My 8-Track Collection! 

When I was 9 years old (1973) I had my best friend`s father who was a business man. Very wealthy man and had one of these devices in the car. I remember he used to ride me to school because he used to live nearby and me and my best friend were classmates. I remember he used to play these huge tapes while driving to school. For me a nine year old boy it was the coolest thing I had seen. Good memories from my childhood.

I've been collecting 8-TRACK tapes since I was 10 or 11. Love the format. Having a three 8-TRACK changer makes the format even more enjoyable with up to a maximum of 300 minutes of music being played before a song is repeated.

8 tracks are undeniably cool. Yes, the format has its drawbacks - fragile tapes, ageing players, inherent wow and flutter, and those grubby labels held on to tatty, yellowing cartridges by bubbling glue. OTOH they're cheap, accessible, mostly easily repaired due to being so simple, and 45 years on, still pretty plentiful - boxes full of tapes seem to be constantly being discovered in attics and basements and finding their way into charity shops, car boot sales and Marketplace for next to nothing. I was born toward the end of the 8-track era so don't have any direct nostalgia to draw upon, but the music is generally the 60s and 70s chart stuff that I grew up listening to and still enjoy now. I'd love to get my hands on a Sanyo RD8400 combo deck from 1979 but unfortunately they didn't sell them in the UK and shipping such a heavy item from the US or Japan would be prohibitively expensive :(

I collected 8-tracks for a short time in the early 1990’s when Inherited a Panasonic stereo when my great aunt passed away. The 8-track player actually popped out of the top of stereo. To help the tape pull from the centre of the spool of tape, finely ground graphite powder is applied to the back of the tape, which after time leads to the muffled inherent to 8-track. From my experience with 8-track players is the belts used to drive the capstan wear out very quickly due to the high amount of torque required move the tape. I have believed that a direct drive system and a Teflon coating on the back of higher grade tape, 8-track could better than it was.

People used to keep them in their cars in all kinds of weather so the labels bubbled up.

The coal is great!I'd love a momento from titanic-it has always fascinated me since I was a kid. 8 track tapes I've had a lot,got none right now as I'm concentrating on vinyl and compact cassette.a very enjoyable and entertaining show mr Recordology

8 track tapes are fun and nostagia, keep in mind that the sound quality varies widely between tapes and players... a good Pioneer, Akai, or 3M Wollensak 8-track deck will run circles around your Soundesign and actually sound quite good. You'll definitely want to buy a roll of 1/4" splicing tape and replacement foam pads, both are available online.

I'm not a big fan of the format but I do have a recorder that still works and has nearly every feature of an 8 track including push button eject, eject after 1 prorgam/eject after 4 programs, continuous play, pause, and a decent fast forward. It has nice VU meters for recording and shows levels during playback. It's probably 42 years old. It's made by Olson Electronics.

Cool Ive been wanting to get into 8 Track very nice video

Good news that 8-tracks are getting a shout out. Prices of some home units are going up. My favourite actual tape ( 8 track) is " In Through The Out Door" by Led Zeppelin.

The bubbled labels. Very often with 8-tracks it's the glue that deteriorated over the years, rather than water damage.

If you want to get into 8-track, better do it now! 8-track machines are getting more and more expensive, especially the higher tier ones from Akai and Panasonic.Radio Shack Realistic ones are pretty good too, since most of the time they are rebranded Akai or Panasonic. Goodwill is still a good place to get decently priced players/recorders, but you should be willing to do a little repair. Or you're lucky and things just need a bit of cleaning (especially the tapehead and the capstan shaft, since 8-track tapes shed graphite). Also 8-track cartridges most of the time sound way better than you might have imagined! The whole thing is great fun :D There's even units that have dolby noise reduction! Whoah! *lol*

Great video. I don't have any 8 tracks myself at the moment but I've watched quite a few videos on these just lately and I'm sort of getting a little bit more interested in the 8 track format. I would love to find a good 8 track player and some tapes one day and start a little collection and see what they were like. That Elvis tape sounds great, looks in very good condition too. The only thing is though here in the UK the 8 track players and tapes seem to be very hard to find these days. I would love to find some, though it might cost quite a bit in repair kits as most of those old cartridges would probably now need repairing. But I'm keeping an open mind on this format, it is very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Nice way of going here, with 8-👣 track tapes and tape players. These machines, along with tapes, are becoming rather scarce. 📖 Bookmans, or 👍 Goodwill could have them, if you're lucky. May even have to go through the basement, 👍 like at an estate sale. It's nice that you're one of the people, 👌 keeping the 8-👣 track era alive. 👍 Yes, the machines need a little work, such as belts, or a recap job on capacitors, and the tapes are old, and can be subject to breakage. Just store the tapes away from 👡 high temperatures, moisture, humidity, dust, and magnetic fields, in a normal 🏡 environment. 👌 Keep your 8-👣 track player's heads and Capstan clean, and the heads demagnetized. I remember an 8-👣 track tape player being in my dad's 🚗 car when he bought it in 1978. I was only 8 then. I put in a favorite tape by Mac Davis, because I wanted to hear my favorite song, 📞 called "The Birthday Song". Gone are the days of glory with all our nice inventions. I understand with 8-👣 track tapes, you had to ✋ wait for the song to come back around, to 👂 hear it again, but, in 👎 no way, do I find this to be outdated technology. I find it "traditional", or a "classic" approach to our past. I even 👍 like pre- digital flip ⏰ clocks, with, or without 📻 radios. ALL our nice stuff of our past has literally gone out the window, with all this digital garbage. You're lucky today, if you buy a flat-screen 📺 TV, such as from Wal-Mart (or ANY other products), if it even lasts 5 months before it makes its way to the dump. Proprietary sales, or planned obsolescence, is what it is 📞 called. ⏰ Clock 📻 radios, washing machines, typewriters, 📺 TV's, furniture, you name it, all the 👍 good stuff of 👍 yesteryear, still going 💪 strong after 50+ years. 👍 Yes, the days of GREAT stuff. Your friend Jeff. Have a very 😊 Happy and safe New Year, and spread the news about the 👍 GOOD old days, and buy this 👍 GOOD stuff.

Brings back lots of precious memories! Gr8 episode👍

I also own one of those RCA Vibra 8-track changers where you can put in 5 tapes at once. My main player (the rare time I do play one) is a Sanyo recorder unit from 1979.

Another great video about a Rodney Dangerfield format that gets no respect. I’ve been buying them since I was a teen in the very early 80’s until they stopped selling them and just recently got back into them when a friend sold me a nice deck and a big box of tapes for cheap and now I have too many. It’s a quirky but fun format to get into but there are some things you need to remember. Check every newly acquired tape before you pop it in your player. Try advancing the tape by hand with your fingers to see if it moves freely and isn’t jammed up. Push down on the foam pads to see if they’re mushy and crumbling, chances are they’re shot and will need to be replaced to get the best sound. Those spring pads are way nicer but sometimes the felt squares on top fall off or are missing. Use a small jeweler’s screwdriver and try to pop them off to see if the glue holding them on is dried up. They can be super glued back on with a pair of tweezers and left for a few hours to dry. Assume every foil splice is going to fall off and change it anyway. The adhesive dries up and if it does come off, your deck will pull the tape in and turn it into spaghetti. And if the tapes have rubber pinch rollers, check to see if they feel mushy or are melted. Tapes from the 60’s had this problem and if that gooey tar gets on your capstan it’s a nightmare to clean up. These tapes are rare but they are out there. You can buy foil tape, foam pads and felt squares for cheap from places like 8-track Avenue or Kate’s Track Shack.

Always check those rubber pinch rollers before you put the cart in your deck. They're infamous for turning into goo.

I'd like to get an 8 track player and cartridges one day. It's just that finding one for a decent price is somewhat tricky.

I own a large collection of classic rock 8 track tapes and several of the better decks to play them on. They're getting tougher to find in the wild these days.

i bought a pioneer 8 track player for 1 dollar at a thrift store and it worked perfectly it was a component player with just rca outputs

I've purchased a number of 8-track tapes and players too over recent years, but I don't generally recommend the format due to severe reliability issues with the tapes as well as with the players themselves. I once received a dozen or so tapes from an eBay seller when I bought his Sanyo 8-track player/recorder which is a great and very dependable unit with cool Vu meters and that distinctive 1970's aesthetic (silver metal face with wood veneer). From other sellers, I purchased two Panasonic 8-track players that unfortunately did not function properly and I have an Aquatron AM/FM/8-track player that plays pretty well and a Fleetwood AM/FM/8-track player (just like a Weltron space age model).

Did you get the coal for Christmas? :D

I have a Pioneer 8 track recorder/player. Still works fine. Also have a surround 8 track player.

i don`t know about 400,000 8 tracks....but what about 400,000 train tracks....? The Titanic coal is amazing,really makes you think..wow,that actually came from the Titanic !! Love your 8 track player...like the way you can switch programmes..

The Elvis cassette sounds pretty Good.... im interested in 8 tracks.... Don't know if i will ever buy one.....

So that's an 8 track I've heard of them but in my 43 years I have never seen one

Worst format they ever came up with, but very interesting to watch and learn about all vintage audio things. Thanks for another great video.

Like number two and my skin's turning... blue? I absolutely love that Three Stooges card. Curly's my favorite. Great video as well 👍

I've scooped up the odd 8-track tape here and there for 50 cents or a dollar at the most from local thrift stores, but the tape quality is very inconsistent (very hit or miss) compared to cassette tapes and 8-tracks have a tendency for the metal and foam pads to fall off since the glue has dried out over a 40-year or more period. The tape also has a tendency to snap which can be tedious. So, I have them purely for fun or as a format novelty, but I don't go crazy collecting 8-track tapes (I probably have maybe 25 tapes at the most) because they will never be as reliable as cassettes, records, or CD's.

Another tape format I wish I could get ahold of is the Revere M-2. But every time one shows up on eBay it’s always Waaaay out of my price range.

It's not hard to add a proper line-out to one of these! If you were so inclined, that is.

I have a decent collection of them. But I rarely play them due to the splice coming apart and I could never attempt to fix them without them being unraveled and me losing my temper and throwing it against the wall or in the trash. Not to mention pads going bad and sometimes the wheel turning into mush on some tapes. That’s the reason why they’re probably my least favorite of the tape formats.

does coal float?