3 ms·
You left out the 8-tracks. Before cassettes were used for music in the US they and their tape recorders were a rare import, just a slick portable tape recorder
by fuzzfactor 6y ago
You left out the 8-tracks.
Before cassettes were used for music in the US they and their tape recorders were a rare import, just a slick portable tape recorder like the portable battery-powered mini-reel-to-reels which were just using small reels of full-size 0.25 inch tape (you still had to thread them yourself).
But too expensive for casual or student use, these were the newest exotic office machine for dictation, monophonic only of course like the little reel-to-reels.
For music in the car the 8-track tape cartridge was well established and growing wildly, with its single endless reel of the regular 0.25 inch tape inside, but having multiple _tracks_ so you could get stereo and more music on less tape.
I was so fortunate my father got the first portable Sony cassette recorder for his business, there was only one specialty store that had unique imports like that.
He eventually let me bring it to school instead of my little reel unit one day, this was about a year before any pre-recorded music tapes were available.
I was recording off the radio, AM of course since pop music had not yet made it to FM and the FM sets and broadcasting stations, though not many were very powerful or stereo yet, basically had an insignificant fraction of listenership compared to AM.
Remember Woodstock came out on stereo LP's, 8-tracks and cassettes, but on the radio (which is about the only way stuff got popular) almost everyone was listening to things in monophonic for years to come. This was before FM stereo pop stations began to prevail, followed by home consoles and AM/FM car stereos.
Only 5 years before Woodstock, most people were still buying mono vinyl since stereo cost extra and few had stereo players. By 1969 mono vinyl was not for any major releases.
Even after FM stereo took over at home, most second-hand cars only had mono AM radios left over from just a few years earlier, but did slowly get replaced by newer vehicles. But FM still cost extra for years to come so plenty of cars were still shipped with the tradtitonal stock AM radio only.
Music lovers who wanted no commercials all had 8-tracks already. Nothing in-dash was found, still under-dash like a CB radio.
Anyway, at school it was still the point where no other businessmen, teachers, or students had seen anything like a cassette, so it was a curiosity but not completely unexpected due to such great familiarity with other dictating machines and 8-tracks too.
People thought the tape was cool since it was smaller, easy to use, and worked like a tiny reel-to-reel, plus we naturally had a lot of fun recording with the microphone. 8-tracks didn't record for years to come.
By the end of the day when one of the umpteenth students to be amazed at my little recorder saw it I just naturally blurted out, "It's going to replace the 8-track".
Of course everyone laughed since there were no music tapes from record companies and no stereo.
But you could record your own, and the rest is history.
Eventually one day my father got me a Beatle tape from Capitol records, Sergeant Pepper was the only one made at the time.
Inside the little fold-out tape liner they had the entire catalog of Capitol cassettes listed, these were stereo but played perfectly on our mono player too.
All 6 titles, one Beatles, one classical, one Sinatra, one jazz, and a couple soft pop. Capitol was just testing the waters.
Eventually got one of the earliest Ampex home cassette decks, naturally with sliders to mix stereo mics together with stereo line inputs.
Then Ampex got kicked out of the consumer market on a technicality where they had supplied a non-updated schematic with a product after a single component had been changed.
By 1973, Sony had just come out with their first stereo portable cassette recorder, same size as my early mono unit but with an additional matching auxillary speaker. Also their first single hand-held stereo directional microphone, which my buddy's father had gotten for him these years later. They were expensive. And they had just invented Memorex tape, before that you could not record a live rock concert very well.
We had always tried to keep up with an interesting group of English artists who had been coming to town for 5 years beforehand, they were too different to be on the radio yet, but since the first time I saw them people had been telling me I was crazy when they heard it. "Nobody's ever going to listen to that, these guys are never going to be on the radio."
Anyway, when Pink Floyd came to town this time they had just released a little record called The Dark Side of the Moon, which was Quadrophonic in concert and also available quad on vinyl. Each year they always played a set of the earlier material, then took a long break and came back to play their new stuff, usually no opening acts. It was crowded for the first time, mainly with new fans who were very anxious for what they had heard on the radio, but there was none of that and then the band took a long break as usual.
It was almost like a riot but once they got back on stage and played the whole Dark Side everyone loved it and they've been on the radio ever since.
Got it all on tape. In stereo. Quad didn't really catch on.
On the way back from the concert we listened to it on my Sears car cassette recorder (with mic unplugged!), underdash of course, the first one they had in the catalog.
- hilbert42 6y ago"You left out the 8-tracks." Yeah, I know it was deliberate on two counts. First, my post was pretty long and second, the topic was about Lou Ottens of Philips, 8-track was RCA and others. Besides, 8-track never achieved the large following that the cassette did. Where I saw it being used most (and that was its professional variant) was in radio and TV stations for audio inserts, etc. The number of times I saw it used in say a car was trivial when compared with cassettes. That said, the quality was much better but ultimately it was doomed because it was too big and other commercial considerations. "<…>small reels of full-size 0.25 inch tape (you still had to thread them yourself).<…>" I remember those, the quality was pretty terrible and most of them didn't even have electronic [RF-driven] erase head, instead they used a permanent magnet erase head for the purpose. I think everyone was pleased to see the end of them. "Remember Woodstock came out on stereo LP's, 8-tracks and cassettes,<…>" Didn't know that but I'm hardly knowledgeable about 8-track releases. I saw the Woodstock movie sometime in 1970 and about four or five times since. I've been meaning to get a copy but not managed to do so yet. It really is a must-own movie given that incredible performance by Hendrix. "<…>By 1969 mono vinyl was not for any major releases.<…>" That's my recollection too. "<…>But FM still cost extra for years to come so plenty of cars were still shipped with the tradtitonal stock AM radio only.<…>" I'm very familiar with that situation, in the early 1970s I had a lot to do with the transmitting side of FM broadcasting. "<…>Capitol records, Sergeant Pepper was the only one made at the time.<…>" There were very few pre-recorded ones around where I was at the time, they were more popular in some areas of the world than others. "<…>Then Ampex got kicked out of the consumer market<…>" OK, I can't recall that incident at all. All I know is that the market narrowed for 8-track pretty quickly then essentially it all but disappeared (I never owned a player so I suppose my interest wasn't there to note). Anyway, Ampex wasn’t in the domestic recorder business much after the early 1960s, essentially it had become a pro-recorder only company. My first experience of Apex was with its VR-1000A and VR2000 2" quadruplex machines and the multi-track audio recorders. "<…>And they had just invented Memorex tape, before that you could not record a live rock concert very well.<…>" Well, Memorex tape was better than Ampex 406/407 and especially the rotten 'melting' Ampex 456 which shedded the coating in a sticky gooey mess. It was a disaster. "<…>The Dark Side of the Moon, which was Quadrophonic in concert and also available quad on vinyl.<…>" Wasn’t aware of quad on vinyl on that recording. About two years ago, I went to a friend's place who has an excellent hi-fi setup, he owned the vinyl recording of The Dark Side of the Moon and I the CD one. We did a critical listening test between the two recordings (I'm not going to enter the debate about which recording sounds best). Quad was just too much mucking about to take off.