Cassette Tapes and Players

[DoctorDizzy]

I know that vinyls are making a bit of a comeback, but I'm wondering if anyone's rocking cassette tapes? :omg:k:

I've had a cassette player for basically as long as I can remember! It's not like... A professional one or anything (in fact, it's targeted at kids :omg:k:smile:, but I really like it!

This isn't my photo, but this is the model that I have. :omg:k:

As for cassette tapes... Most of mine just play kids songs lol. They're all from a songbook series called Wee Sing, and the tapes basically correlate to the songs in the books. I'm trying to get more use out of my player, though, so I'm trying to get more cassettes lol. Today, my Spirit Phone cassette arrived, and I'm super happy about it!

So... Do any of you have cassette players? What kinds of tapes do you have?

[loren]

i do! i have a radio + cassette/cd player and i mostly use it to listen to cassettes. they're pretty popular in the improvised/diy music scene in my area, so i've picked up a lot at shows in the last year or so. here's my cassette shelf:



the one i have in there right now is cut into your own dimension by post moves

EDIT: because you're a fan of lemon demon, i recommend checking out slugbug!
i have layer of abstraction and 0xBAADF00D tapes

[Melooon]

Omg thats such a cute player I still have my kids cassettes around somewhere, I should inspect them.

I have WAY more than this, including far more portable players, but this the collection I have on hand where Im living atm. I just plug it into a bluetooth speaker for playback ^^

[SilkSkull]

This reminded me, I inherited my grandmothers and fathers music collections. I have a bit of vinyl, a few eight tracks but most importantly to this a metric ton of cassettes (sort of wanting to mail out some cassetess to some friends and relatives) and I have possibly the strangest mix; Rap and Country. My father was a huge rap fan when he was young so I got all his Bone-thugs, Tupac, Jazzy Jeff and Biggie. On the other hand I have a literal pile of Hank Williams, Alan Jackson, Willie Nelson and other country artists I don't care for. I also have a couple random ones like kids music and Christmas music. It's one of my favourite ways to collect music and I wanna see if I can get some cassettes custom made

[DoctorDizzy]

EDIT: because you're a fan of lemon demon, i recommend checking out slugbug!
i have layer of abstraction and 0xBAADF00D tapes

Thank you so much for the recommendation! I will definitely check slugbug out when I can :3
I also really love your cassette shelf And your player definitely looks neat

Omg thats such a cute player I still have my kids cassettes around somewhere, I should inspect them.

Thank you so much! You should totally look at your old cassettes!! The collection that you currently have with you is super cool, of course! And your Walkman seems really neat

I have possibly the strangest mix; Rap and Country. My father was a huge rap fan when he was young so I got all his Bone-thugs, Tupac, Jazzy Jeff and Biggie. On the other hand I have a literal pile of Hank Williams, Alan Jackson, Willie Nelson and other country artists I don't care for. I also have a couple random ones like kids music and Christmas music. It's one of my favourite ways to collect music and I wanna see if I can get some cassettes custom made

Good luck getting custom made ones! That really does seem cool. Rap and Country are... Definitely an odd mix, but it's always cool to have variety!

[virtue]

I have a friend who's really into tape audio and has been trying me to get into making mixtapes out of my playlists... Apparently the thing I do is basically already the same as making mixtapes, like he does! I like to make little "pseudoalbums" as I call them, where I take an artist that doesn't have any perfect albums but has a lot of perfect songs, and I assemble their best work into a cohesive tracklist and do transitions for the songs and whatnot, then I make fake album covers and titles for them. My friend said I should make boxes for these and record them onto tape, which sounds pretty fun, so I busted out my ANCIENT sound system that I used to use for listening to CD and tape when I was around 11. Here's the deck. I wonder if its even still usable! If it is, I'll probably start recording some tapes!

[keybladekid6]

awesome!! i wish i had a setup this cool. i collect cassettes, but all i have to listen to them is a dinky walkman and little boombox. i don't mind, though c:

you should show us some of your fake albums sometime!!

xoxo, lolo =3

[brisray]

I've got totes of old cassettes. Some of them dating back many years - old mixtapes I made and commercial ones. I've even got some blank ones that are still sealed.

Some are special to me. I've got tapes of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in 1978 that I recorded.

In 1995, I was travelling around California and heard the funniest thing on the radio - The Bob and Tom Show. I didn't realize they were syndicated from Indianapolis so drove to the radio station in Fresno and asked to see them! The station manager laughed but gave me a couple of tapes of their shows. In return, I went out and got them a pot plant for their reception area.

My old stereo and TV are relegated to the basement now, but I spend quite a bit of time down there because that's where the Server in the Cellar lives that serves up my web sites.

[Cobra!]

I love cassette tapes! I got a TEAC W-1200 earlier this year, which is the best cassette deck that is still in production today! (As far as I know, anyway)

I also like to make mixtapes, most from new Maxell UR tapes (To see how good quality audio you can get from only new parts/tapes) consisting of my favourite videos on the internet! I have like 30 now.

The deck has a USB port which I use to listen to tapes on my PC.

Here's my setup:

[PurpleHello98]

I only have one tape, and when this post made me look at, I found out that the tape's broken, so I couldn't listen to it. Not that I could listen to it anyways, since I got it for my mum's old car that has a cassette player, which got totalled and which we sold to insurance. But I have it on CD, so oh well. (Photo of my tape below.) I also had a Spice Girls tape once, but sadly, when we tried to play it, it had degraded too much to sound good. :(

[brisray]

I know the pain @PurpleHello98

A little bit of Scotch tape can be used to repair broken tape. The longer the tape, the thinner it got and the easier to stretch. C120 tapes were always prone to this as they were half the thickness of a C60.

Then there was the joy of ejecting the tape to find it had unravelled inside the player and wrapped itself around the capstan spindles or pinch roller. I think they made the cassettes specifically so a Bic pen or a pencil could be used to rewind the tapes.

And the mental torture of deciding if you wanted to splurge on a chrome tape for that special mix tape you wanted to make that was badly recorded in the first place.

[Chandelier]

Ooooh! All so pretty, so vintage. I DO have tapes in my home but no cassette player to be found :(

[DiffydaDude]

I have tons of cassette tapes, and I still use them to listen to music even though I've never lived in the 1970s-1990s. Take a look at all these cool things ive got!
My 1970s Realistic tape recorder
RadioShack metal tape
Maxell XLII 100 cassette
TDK Type 1 tape
Deltarune cassette tape I made
Emerson M3010 from 1976
1st shelf of cassettes
2nd shelf of cassettes
If you want more info about cassettes, i recommend Cassette Comeback @ https://www.cassettecomeback.com/. His channel does really good in depth explanations on cassettes, and their cool satisfying colors are pretty cool to look at.

[Cobra!]

I decided to dig out my old CFD-S70 as I wanted to listen to music to get through the very long races of Virtua Racing, and I’m still listening to it.

I’ve noticed listening to my mixtapes in my bed as I explore the net on my iPad is boosting my morale significantly! Tried to do the same with Spotify once, and it helped a bit, but it’s night and day difference!

Anyone else noticed this or is it just a me thing?

[Yaya]

Ahh I'm so glad this thread exists!

I LOVE CASSETTES!!

I'm a bit too young to have grown up around vinyl, and CD's are OK but digital, but I've found cassettes to be such a cool and happy medium.

I have one portable player but I'm hoping to get a nice big boombox in a few weeks as a reward for hitting a personal milestone XD -- I'll be sure to post a pic! I'm still a bit insecure about listening to cassettes in public and on the subway but working on it. Just stands out a little more.

I also find it really fun to try to hunt down specific cassettes, as I usually find those who are doing it are really doing it for the love of the format and the music, and people are usually really intrigued and down to help out. It's also just such a good vibe and so much good music I feel exists on cassette in a physical format for a doable price.

I like a lot of mixes on youtube (mainly Jamaican riddims, edm breakcore/trance, and grateful dead soundboard concerts), and I really like the idea of recording them from my computer onto the cassette and then labeling them and having them ready to play. The idea just gets me so excited.