Centuries from now historians may decide that the 8-Track (created in 1964 by a consortium of Lear, Ampex, Ford, GM, Motorola, and RCA, peak sales in 1978) represented the pinnacle of American innovation and technical dominance.
The grandmother of the last B-52 pilot has yet to be born.
October 11, 2023 at 10:39 am
Kafiroon
I’ll go with the 1911. They are still being handmade in the Philippines for example.
October 11, 2023 at 2:53 am
jdow
Then decades after the single great dictator has established total and utter control over everybody he has somebody stroll into his impenetrable lair, his own puppet master. It’s puppet masters all the way down.
{^_-}
Why the flimsy reel to reel cassette was considered an improvement I’ll never understand. Nor why vhs was pushed the superior beta aside. Probably the same folks that brought us Biden to replace the superior Trump and lithium battery powered pos cars to replace superior cars such as the late 60’s muscle. Next, crickets to replace ribeye and trannys to replace buxom bases. A paradise lost for sure.
The betamax died because Sears tried to corner and keep the prices high. People made the decision en masse to purchase the lower fidelity but massively cheaper VHS. Then, with the advent of the 4 head VHS, the beta’s superiority vanished.
Beta was Sony, not Sears. But yes, Sony did try to keep it all to themselves and initially refused to license out the manufacturing rights to anyone else — and then, later, made sure the license costs were high enough to keep competitors from being able to undercut Sony’s prices enough to matter.
The other thing that drove customers to VHS, besides price, was recording length. Beta I (equivalent recording speed to VHS’s SP) could only manage 1 hour on the then-standard L500 tapes, while VHS could get 2 hours on a T120 tape in SP mode. Even with longer tapes, the most Beta could manage was about 1:40 (1hr, 40min), which limited the kinds of pre-recorded material they could offer in that format since a lot of movies would have had to be distributed as two-tape sets, while VHS could distribute a 2-hour movie as a single tape.
BetaII (equivalent to VHS’s LP mode) doubled the running time, but the slower speed also lowered the video quality somewhat. (And of course, such tapes would be incompatible with any Beta VCRs already sold.)
October 11, 2023 at 9:31 am
Bren
Beta was Panasonic. I still have a couple squirreled away. And Sears had an exclusive retail contract. I was working at Sears when they still had betas on the shelves.
To the best of my knowledge, Sony has never operated any direct to the public retail stores.
October 11, 2023 at 9:36 am
Oldarmourer
The way I’ve always heard it was that the porn indusrty standardized on VHS and that was pretty much the end of Betamax 😉
I was 17 and installed my first 8 track stereo and new speakers in my 66 mustang.
Plugged in a Beatles tape. It sounded outstanding. From what I remember.
I wonder if they all sounded so good because we all had better hearing, before years of listening to the symphony of main machinery spaces, flight decks, and heavy ordnance.
To explain the term Rich men north of Richmond. The phrase has little to do with the south. Rather, it refers to four Virginia counties on Virginia’s northern border and the southern border of DC. The four counties are among the wealthiest in the USA. Referred to locally as the Beltway Bandits. Where dwell the lawyers, contractors and influence peddlers that cater to the DC area. I lived in one of the counties, Prince William, for nine years. Prince William voted Republican back then. Two things increased the population of Democrat voters and those catering to DC. First, Maryland increased their taxes twice. Which resulted in flight from the state. Retirees went far south. The rest settled in northern Virginia. BTW, Maryland collected less revenue after both tax hikes. Second, Obama’s administration, which added many more regulations and increased the bureaucracy.
The lyrics referring to high sugar items allowed under SNAP aka Food Stamps rather than healthy food items. At the connivence store, where I buy gas. I see rack after rack of such foods, catering to SNAP holder These lyrics refer to high sugar items allowed under SNAP aka Food Stamps rather than healthy food items. At the connivence store, where I buy gas. I see rack after rack of such foods, catering to SNAP holders
Well, God, if you’re five-foot-three and you’re three-hundred pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of Fudge Rounds
Young men are puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground
‘Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin’ them down
I well remember the “tax flight” that happened in MD (remember the Rain Tax and Millionaire Tax? Thanks, O’Mally – you sack). The Demonrats finally drove me and mine into TN 10 years ago. Guess we were slow learners . . .
Don’t need a matchbook for ours, but the Roy Clark Live cart skips on track change – – crack in the trigger tape. Prolly should go looking for a replacement someday . . .
There was one thing that annoyed the bejesus out of me with the 8 tracks- that jarring Ka-CHUNK in the middle of a song when it changed tracks. It ranked right up there with having to flip the LP in the middle of the third movement of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony. GAAH!
I never, ever had or desired an 8-track. I probably would have, if that was all there was but, fortunately, there were cassettes. I wouldn’t have minded 8-tracks if all I listened to were 3 minute songs but, trying to listen to ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ or Grand Funk’s, ‘Mark, Don and Mel’ with several songs that were 6 minutes or longer… No! Hated the fade out… several seconds of silence… The ‘click’ followed by more silence… and then the fade up to where we were. Sacrilege.
I always seem to buy dead tech or orphan tech. I had an svhs machine, think it was Yamaha. Recorded at dvd quality, 2+ hours per tape. Then came hdtv, Tivo, blue ray, etc. But for a while it was impressive.
They *did* have 8-track decks which could record on blank tapes(*) — but it was definitely a lot more of a pain to roll your own mix-tape with an 8-track because you had no ability to rewind the tape if you missed a cue, or if the record skipped. You just had to let the entire tape wind all the way through until the spot you needed to re-record came around again, and hope that you caught it at the right moment.
(* actually, they could record on *any* tape, because 8-tracks didn’t have the “record protect” notch like cassettes did.)
I remember those, and being in the pawn biz for 40+ years saw them come through the shop. But, I don’t have a box of homemade 8 tracks, and that pretty much says it all…
October 11, 2023 at 4:29 pm
Browncoat57
I always opted for Maxell. Would buy them in ‘bulk’ of ten, 90 minute tapes, and had a TEAC 3-head deck. The first time to play a new LP, I was recording it. Invariably, at least one tape would have a glitch which the third head would playback during recording. Stop… reset the stylus… pop in another blank.
Those were the ‘good ol’ days’ but mp3s and a flash drive in the dash of my truck is SO MUCH EASIER.
My foray into being a studio recording tech happened to coincide with the year my wife and babies left my ass on my own and high-tailed it to Georgia for a while. Best thing that ever happened to us as a family but painful as hell of course. But in 1978-’79 some of the best rock of all time was being made and played and due to my new job managing Dick and Harry’s Pawn, I had access to some top notch equipment. So my Teac became an Akai became a Pioneer believe it or not…their high end stuff is/was amazing.
Yeah, time-consuming and full of glitches but I absolutely loved cruising down the road in my brand new “single-guy” car, a ’79 280ZX, and cranking the noise from my beautiful case of ten custom tapes, loved it then, love remembering it now. In fact while there is nothing more important to me than family and that year apart was hard…it was also extremely instructive, and FUN! Did things that I could/would never do while I was attached!
October 14, 2023 at 4:47 pm
Browncoat57
I remember wanting a Pioneer ‘707’ but never went for it… Having to flip a cassette or an LP was a benefit in knowing how sober I was. Or wasn’t…
October 11, 2023 at 9:50 pm
Bren
There were higher end machines that could record on 8 track, but they were far from common, compared to the cassette player/recorders that were so cheap they were sold as children’s toys.
The smaller form factor and more secure carriage system for cassettes helped a lot, too.
I remember wanting a Pioneer ‘707’ but never went for it… Having to flip a cassette or an LP was a benefit in knowing how sober I was. Or wasn’t…
October 11, 2023 at 5:17 pm
S'aaruuk
While I had several 8-track and cassette decks, I STILL preferred my reel-to-reel system for uninterrupted play and exceptional sound. My best ever setup up a Teac 4-channel record/playback deck mated to a Technics discreet 4-channel stereo receiver/amp.
I put both sides of both LPs of Jeff Wayne’s musical version of War of The Worlds on a single T-36 (3600ft) BASF tape at 7 1/2ips and listened to it in full, glorious 4-channel “Dolby surround sound” with no interruptions start to finish.
Getting a nice buzz on and zonking out in a beanbag chair in the middle of the living room centered in the acoustic “zone” I could virtually “watch” the entire show as I’ve read the story sooo many times.
This was back in the 70’s and YEAH……those were w/o doubt “The GOOD Old Days”!!!!
Yeppers, I SO remember the KA-CHUNK on mine as well. My first 4, while crusin …YES, “Fragile” Pink Floyd “Meddle”, Blue Oyster Cult “Secret Treaties”. and something on sale at the Farmer’s Market Listening Booth section I think Supertramp “Crime of the Century”. Not sure, but I wore them out driving around with friends. And Yea, the cases with your favorite 8 -Track and Cassestes ( Mix n Match holders) with the roll your own specials. Like S’aaruck said above. The good Ol Days..
41 Comments
Thank you R. Neal…your “patron”age is much appreciated. 🙂
Centuries from now historians may decide that the 8-Track (created in 1964 by a consortium of Lear, Ampex, Ford, GM, Motorola, and RCA, peak sales in 1978) represented the pinnacle of American innovation and technical dominance.
Or it might be the Colt 1911, particularly if they’re still in production.
Why wouldn’t they be?
Remember, the first commercially available 3D printed gun was a 1911.
Centuries from now, they’ll be growing1911s in vats of malleable and artificially intelligent metal.
Or the Boeing B-52 which will STILL be flying!
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a8/71/c3/a871c3f0b33784b09ee7ee25a5bb9bdb.png
Zar Belk
MasterDiver,
The grandmother of the last B-52 pilot has yet to be born.
I’ll go with the 1911. They are still being handmade in the Philippines for example.
Then decades after the single great dictator has established total and utter control over everybody he has somebody stroll into his impenetrable lair, his own puppet master. It’s puppet masters all the way down.
{^_-}
My first stereo was an 8-track tape player!!!
Why the flimsy reel to reel cassette was considered an improvement I’ll never understand. Nor why vhs was pushed the superior beta aside. Probably the same folks that brought us Biden to replace the superior Trump and lithium battery powered pos cars to replace superior cars such as the late 60’s muscle. Next, crickets to replace ribeye and trannys to replace buxom bases. A paradise lost for sure.
The betamax died because Sears tried to corner and keep the prices high. People made the decision en masse to purchase the lower fidelity but massively cheaper VHS. Then, with the advent of the 4 head VHS, the beta’s superiority vanished.
Edit: corner the market…
Beta was Sony, not Sears. But yes, Sony did try to keep it all to themselves and initially refused to license out the manufacturing rights to anyone else — and then, later, made sure the license costs were high enough to keep competitors from being able to undercut Sony’s prices enough to matter.
The other thing that drove customers to VHS, besides price, was recording length. Beta I (equivalent recording speed to VHS’s SP) could only manage 1 hour on the then-standard L500 tapes, while VHS could get 2 hours on a T120 tape in SP mode. Even with longer tapes, the most Beta could manage was about 1:40 (1hr, 40min), which limited the kinds of pre-recorded material they could offer in that format since a lot of movies would have had to be distributed as two-tape sets, while VHS could distribute a 2-hour movie as a single tape.
BetaII (equivalent to VHS’s LP mode) doubled the running time, but the slower speed also lowered the video quality somewhat. (And of course, such tapes would be incompatible with any Beta VCRs already sold.)
Beta was Panasonic. I still have a couple squirreled away. And Sears had an exclusive retail contract. I was working at Sears when they still had betas on the shelves.
To the best of my knowledge, Sony has never operated any direct to the public retail stores.
The way I’ve always heard it was that the porn indusrty standardized on VHS and that was pretty much the end of Betamax 😉
Bases=bases. Freaking auto correct. Damn AI!
Babes!
We knew what you meant.
I was 17 and installed my first 8 track stereo and new speakers in my 66 mustang.
Plugged in a Beatles tape. It sounded outstanding. From what I remember.
CG Snipe,
I wonder if they all sounded so good because we all had better hearing, before years of listening to the symphony of main machinery spaces, flight decks, and heavy ordnance.
“Guess I’ll have to buy the ‘White Album’ again.” Kay, Men In Black
To explain the term Rich men north of Richmond. The phrase has little to do with the south. Rather, it refers to four Virginia counties on Virginia’s northern border and the southern border of DC. The four counties are among the wealthiest in the USA. Referred to locally as the Beltway Bandits. Where dwell the lawyers, contractors and influence peddlers that cater to the DC area. I lived in one of the counties, Prince William, for nine years. Prince William voted Republican back then. Two things increased the population of Democrat voters and those catering to DC. First, Maryland increased their taxes twice. Which resulted in flight from the state. Retirees went far south. The rest settled in northern Virginia. BTW, Maryland collected less revenue after both tax hikes. Second, Obama’s administration, which added many more regulations and increased the bureaucracy.
The lyrics referring to high sugar items allowed under SNAP aka Food Stamps rather than healthy food items. At the connivence store, where I buy gas. I see rack after rack of such foods, catering to SNAP holder These lyrics refer to high sugar items allowed under SNAP aka Food Stamps rather than healthy food items. At the connivence store, where I buy gas. I see rack after rack of such foods, catering to SNAP holders
Well, God, if you’re five-foot-three and you’re three-hundred pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of Fudge Rounds
Young men are puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground
‘Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin’ them down
I well remember the “tax flight” that happened in MD (remember the Rain Tax and Millionaire Tax? Thanks, O’Mally – you sack). The Demonrats finally drove me and mine into TN 10 years ago. Guess we were slow learners . . .
The connivance store. I like that!
I still have a table model 8-track that works, and you don’t even have to jam a folded up match book under the tape…usually.
Don’t need a matchbook for ours, but the Roy Clark Live cart skips on track change – – crack in the trigger tape. Prolly should go looking for a replacement someday . . .
There was one thing that annoyed the bejesus out of me with the 8 tracks- that jarring Ka-CHUNK in the middle of a song when it changed tracks. It ranked right up there with having to flip the LP in the middle of the third movement of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony. GAAH!
I never, ever had or desired an 8-track. I probably would have, if that was all there was but, fortunately, there were cassettes. I wouldn’t have minded 8-tracks if all I listened to were 3 minute songs but, trying to listen to ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ or Grand Funk’s, ‘Mark, Don and Mel’ with several songs that were 6 minutes or longer… No! Hated the fade out… several seconds of silence… The ‘click’ followed by more silence… and then the fade up to where we were. Sacrilege.
I always seem to buy dead tech or orphan tech. I had an svhs machine, think it was Yamaha. Recorded at dvd quality, 2+ hours per tape. Then came hdtv, Tivo, blue ray, etc. But for a while it was impressive.
Why did cassettes kill the 8-track? Several reasons, but number one?
The ability to “roll your own” with cassettes…
Still have a box of TDK C-90’s loaded up with 70’s rock somewhere…and some of the albums they were loaded from!
They *did* have 8-track decks which could record on blank tapes(*) — but it was definitely a lot more of a pain to roll your own mix-tape with an 8-track because you had no ability to rewind the tape if you missed a cue, or if the record skipped. You just had to let the entire tape wind all the way through until the spot you needed to re-record came around again, and hope that you caught it at the right moment.
(* actually, they could record on *any* tape, because 8-tracks didn’t have the “record protect” notch like cassettes did.)
I remember those, and being in the pawn biz for 40+ years saw them come through the shop. But, I don’t have a box of homemade 8 tracks, and that pretty much says it all…
I always opted for Maxell. Would buy them in ‘bulk’ of ten, 90 minute tapes, and had a TEAC 3-head deck. The first time to play a new LP, I was recording it. Invariably, at least one tape would have a glitch which the third head would playback during recording. Stop… reset the stylus… pop in another blank.
Those were the ‘good ol’ days’ but mp3s and a flash drive in the dash of my truck is SO MUCH EASIER.
Easier for sure, but better? I dunno.
My foray into being a studio recording tech happened to coincide with the year my wife and babies left my ass on my own and high-tailed it to Georgia for a while. Best thing that ever happened to us as a family but painful as hell of course. But in 1978-’79 some of the best rock of all time was being made and played and due to my new job managing Dick and Harry’s Pawn, I had access to some top notch equipment. So my Teac became an Akai became a Pioneer believe it or not…their high end stuff is/was amazing.
Yeah, time-consuming and full of glitches but I absolutely loved cruising down the road in my brand new “single-guy” car, a ’79 280ZX, and cranking the noise from my beautiful case of ten custom tapes, loved it then, love remembering it now. In fact while there is nothing more important to me than family and that year apart was hard…it was also extremely instructive, and FUN! Did things that I could/would never do while I was attached!
I remember wanting a Pioneer ‘707’ but never went for it… Having to flip a cassette or an LP was a benefit in knowing how sober I was. Or wasn’t…
There were higher end machines that could record on 8 track, but they were far from common, compared to the cassette player/recorders that were so cheap they were sold as children’s toys.
The smaller form factor and more secure carriage system for cassettes helped a lot, too.
I remember wanting a Pioneer ‘707’ but never went for it… Having to flip a cassette or an LP was a benefit in knowing how sober I was. Or wasn’t…
While I had several 8-track and cassette decks, I STILL preferred my reel-to-reel system for uninterrupted play and exceptional sound. My best ever setup up a Teac 4-channel record/playback deck mated to a Technics discreet 4-channel stereo receiver/amp.
I put both sides of both LPs of Jeff Wayne’s musical version of War of The Worlds on a single T-36 (3600ft) BASF tape at 7 1/2ips and listened to it in full, glorious 4-channel “Dolby surround sound” with no interruptions start to finish.
Getting a nice buzz on and zonking out in a beanbag chair in the middle of the living room centered in the acoustic “zone” I could virtually “watch” the entire show as I’ve read the story sooo many times.
This was back in the 70’s and YEAH……those were w/o doubt “The GOOD Old Days”!!!!
Yeppers, I SO remember the KA-CHUNK on mine as well. My first 4, while crusin …YES, “Fragile” Pink Floyd “Meddle”, Blue Oyster Cult “Secret Treaties”. and something on sale at the Farmer’s Market Listening Booth section I think Supertramp “Crime of the Century”. Not sure, but I wore them out driving around with friends. And Yea, the cases with your favorite 8 -Track and Cassestes ( Mix n Match holders) with the roll your own specials. Like S’aaruck said above. The good Ol Days..
Ohps…Forgot. Thank you R. Neil for the Sponsor on this.