All About Cassette Tapes (and some players) 

I can remember cassettes coming in long cardboard boxes so they could use the same shelves that they used for records. I remember in the early years they were in locked cases too

I bought Motley Crue's Dr Feelgood cassette when I was like 8, and the store forgot to take off the security device. My mom was like "I don't think this is to actually listen to" because she didn't want me listening to it. I want at it with a pair of scissors for like an hour and eventually got it out!

Aah the joys of audio casettes! Nothing like buying a new album just to have it esten that same day and once you get it out the listening experience of replaying the eaten section. Priceless.

I have an affinity for cassettes for a specific reason: In the late 90s, a "friend" offered to store my huge music collection of vinyl, cassettes, CDs, etc... for me because my storage unit was not temp controlled, and I was in a really bad way emotionally and physically. He took off with it all to parts unknown. Years later (2007), a true friend that I exchanged mixtapes with since 1987 heard about what happened. He knew that I had a lot of rare stuff in there that would be pricey to replace, so he took what he needed from the 70 + tapes I had sent him, and mailed me the originals. I recorded them mostly from vinyl, on Maxell UDXLII, and they still sound phenomenal. I am now on a fixed income, so it will take me forever to build up a collection like that again, but I have those tapes to take me back with quality analog sound :)

I will always love cassettes when I was a little kid that’s all I listen to how much born in 1984 and I got a chance to have a bunch of cassette tapes sometimes I would record myself singing or I would record stuff on the radio making my own expense which is great there’s nothing like having a cassette and one of my favorite memories was when I bought the Smokey Robinson and the miracles 35th anniversary“ that and I was able to hear the tape hear that wonderful sound that you get when you press both play and rewind or fast forward play the sound of that is great.

Quite impressive! Your tapes are cool too.

Thanks for the great videos you really brought me back when you mentioned that cassettes were often behind glass in the record store. I was a very shy kid so I never wanted to ask the person behind the counter to get the cassette for me. It was really frustrating and sometimes I just wanted to look at the track listing on the cassette or the price of it, it was just such a pain. My strategy eventually became just to buy vinyl albums and then buy a high quality blank cassette and record the album. I found this saved the wear and tear of my vinyl albums which are very pristine to this day. I also preferred this because if my cassette was ruined I could just buy a new a blank cassette and record the album again. Another benefit was that I could usually fit two albums on one cassette which was more convenient.

19:39 Pretty crazy when it came that way. But now all theses years later, it's pretty cool that you have it. It's special like a time capsule. I never had any Beatle releases on cassette. I also went from albums to CD's for the Beatles. I will say by the mid 80's cassette quality was pretty good. My own cassette recordings (copying album to tape) still sound pretty good even after 40 yrs.

17:24 I'm pretty sure the Side 1/3, 2/4 split was for dual cassette players. Fancy systems (and some boom boxes) had two players for your cassettes; you put Side One in the first deck and pressed "play," and then you put the cassette with Side Two in the second deck and pressed "play/pause." When the first deck stopped, the second deck would automatically un-pause. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

Sweet looking Napa Valley's :)

My first cassette was AC/DC's Back In Black in 1980! My first player was that Panasonic you showed. I brought that to camp. Also had Styx Cornerstone/Paradise Theater, Queen's The Game, Rush's Moving Pictures and many more. When I went to college I had a portable record and tape player for the dorm I also had one of those cheap suitcase things that were vinyl on the outside and had a plastic tray with slots for the tapes to carry them. The lock mechanism was cheap. Well on a trip home at Christmas with slush on the ground the thing opened up with tapes falling out. Asia and Billy Squire and many others ruined. I have tapes again now with color editions like Ghost on a gold cassette. My system has a cassette player. Love your videos. Thank you for doing them. Evan

One thing about high school in the mid-late 80's. When I walked around with my jean jacket or Lumberjack jacket on and I had either a Iron Maiden, Judas Priest or AcDc tape in my front pocket I KNEW I was cool!!! LOL Great collection you got there Robert!

Man! A lot of memories are coming back by watching these cassette's. My Grandpa had a lot of them and we played a lot of tapes when we arrived to him. Good collection! 👍🏻

This is so awesome! Thanks for putting this video out! I never knew all this info about tapes ! I love them I think they’re so awesome

This was fantastic walk down memory lane and bravo to you for holding on to these for so many years. Was secretly hoping to see a TEAC tape. I was fascinated with those in my youth but generally out of my price range. Thanks Robert. Love the videos.

I used to collect tapes as a kid before moving on to CDs. Used to love going to music stores and just browese. I remember also getting priated tapes in Tijuana and having the sides on the tape switched. Like side one being on side 2 and side 2 on side 1. Good times.

This just popped up in my feed, and watching it brought back a lot of memories, as the cassette was the medium through which I first became a music fan. Moreover, I loved looking at your collection - lots of great stuff in there. The Walkman? Oh wow. Blank cassettes and mixtapes? Yup, remember those, too. I still have some cassettes around (and a bunch of mixtapes), but most things got upgraded to CD. Great video.

I'm addicted to your videos! On one, you mentioned how poor the Black Crowes' vinyl album sounded. I bought the cassette for less than a buck and it sounds phenomenal 👍

Great video.Learned a lot about tape cassettes. Teena Marie in your collection.Awesome.

24:05 can’t hide that thing.. damn

I had Ice T " The Power " as well. Your video has me looking through garage boxes for my cassette of Nirvana Bleach. I think i left many cassettes in the glove compartment of my old car when i sold it. My first cassette walkman was great, only had Nena - 99 Luftballons to play. One side in german, the other english so you got the translation of side one when you switched the tape.

I considered myself a Digital Underground fan ....... until this video. I never knew about the extra tracks on the cassette version of Sex Packets. U learn something new everyday.

I am a little surprised that you didn't talk more about the decks of the day. One cannot talk about cassettes without mentioning Pioneer and Nakamichi :-)

The first tape I ever owned was Alvin and the Chipmunks Urban Chipmunk. 5 year old me loved it. One of the last ones I remember buying in the 90s was an Alice Cooper live performance from a bargain bin. It was new, but sound quality was horrible. Like it was underwater. I was so mad I threw it away before the 3rd song finished. The only tape I still have with the original case and sleeve is the Good Morning Vietnam soundtrack.

Very cool. I doubt currently own any. I was born in '80 so this is definitely some nostalgia going on.

This was a wonderful video. Maxell tapes did cinema adverts here with Peter Murphy from Bauhaus as the Walkman kicked off. Still got mine. The add was ‘is it real or is in Maxell’. To which a fellow audience member shouted ‘No, it’s bullshit!’ Remember that as there was still smoking allowed in cinemas then…

Great video. Great head “info” too!!

In the past couple of years, I've been having a lot of fun collecting cassettes again.

Hi Robert here in Canada in the 80s the record stores just quit selling the vinyl records and put the cassettes in their place. The sound quality was very good the tapes and the players would break. I have a copy of its only rock n roll by the stones that I got used I believe it was an original and played it over and over the sound is very good on it I even played it this summer on my old ghetto blaster it still works great.

I still have some of whatcha got. That Flashdance (the store-bought one) looks like a reissue from '89 or later - the clear caseback and clear shell are the clues. And that was the casing rule of thumb: opaque/opaque and clear/clear, unless it comes with a full U-card (not a standard J-card), then of course a clear case. And you might remember clear/clear (shell/case) start appearing around maybe '87 or so? Then it became pretty much standard for all new releases and reissues after that. I also remember having a WB 2in1 special which was Fleetwood Mac '75 + Rumours, and Rumours had a modified track sequence. I don't actively listen to cassettes anymore, even though my player's pretty decent. It's 2021 and ain't nobody got time fo' that! - Red

Very interesting and informative. I still have many tapes (some pre-recorded, most made by me or friends). Still have my circa-1982 Sony tape deck that had Dolby B AND, the latest, greatest Dolby "C"!

Totally forgot about the XDR tone. Man, I just recalled exactly the way the LED level meter on the deck went yellow, green and would just hit the red. Many a fond memory of cassettes. Making a mixed tape for the girl you loved, The perfect cruising tape, Bootlegging concerts, and now of course, the XDR tone. SIGH!!! Bought very few commercial tapes in the day. I was a LP guy. Last cassette I bought was Talking Heads Live album "The name of this band is" just a few years ago because it contains one track not available on the album or CD.

I remember diving into the VH back catalog in Middle School (around 86'), and my Dad buying me a Two-For-One WOMEN / FAIR WARNING. I was fascinated by that back then. It was the only Two-For-One I ever owned. Great video. Take care.

I had hundreds back in the day. I still play and buy from time to time.

Can you remember high speed recording? If you had a twin cassette deck you could record one cassette onto a blank one but super speeded up so it didn't take long. I bought two cassettes that had the wrong album on it. The labels were correct but the albums were totally different, not even the same artist. I remember getting Def Leppard's Hysteria and it had a really old sounding blues album on it. Listened to a track and a half before deciding it wasn't the right one! Also I remember taking a cassette back because one side was terrible quality (there was often a big difference in quality between sides, not sure how that works) and they gave me a new copy and the cassette looked different and I noticed it said "Master Cassette" or "Master Tape" on it. It sounded really good, I guess it was the one they recorded other cassettes from? Not sure but did they usually end up going on sale too?

Recently bought a retro look boombox with Bluetooth, usb & cassette. Never got rid of my 155 old mixtapes, so I’m going to start listening to them again 👏🎶😍

A lot of those Warner Bros/Capitol tapes were manufactured by Ampex in the 70's up until around 1984. The black tape they used over time would start degrading from a chemical change and breakdown of the binders. Some of those tapes I have still play but most of them start squeaking and squealing to a stop from the tape sticking to the heads. As far as I know there's no cure so most of my cassettes are for collecting only

I heard that Chicago covered 25 Or 6 To 4 on Chicago 18. They've basically covered their own song. I live in an area close to Chicago. I heard about them covering their own song through Nick Digilio. He used to be on WGN Radio in Chicago. He was talking about how Green Days' Brain Stew? It's the song that starts off with 🎶BAAADAM!... BAAADAM!... BAAADAM!... BAAADAM! BAAADAM! BAAADAM!..🎶 That sounded exactly like 25 Or 6 To 4. The original version, not the one from Chicago 18 from 1986. He didn't have the Green Day album but he did have the one album from Chicago on CD. He goes and plays the song thinking it's the 1970 classic but au contraire. This is 1986 and everything is polished with reverb and the drums with the big sound and the keyboards. Geez, I can imagine the look on his face when he heard it. He was caught off guard. He was completely horrified at the way it sounded. I remember him saying, I know they suck now but why do they have to ruin one of their good songs? I actually taped that incident. His one producer said something like, That's because we're news and talk. Which News And Talk was their old slogan. His weatherman said that it sounded like it came off the Top Gun soundtrack. Another radio alumni named Steve King said no when asked if he had heard of this cover and he said no and also said that it should never been done. Nick was totally blindsided with that one. The funny thing about tape players with auto reverse is that you try to put a tape in that has been played and hasn't been finished yet and for some reason it starts playing the other side backwards. My older sister had a car with a tape player with auto reverse. She put on the Cassingle of Kokamo by The Beach Boys. And the flipside was Toottie Fruity by Little Richard. It was on the Cocktail soundtrack. And no, I have not seen the movie. By that time it was a year old. Anyway, she must have played the side that had the Little Richard song on it and it started playing side A backwards. I can remember that it was the same night that me, my older sister, my mom, and my brother. I don't know who else went with us. I was in the back with my brother and I don't know if my mom was in the back with us. But we went to eat at Pizza Hut and Pizza Hut was giving away these futuristic sunglasses as a promotional thing for Back To The Future Part 2. And we went to see Back To The Future Part 2. I was like, Turn it off. She played it the first time and the the other side was playing in reverse and she was all puzzled when she stopped the tape to look at it but she put it on again. And my mom was telling her that it's gonna break. Finally she turned it off. There was that other time that me, my sister, and my brother went to a Christian bookstore or whatever it was. It went by the name Count Your Blessings. They had some kind of stereo that had a tape player. I don't know if it was a duel cassette player. And they had stacks of cassettes. The tape player might have had auto reverse on it because some lady came by and put a tape in and played it and it was playing something but it was all backwards. And she was like, What is going on?🤔 She stops it, looks at the tape, and puts it back on. And she stops it again and takes the tape out and put it back where it was never to be played again. Ahh, the joys of cassette tapes. Oh, and that sound you played at the beginning of the tape brought back memories and the pain of having to open a cassette tape from that piece of plastic it was in.

I had 2 side loaders, Black Oak Arkansas and an Alice Cooper, stolen at a party 40 years ago. Burns me to this day. Falco tricked me too! Nice video, you've got some cool ones. Take Care.

I have around 1000 cassettes from the 1980's/ early 90's and are in the rock and metal genre. Not played since those times and no player now either. Had a double Blue Oyster Cult set in long slip case ....a collectors piece maybe. Regards from Birmingham,England

I absolutely love cassette tapes they’re the greatest ever and I love not only cassette tapes by different artist but I like blankets that types initiate make a hunch come back and so should definitely CDs. I love blankets that takes my favorite ones the ones that I stick to you and will always stick you with the 120 minute ones those are great especially the max hours which is my number one in my second favorite is the TDK 120 blankets that time.

Another great thing about casettes was missing seconds of audio on some prints. I remember hoe listeing to headphones and the left side would rdop out. I took these back and got it exchanged.

I've yet to hear Revolver in its correct order. I grew up with the tape and was shocked to find out many years later Revolver starts with Taxman (it's track 4 on the tape). I still prefer that sequence.

Only real good thing about cassettes is that they were easy to store. You could have thousands of them and they wouldnt take up much space. I personally liked vinyl better, but when i started driving i bought cassettes so i could play them in my car. It took me a longtime to get into.cds (maybe 1993 or so). You couldnt tell me to get rid of my records and tapes and replace them with cds. Eventually i did. Cassettes were good for their time, but listening to them now they sound flat. Remember cromagnum or something like that? I eventually got rid of my cassettes. Most i had already upgraded on cd. I kept my vinyl collection however. I just think of all the cassettes i had, and they became virtually worthless. Nobody wants them now. I traded remaining collection when the van halen live from the tokyo dome came out. I think i got $14 total on trade.

i have albums on tape which are so hard for me to get affordably on cd or vinyl. I have Paice Ashton Lord/ Anderson Wakeman Bruford Howe/Greatest hits Helen Reddy. I got Islands by King crimson dirt cheap .Howard jones human Lib. bruce springsteen Born In The USA. I remember buying Beatles tapes and wondering why the stereo panning was so unusual, vocals to one side drums mixed to one side. In the UK we didn't have that thing about cassettes being behind locked glass. i have a system frrom the1970's which can play metal tapes CRo2 and of course normal tapes,also Dolby. I often don't use Dolby,as it makes the music sound dull.

The importance of the Walkman players and it's imitators is not to be under-emphasized. I had a Panasonic with a recording feature and am/fm built in; lasted for years. I remember going to Radio Shack and buying an electric playhead demagnetizer. Then, you also had to clean the capstan rollers with a q-tip soaked with an alcohol solution.

1895 . Amedus took a piss X"D

Don't remember the brand, the price, or when it came out (early-to-mid 80's probably), but at some point, there was a boombox RECORD PLAYER.

cassette singles...the most useless and expensive folly of all time...and yet,they look really classy....GREAT VID!!

Im a 13 year old,yes a kid in 2022 who still listens to tapes,ive been looking forward to find something New to find,im trying to find something Like a mix between pop and rock,suggetstions?

Just threw away a ton of tapes…both pre-recorded and homemade ones. Into the dumpster they went. Worked for Record World for 5 years and Record Town for 1 year…thus got a lot of freebies from the record companies. 80’s & early 90’s. I guess I shouldn’t have been so ruthless in what I tossed. Almost every homemade tape did not make the cut. A few pre-recorded ones did. Tapes I have never found on CD.

I wanna hear the glenn danzig stories!

Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty was a 2 for 1 I had.

Was hoping to see th k mart cassette with rainbow s

I have the remixed version of Bringing On The Heartbreak .

I still sell quite a few new releases on cassette.

Alien vs Predator thumbnail. Nice!

I have so much more fun buying and playing cassettes than vinyl.

I borrowed so may cassette tapes from k mart.

On the ET Michael Jackson cover, which one is Michael Jackson…..?

"They were usually that color." What color is that? Beige, taupe, tan? 13:55

Did you have the most notable cassette-Motörhead -no remorse in leather pouch -that also conveniently a pack of cigarettes

I never warmed to tapes. They seemed cheap. Like, a cassette was a plastic Kmart fork.

You guys remember putting tape/ cotton balls on the holes in the top of the cassette so you can record songs on the radio?

Recording tape company Maxell tried to offer 120 minute tapes in mid 90's. But tape had trouble playing cuz one side would be too big for rotators to rotate.

I Want To Har About Capitol LabelX D R Tapes& How A&MSnd Arista Went To Chrome Bias

What about 8 tracks?

i still have around 150 cassets have about 40 or so country seperated i a case wasnt my thing have the police bon jovi zepplin4 john cougar brian adams little river bands greatest titanic frank sanatra 2 foghat the everly brothers greatest the police recorded off radio back in early 80s 70s 60s everyone was mainly country on cassett back then i had more 8 tracks and lps untill cds back then

They weren't 'trying' to make a comeback. They HAVE.

Do you have walkman for sale

You need good kit to avoid old cassettes just getting churned up

同大贏家打針

Dude! Seizure warning for the camera work! lol

You have a wide taste in music...!

the reason the songs were out of order was because of tape lenth