled it out. I replaced it with this from the MKIV’s that were still built in China until the 2010’s:
https://www.amazon.com/Car-Speakers-Subwoofers-Audio-Video/b/?ie=UTF8&node=760560&ref_=sv_e_car_5
You’ve got a good music collection there! Changed my last in car tape deck to a CD player in 2003.
You’ve got a good music collection there!
My 1995 Dodge Intrepid came with a Chrysler factory AM-FM-cassette unit. I retrofitted it with a 1997 Chrysler factory AM-FM-cassette-CD unit so I could play CDs but also play my cassettes. But I have hardly done so since…though I still can. The other cars don’t have cassette capability, and my home system’s cassette deck needs a take-up belt to be reliable.
I never liked cassettes. I was into vinyl right up to 1989 (the last LP I bought was The Cult’s Sonic Temple) and then I went straight to CDs. I would only buy cassettes to tape my LPs and CDs to play on my Walkman and later my car stereo.
Today, 4 of my cars have working cassette decks that I use adapters for to plug my phone into.
I agree – I don’t think I ever bought a pre-recorded cassette. When I bought music I bought LPs, then switched straight to CDs. Cassettes were purchased blank only so I could listen to my LPs or those my friends were gracious enough to let me tape.
The last time I played a tape in car was around 2008 in my 1995 Ford Crown Victoria. The out reason I did that was because the head unit was not playing nice with my CD cassette adapter or FM transmitter. So I made one last mix tape for use with it. However, I didn’t have the car for very long and all my subsequent cars didn’t have a tape player. In terms of CDs, I think the last time I used a CD in a car was around 2014 in my 2013 Honda Accord. My latest and current vehicle, a 2019 Honda Insight doesn’t have a CD player! Just Android Auto and Apple Car Play.
My buddy has a mercury grande marquis that has a tape deck. I picked him up a Naana Miscurry and Zamphir tapes at the thrift store as a gag gift. Next time I was in his car and asked what happened to the tapes. He said his girlfriend threw them out the window when he tried to put them on.
My 2003 Toyota Matrix came with a cassette/CD combo unit. When the CD player quit, I replaced it with a CD/Bluetooth unit, and when the Bluetooth started to become hit and miss, I replaced it with a Sony head unit with a 7″ touchscreen and Apple CarPlay. Thanks goodness the original cassette/CD unit was a Delco double din. The car looks like it always had the touchscreen.
I’ve had 8 track, cassettes, and CDs, and I don’t miss them one bit.
No tapes here, I’m pretty sure neither of our cars has a tape deck, since they aren’t (yet) CC’s. In fact while both do have single disc CD players, I’m not sure a CD has ever been played in them. On other hand, I do remember when cassette players were the new technology, compared to 8 track or just FM, let alone just AM as in my first two cars. One of the first cassettes I bought was a Commander Cody “Best Of” tape which included Hot Rod Lincoln and Mama Hated Diesel. I played that one a lot in my Vega, on the under dash Pioneer deck I bought new at Pacific Stereo. But for me, Rumours is still the “new” Fleetwood Mac, after Peter Green and Danny Kirwan were gone and Buckingham & Nicks came along. As for Hendrix’s Rainbow Bridge, I remember seeing the movie in the theater when first released.
Both the original and “new” Fleetwood Macs were great IMO, as were the “transitional” Mac (w/Bob Welch) that came in-between (start with Bare Trees, side 2)
The last car we had that had a cassette player was our ’93 Mercury Sable. The unit was factory equipment, and it had Dolby B and auto-reverse. It never, ever ate a tape. But everything we’ve had since has had a CD player. I had an iPod interface added to the system in our ’09 Camry Hybrid; it’s horribly clunky compared to what newer cars have. Most of what’s on my iPod is ripped from CDs, and even some digitized LPs.
Cassettes? Well, I have a bunch waiting to be digitized (the truly irreplaceable ones–live concerts, radio broadcasts and the like). The trouble with cassettes was always their slow speed (1 7/8 inches per second) and narrow tracks on 1/8-inch tape. It took technological wizardry to make them come close to real high fidelity–metal-particle tape, Dolby C to reduce the inherent hiss to near-inaudibility. Even then, loud high frequencies would get softened a bit. Contrast that with professional machines running at 15 inches per second on half-inch two- or three-track tape (common in the big classical studios in the ’50s and ’60s).
I have hundreds of CDs, starting nearly from when they came out in the early ’80s to now. When I digitize something, I still burn it to CD–no data compression involved. The analog versus digital question is still a burning thing, but there were those of us who, when we first heard CDs, marveled at the complete lack of tape hiss, of the sound of vinyl itself in the silent spaces, the rock-steady pitch of piano and organ, the effortless accommodation of deep, powerful bass and the loudest musical climaxes. Yet, I still have LPs, all the ones I bought in college and since. I still buy LPs at thrift stores and estate sales–I can find all sorts of stuff from the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s that I couldn’t afford then. I don’t buy cassettes.
I still have reel-to-reel tapes and functional machines on which to play them. Again, the ones I care about the most are live recordings and radio broadcasts.
First car I had had a cassette player in it, but it was a wreck and so noisy it wasnt worth it. Second and third cars I used a boombox powered from the lighter socket. Then I got a Ford LTD and put a Blaupunkt unit in it, by that stage I was using a really high quality Dolby C home deck to record all manner of Country and Western onto chrome or metal tapes so the sound quality was pretty good.
By the mid 90’s when I got my Cadillac, Mini Disc was available so I moved to that, as I was totally over the limitations of cassette, copying all my Hank Williams, George Jones, Willie Nelson and Cash CD’s to MiniDisc for in car playback. By 2005 or so it was pretty obvious MP3 was the way to go, so I changed over to that, recording music onto MP3 discs – great as you can fit several hours of music onto one disc.
In the last 2-3 years I have gone to Bluetooth streamed off my phone, and now both my daily driver and Cadillac are so equipped. I have found not just my favourite country hits but so much more on Google Play, am sold on it (Spotify has limitations and a very poor mobile UI).
So… havent played a tape in my Curbside Classic since 1995
That Clarion deck looks like the one that came in my 2000 Jetta except I didn’t have the CD player. Mine did not have, or require, the power amp. Mine crumbled recently so I picked up a bluetooth amp from China where they made these cars still into the 2010’s:
My ’07 Town car has both CD and tape, I still carry a few tapes along, the 1988 mix tape made for me by my daughter is always fun. You don’t often get to hear Aerosmith, Rhapsody in Blue and “Springtime for Hitler” from the Producers back to back!
About 15 years ago I was driving our ’95 Thunderbird to work and it ate a cassette — then ate another one that evening. At that time, I figured “well, I guess no more cassettes,” and gave up on it. I still have the original tape deck in the T-bird, but just listen to the radio in it now. I can’t say I miss cassettes too much, though.
Yes, I still play cassettes because my two daily drivers are a 1995 Olds 98 and a 1995 Chevy S-10 pickup and the AM/FM radio and cassette player is what came with them. I’ve never had a newer vehicle. I have almost all my cassettes, probably a hundred fifty or so from many years ago only having to toss a few that wore out. I’m a big fan of Motown and The 4 Seasons and top 40 in general from the early 60’s to the 90’s and I taped a lot of my 45’s and albums. My other vehicles are a ’61 Rambler with a still working AM radio and a ’59 Chevy Apache with a factory AM radio and under the dash a circa 1980’s Kraco FM converter. I play CD’s in my den, but since I’m an old geezer of 61, I believe technology wise, I’ll never advance beyond that.
I’m a musician and an obsessive collector of recordings. I also prefer listening to live recordings over studio albums. So it’s no surprise that I have around 3000 cassettes, mostly live concerts. My first three albums were released in the early ’90s on Sykronos, a cassette-only label at the time.
My 1993 Corolla wagon, which I still drive, came new with a cassette deck. Most of my previous cars didn’t even have a radio. For many years I enjoyed my cassette collection while driving the Corolla. But about 10 years ago I switched to lossless digital files as my preferred medium. I now have over 6000 hours of live concerts which I listen to in the car using a SanDisk file player through an fm transmitter. I left the last tape I was playing in the deck. It’s Moby Grape live from 1967 and 1969.
I have a record label and we mainly release music on cassette tape. Trust me, they are still a thing. I love that analog sound. Just wish the higher end tapedecks were a little cheaper.
My cassettes mostly collect dust, but I still listen to reel-to-reel tapes, got a huge collection!
Over a decade since we had a vehicle with a tape player. I don’t miss them. Cassettes and eight track were terrible audio formats, just small and convenient. I was an early adopter with an underdash Muntz four track in the ’66 Dodge A-100.
At home there is a Nakamichi cassette deck that has died from lack of use. The drive belts are done and grease on lubricated parts has hardened. Rebuildable, but I have other priorities.
Yes I still listen to them daily on the go in my 2001 gmc Sierra for the last 6 years or so At home I use my Denon or nakamichi decks. They sound steller to say the least especially the nak. Plus I’ve still got nearly 2,000 tapes.
My last car with a cassette player was my 1997 Grand Prix GTP. And even in that car, my ex, a tech at Schaefer & Strohminger Pontiac GMC, installed a 10 disk SONY CD changer in the trunk, so tapes were RARELY used even in that car. Even my previous ex’s 94 T-Bird, which had a cassette player, was used by her son as a CD player with an adapter for his portable CD player that fit into the cassette slot.
FFWD (pun intended) to my 2007 Mustang, and it came with a 6 CD changer that similarly fell out of favor for being able to plug in my iPad into its 3.5mm AUX jack. Tapes? What are they?
And then there’s the 2016 Honda Civic… CD(s) aren’t even a choice. It’s all digital, or don’t even bother. I can load up a thumb drive (or plug in the aforementioned iPad) and the Honda’s interface is even kind enough to index it for me on the navigation screen.
Do I miss cassettes? Maybe a little. It was big part of my 15 year old childhood (1975) thru the early nineties’ mix tapes, but after that, I’ve really never looked back.
Last use of a cassette player was in my 99 AU Falcon, I recorded some of my CDs to play in it , but the speed was slightly different, so made it unplayable.
I don’t miss cassettes, nasty hissy poor sounding things, I don’t miss vinyl records much either, except for the covers, I wish I still had all my old LPs, just for the covers.
With the coronavirus lockdown…….. I just finished putting over 1,500 cassettes tapes on Ivanhoe. Ecrater. Com
I’ve a hundred odd cassettes sitting in a cupboard waiting for me to purchase a stand alone cassette deck that I can hook up to my home stereo system. Last car that had a deck in it was my Mercedes E class. My present ride a CD deck with a stereo jack connection. I play my music through my smartphone; my choices being 100 GB of music with nearly thirteen thousand tracks that I’ve religiously digitalised from my 1000 vinyl albums that I still own. It’s a real thrill to be listening to a fifty year old vinyl album on the move, so to speak.
I’ve made a tidy sum of beer money selling another sealed collection of records on the internet, but business has tanked with the pandemic, so I’ve been ‘stealing’ some duplicates for my own collection. My mantra is ‘All music is good music’.
PS. I’d kill for that Wang Chung cassette of yours. I’ve been a fan of their since ‘Dance Hall Days’ when they were called Huang Chung.
I believe the last time I used a cassette player in my car was when I won a CD player converter that you stuck into the tape deck, and then played CDs on a portable device that sat between the seats of my minivan. Worked pretty well, it even had anti-skip technology.
We haven’t owned a vehicle with a cassette player in about 15 years, and I’m not sure if we have a working cassette player in the house. My wife and I still have most of our old tapes, though (along with our vinyl and our CDs).
Of the tapes shown, I have/had Led Zeppelin I, Private Eyes by Hall & Oates, and Aja by Steely Dan. I think my wife has Diamond Life by Sade.
back in the 1990s and 2000s, I actively collected vinyl, mainly 45s, but time and budgetary restraints have mostly put a stop to that. Along the way, though, I developed an interest in what you might call the esoterica of records, things like catalog numbers, label designs, etc. From that point of view, here are three things I notice about Scott’s tape collection:
1) I’m pretty sure that at least two of these tapes (Steely Dan and Philip Bailey), possibly more, are Canadian. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that at least a few others (the Sade tape, and the three tapes that are on Atlantic Records) are American, not Canadian.
2) The Donald Fagen and Michael McDonald tapes have “saw marks” across their spine, a sign of having originally been purchased as marked-down, remaindered “cut outs”. These are among the newest titles in the collection, dating from the early 1990s. My guess is that the person who originally bought them had mostly moved on to CDs, but still sometimes listened to cassettes, and picked these up on cassette because the tapes were cheap and they liked these artists.
3) In contrast to the Fagen and McDonald tapes, I think a few of these tapes date back to the 1970s. “Aja” is one of them; the spine identifies it as a product of ABC Records, which went out of business in 1979 (ABC was bought out by the similarly-acronymed MCA Records, so later copies would be on MCA). The Woodstock tape also looks to me like it’s pretty old.
🤔🤦 good God Almighty do I I got old cassette tapes for old rappers old school rap jazz gospel R&B I’m talking about I got a box of them🎶🎶🎶🎵🎵🎼🎹🎹🎹 this go backed I think 92 cassette tapes I know how to repair them and fix them yes sir yes ma’am that’s what I do put it back together again VCR tapes I know how to do the same identical thing
God bless each and everyone of you all keep the faith be encouraged most of all be safe❤💚💜💜💕👪👪👪👪👪👪🙌🙌🙏🙏 ☎📞🙌🙌🎼
I’ve got boxes of cassettes. They don’t get played much anymore, but there are people and places tied to many of them, “…some are dead and some are living…”. After living with nothing but a factory AM radio with an FM converter for way too long, I decided to take the plunge. I bought a Kraco AM FM cassette player with a built in equalizer and a pair of Sony 6×9 speakers. I still have them too. That Kraco cost $189 in 1985 and it kicked ass. Their cheap stuff was cheap, but their high end stuff was good. I’ve got 8 tracks, LP’S, 45’s, and 78’s too.
I went on e-Bay and ordered a digitally-enhanced Cassette-to-MP3 Converter Player. Then, I went to TJ Maxx and bought Phenom Gaming PC Headphones with 7.1 Surroundsound and BAM! I am in Music Heaven with with all my cassette tapes. It still does not sound as good as CDs but it is better than a Walkman. Keep on rocking!
I never really bought cassette tapes. What I did was buy the album and then make a tape of it. I did that all through the 80s and still have all the tapes I made. I also have about 10 Maxell High Bias XL II 90 tapes that have never been opened. Just try to find those today anywhere.
The 04 Le Sabre can play cassettes as well as the 67 Park Lane which has an aftermarket unit below the dash. Then there are the Sony and Akai tape decks I have in the house to go along with my collection of vintage stereo receivers.
Yeah those blank tapes are collectors items! You can still buy tapes if you look hard, but I’ve only seen the cheaper ones, not the fancy XL II’s.
I’ve got dozens of still sealed blank Maxell XLIIs. Didn’t realize they were worth anything. As a somewhat OCD collector/hoarder I’m not likely to sell them anyway.
I love the Al B.Sure!!!
No, I havent seen a tape player that worked in a car in a very long time the 97 Sentra I bought and flicked a couple of years ago had a cassette player but Ive go no tapes either I gave the buyer of it a Kenwood CD player to install I pulled that from a previous flick Sentra and hadnt used it yet.
The only one I have left
I still have a ridiculous number of tapes that are played mostly in the house. The only car in my fleet that still has a cassette player is my 2002 Chrysler Concorde Lxi. It has a factory CD/cassette/AM-FM radio. The CD player isn’t acknowledging CD’s but the tape player is still going strong. My two classics have a Pioneer AM-FM/CD/USB which is used mainly for playing music on USB flash drives and the occasional CD. I laughingly refer to the flash drives as “micro 8 track tapes”.
When I still had my ’96 Ford Aerostar I did play the “Soul Train” tape (lower left) I found already in the cassette player once or twice, as well as one with recordings from The Monkees my mom still has (lower right). Most of the other cassettes my family owns have Christmas or other holiday songs on them–“Traditional Christmas” (top left) and “On the First Day of Christmas” by CBS Records (top right) being just 2 of them.
My ’05 Chevy Astro only has a CD player although some models have players for cassettes AND CDs. The CD player still works & I’ve used it once or twice also.
My 2011 Ranger has neither (just the basic am/fm radio) but 99% of the time that’s all I need for music on road anyway.
We also have several LPs and can play them along with our cassettes & CDs on this Digisonic Radio & Combination LP/Cassette/CD Player (in order from top to bottom). EVERYTHING on it still works, even the CD Player remote!
My 96 Roadmaster has its original tape/CD deck and it works. I have a number of old tapes which I occasionally will tap into when the mood strikes. I never bought many tapes back in the 80’s. I would usually buy the vinyl and record it onto tape for listening in the car. I’m glad I did it that way now, since the records are better to have today. I switched to CD’s in the early 90’s and have yet to buy into the whole file download thing. I like to have something physical when I spend money on music.
All Hail the mighty Redbook CD! Finest mass-market music medium ever developed. (Theoretically, SACD and DVD-A and whatever “high-rez” format is currently being ignored are “better”; but 1) they were never really mass-market; and 2) they were no “great leap forward” in the way CD was from cassette, and could be from vinyl if the CD was mastered properly.)
Yeah, I’ve got cassettes and cassette players; but I haven’t actually put a cassette into a player in…years. Maybe over a decade. The home cassette players aren’t even connected to a music system. Gonna have to change that, someday, and “rediscover” some old music. Thanks for the push.
My automotive cassette players get a cassette-looking adapter crammed into them, and then a portable CD player connected via the headphone jack. I sometimes (rarely) listen to music on the highway. Never in-town; music is too important to be background noise.
I have AM/FM/Cassette radios in three of my old vehicles, as well as several portable cassette players, and a dual recorder player for my stereo system. I replaced the OEM AM/FM/Cassette/EQ radio in my DD S-10 with an OEM CD player. As an amateur DJ, I always dubbed cassettes from my extensive vinyl collection, never bought pre-recorded ones. I also have a CD player/recorder which I use to digitize vinyl and cassette collections. I primarily play CD’s nowadays. BTW: I also have a pristine Sony cassette Walkman, AND a Sony digital Walkman that I somehow have never gotten around to uploading music into!! 🙂
Last experience with cassettes was the day I moved out after my divorce. I set up my ex’s car with a CD to cassette adapter from the cassette case, because she hadn’t been able to make it work during the separation.
Hell Yeah!
I still have cassette units in some of my vehicles. If they die, I’ll just have to find a replacement cassette unit, or at least one with an aux input, like the Sony CD-radio in my ’96 Tacoma. With that, I can play a cassette walkman, portable CD, MP3, I-Pod, or just about any device that has a headphone jack.
Plus, with my old Sharp Dolby cassette deck, I can make mix tapes, from online and most any other source, without worrying about copy-guard, download glitches, incompatible CD burns etc…. My old Sharp records it all!
I am testing out another format – an analog-compatible SD-card audio recorder I found cheap on Ebay. Main flaw is it’s weak output when played through amplified computer-speakers. But my Tacoma’s Sony has much better amps. So maybe I could transfer a whole bunch of my cassettes on to one SD. We’ll see.
Happy Motoring, Mark
Yup a stereo 8-track in my 1976 Cadillac – hoping to use whatever the hell this is to play tunes from my iPhone……I have a collection of several hundred 8 tracks (including 40-50 quad tapes)
My son still plays cassettes in his 2003 Buick which has a combination CD/Cassette deck and mostly old ones from my collection, My 2002 F-150 only had a CD from the factory and the replacement single DIN unit I had on the shelf is also CD only. Interestingly my old 900Mhz motorcycle radios have an aux jack for a Walkman, and I have heard of people using the aux jack on modern stereos to play old cassettes.
Maybe *this* is the reason I’ve saved most of my cassettes: for the day I purchase a CC of my own and can play those tapes in my car. I like that thought. Dolby Noise Reduction, all the way.
But of course 🙂 I actually have 3 shoe boxes full of 8 Track tapes for the Cadillac, as well my original Cadillac tapes from ’74 ’75 & ’76 obtained back then as a child, that used to come with your new car on delivery.
Although a while back last year, this was my latest addition (and the CB still works too! –>>