The oldest tape I had as a kid was Peter, Paul, and Mommy from 1969. My uncle bought it in the 1970s and handed it down. Cassettes have came a long way, I got some new cassettes albums from Record Store Day.
I used to have that record I think I sold it in a bundle collection 10 years ago.. I never actually listened to it.. just remember the AND MOMMY .. made me laugh.
@@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777 it’s my introduction to the folk music, I thought they were a Sesame Street group, because they played children’s songs in the late 1960s and throughout the 70s like “If I Had a Hammer” and “Mail Myself to You” those I listened from Peter, Paul, and Mary!
5:30 You can't visit a Salvation Army Thrift Store, Goodwill, Value Village, etc. on a regular basis without seeing Mantovani records and I do have a few of his albums while the one I most highly recommend is his 'Gypsy Soul' Phase 4 album on London records (also available on out-of-print CD's). One of the best tracks is from the movie 'Villa Rides!' (starring Russian-born actor, Yul Brynner, playing Mexican revolutionary Poncho Villa. Haha!) composed by Maurice Jarre ('Lawrence of Arabia', 'Doctor Zhivago', 'Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome', etc.) which is certainly NOT a Gypsy tune, but it's great as are the Hungarian tunes on the record. :)
My memory of cassettes tells me that it's best to gently hold the centre of one spool with the tip of your finger while you are rewinding the other one with a bic biro, just to prevent it from spinning by inertia and unspooling inside the cassette
Those cases look far more robust, reminds me of the ones VHS came in over here. It’s a tragedy you got commercial VHS in cardboard cases, I only ever saw those for blank tapes.
I have to wonder whether these played because they were sealed off from air changing, and causing degrading. I have no tapes older than 1984. They all died due to either drag or most often tape rubbing off on read head eliminating the treble. I do have a couple of k-mart tapes that are older and still play, so that proves they were not crap cheat tape as they still play while many 90's tapes with improved tape quality and dynamic range have long since died.
Wow! Hearing that Mantovani ( 5:06 )song gave me chills. Reminded me of my father who always listened to 105.1 WRFM New York, beautiful music. We kids used to call it the Daddy Station! Love you daddy!
Yeah, I tend to use things that I buy right away. I wouldn't have bought something if I didn't want to make use if it. I don't believe in buying things to hold onto and not use and enjoy.
@@applegal3058 I try to as well....but I have amassed stuff that I intended to sell and just haven't had time to list them. Kind of a good catch 22.. :)
No matter where in the world you go, if you find a collection of more than 10 old records, cassettes, 8-tracks, or open-reel tapes, at least one of them will be a Mantovani recording.
@@ivok9846 This from Wikipedia: "Annunzio Paolo Mantovani (Italian: [anˈnuntsjo ˈpaːolo mantoˈvaːni]; 15 November 1905 - 29 March 1980) was an Anglo-Italian conductor, composer and light orchestra-styled entertainer with a cascading strings musical signature." My take has always been that Mantovani was responsible for almost all the music you would hear in supermarkets, malls, and elevators in the '70's and '80's.
@@aTrulyPowerfulSpirit I have a Mantovani LP box set and a few single records and even a reel to reel. I bought them myself in the past year. Sometimes that music hits the spot for relaxing.
I'm surprised at how good they sound (age relative) - could early cassettes have been duplicated in real time? Surely not... The collector in me kept saying _"Don't open them!"_ 😜
@@AndrewHeller-jn7dx : Yeah, audio cassettes spent maybe a decade with universally low audio quality for the transcription & similar markets (reel-to-reel and 8-tracks were the entertainment-grade, because both ran tape much faster), so by the time they started doing music cassettes the industry had been fairly well developed.
I have a handful of these early ('68 to '72) pre-recorded cassettes in my library. Those early PRCTs sound much like these, which is to say high frequencies vanish above 10k, there's a significant amount of tape hiss, and they are basically listenable. FYI I am guessing that today's National Audio Company (founded in 1969) was one of many companies which was involved in the (then-new) business of high-speed cassette tape duplication. It's conceivable that Ampex outsourced their duplication to NAC's Springfield, Missouri facility. Who knows?
@peacearchwa5103 Thank you so much. Highly fascinating info! However, my memories of the ones, I'd owned back then, seemed more rosy, than you had just painted. Now, I'm awfully confused.
The audio quality of the cassettes sounded marvelous. Whenever I hear of people claiming how audio tapes, or even home recorded video tapes, can deteriorate after 10 or 40 years, yet, I have hundreds of home-recorded tapes that still play fine of the same age, it got me thinking . . . Is it possible that such tape deterioration, that people lament about, resulted from hundreds of replays of those tapes? I bring this up as the tapes in my collection, that have held up well for me, may have been replayed a dozen times over the many years. With my ADHD, I don't have the temperament to enjoy replaying a tape 100 times. But, it is nice to hold onto such tapes as there are no assurances of it being replaceable in the future.
The reason for rearranging songs (or reversing sides) is to keep side 1 (A) longer than side 2 (B). this is to avoid a long blank space (break) between the sides of the tape. If there was a 2 minute blank space on side 1 (A) then you would have to fast forward to the end or flip the tape and rewind side 2 (B) to the beginning.
When I made home tapes I always tried to fill side A , leaving about 20 seconds of tape before the tape turned round ( I have always had auto reverse machines ) ...At the end of side B , I didn't mind leaving a few minutes of blank tape ( if I had nothing of the same style to fill it with ) . I can't imagine not making home tapes any other way .
I really love the case design of these. That Ray Charles tape would be awesome to have. I LOVE his music. That man was 150% pure talent and is still a pleasure to listen to. The tapes sound pretty well. Sure a little low on the high frequencies but that was to be expected from an older formula Type1 tape and with a few dacades of storing. But i did hear a lil bit of tape aging and slight dropouts on the "the world of Mantovani" tape. It's pretty cool they even wrote on the covers what tape stock they used. Something i NEVER saw on any pre-recorded cassette. Thanks Kevin for doing a sequel to this "50 year old cassettes" video you did a while back :)
One reason to just flip the sides entirely might be if the leadout on side 1 was going to end up considerably longer. Better to have side 1 be longer and flip right into side 2 rather than having to fast-forward or rewind there.
I have the same World of Mantovani cassette from 1969, also I have a bunch of cassettes including some early ones from 1967 (AMPEX started to produce pre-recorded cassettes in 1967).
Back when the MJ album "Thriller" was £14 in the UK record stores, I got a quote from C.O.P.S Limited in the UK to duplicate an independent album on to chrome tape. 1000 tapes duplicated with boxes and colour inserts for £1000 (plus VAT tax which may have been 20% or less) So someone was making a lot of money from 30 million copies of the "Thriller" tape..
"Boss, we accidentally reversed the sides of the tape! - Nevermind, we'll stick the labels on to match." - would be my guess for the swapped sides... 😁
Youre right, the cases seem to be made from softer plastic, so they won't break as easily. What they lack, compared to the PHILIPS ones, is the little tab that prevents the tapes from unwinding.
If stored right, audio tapes ought to last a long time, though not indefinitely owing to chemicals breaking down and plastics failing eventually, but the fact these ones were still in as-new condition with only the one needing repair, that's pretty good stuff...
I got my first cassette recorder/player for Christmas in 1968. My dad bought me a couple of pre-recorded cassettes a few months later. One was “Diana Ross and The Supremes Live at ‘The Talk of the Town’”. It looked just like those you unwrapped here. AMPEX.
I know that the 8 track format is probably the underdog of all audio formats, but I absolutely love them. I own close to 200 of them and I have a one single cartridge player and two 8 track tape changers that can play multiple tapes back to back, just like a CD changer. They can sound really good on a maintained player, with a high quality audio system. My compact cassette collection is around the 200 mark also. I'm just a huge fan of vintage audio in general.😊
Just curious Ray Williams if the 8track carousel player you have is a Qatron or Telex player. I worked at Telex when they manufactured the Telex 8 track player that held 12 tapes. The models 48H and 48D also have the TMS 101 and The last model built TMS 1000.
@mike keech Hello Mike, I have the RCA Mark 8 eight track changer ( Model VYC - 950W ) that has the removable magazine, that can play up to five 8 track tapes back to back at a time. It also has an Am and Fm turner, with a built in amplifier , so can hook up speakers directly into the player. My second 8 track changer is a Mitsubishi MGA ( Model TD-83 ) that will play up to three 8 track tapes back to back. I don't own a Telex or Qatron carousel 8 track changer, but I would absolutely love to acquire one of those players someday. 🤗
Cassettes took off here in the U.S. when cassette players became available in cars just like 8-track did before it. 8-track stuck around for as long as people still had it in their cars. Once CD players hit automobiles the Cassette slowly died. A lot of what went on in the U.S. revolved around what you had in your car.
I would love to have a WAV copy from all of these cassettes, they are incredible for their age, and sound very good still. Nice video, Kevin, thank you for posting it ♥
lossless 16/44 or 24/48? I would be interested to see the sonograph results.. I bet they reach up past 18khz in some cases unless they were limited somehow.
@@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777 The maximum frequency for cassette tape "type 1" on non high-end equipement is around up to 12000 Hz, sometimes less, for type 2 tapes you can reach 14000 Hz, and for type 4 (metal tape) probably 15000~16000 Hz, expensive equipements like Nakamichi can reach 20000 Hz if you use this equipement for recording on the tape with correct bias and azimuth.
@@techmaster-ch5yd In my experience, it is really hard to hear the difference between 14khz cutoff and a 12khz cutoff or frankly an 8khz cutoff. Most musical instruments never get anywhere near 12khz. There just isn't a lot of music up high. Guitars have a frequency range up 1200hz. Violin can reach 2637hz. 4186hz for a piano. A harmonica can reach 10khz, though that is theoretical. A chart of string instruments shows most top off at a few khz. It might be my hearing, but I can detect a 12khz tone. Apply a filter to whack anything over 8 or 10khz and I just can't hear the difference.
Despite having been born in 81 there is always something nostalgic for me when I hear a Don Ho song, as my parents(mother, and step dad) were big into the beach/Tiki scene, and I still have my late step father's old Tiki bar setup in my game room. 👍
Moral of the story: Ampex were really good at making tapes =P I'm impressed by the stereo separation on these (though it was 1969 so I guess they just hard-panned everything and called it a day). Also everyone had to have a crack at Proud Mary huh
Yes JVC can be good - Japan Victor Company. Even the middle of the road dual deck by JVC I have works like a champ - I had another one almost the same but with speed control and it had a ghost in it.
Puff the Magic Dragon hit me right in the feels. I've bought a couple tapes off eBay that snapped on the 1st play, but it's not that hard to fix, even the shells that don't have screws.
As I expected.. they play fine - Ampex had high quality at that time.. even their Vinyl pressings have a better dynamic range in early 70s.. the Canadian Ampex Pressed Motown Releases sound better than the later Motown issues (probably pressed by Capitol) when Ampex folded as a manufacturing arm for pop music. I'm not sure if it's the same for the USA counterparts. Thanks for showing the pre-standard cassettes - I never see them in good shape if ever - people around here just throw out tapes they don't even bother to try to re-sell them - at one thrift store they give them away for free but I still go into their dumpster they dump CDs and Tapes that aren't of a 'religious' nature ... so basically all the pop music they throw into the trash lol .
I found a ton of old southeast asian market cassette tapes at a thrift store and they were in those clamshell-type snap cases. Though, it was mostly stuff from the late 70's to the 80's. Billy Joel, Springsteen, Michael Jackson etc. They looked legit but I'm not 100% sure they weren't bootlegs.
$5.95 in 1969 was a lot of money for an album. According to the BLS, which very much understates inflation, that's 50 dollars and 70 cents in 2023 money! Minimum wage was $1.30/hr. You would have to work 4 and a half hours to buy one album.
I would buy the LP for $3.50 and a $1 blank tape and have both for less. The tape went in the car and the LP on the shelf until the tape expired and a new one would be made.
Yes it was very expensive but inflation scales are inaccurate for myraid of reasons. I see new tapes for around $30 today. All these inflation calculators do is try to lull the con-sumer to keep accepting price hikes. You know..the American Dream.. you have to be asleep to believe it?
The Compact Cassette didn't sound good until the late 60s. The first cassette decks has 4-5lhz frequency response and bad wow and flutter. The 8track tape sounded great in 1964. The mech was also more complicated.
this also had to do with how cassettes were driven as a lot of cheaper decks were rim-drive, meaning there was no capstan and pinch roller, but instead the tape would have been driven only through its takeup spindle. This caused horrible flutter, and the playback speed would also change relative to how much tape has been played.
@@RealEpikCartfrenYT I am unaware of even a single rim drive compact cassette deck. You saw that a lot in portable reel to reels, but never compact cassette. The main reason for the poor wow and flutter is nobody ever thought at the time CC was invented that it would be a hi-fi audio option. Phillips envisioned it as a dictation device. It didn't need great wow and flutter. So the motors were less precise (cheaper) and there generally wasn't a flywheel. The belts weren't as precise (low quality belts adds a lot of wow and flutter to a cassette) If you look at the flywheel on 8-tracks and early stereo hi-fi cassette decks, they were comically huge though quite effective..
Delightful video! The thing about the swapped sides is not that unusual. Well into the '70s, it was common (particularly for jazz and instrumental records) to have swapped sides on vinyl vs. open reel or cassette. I'm not sure why but it's a thing I've noticed a lot. The CD releases as often as not use the cassette running order, and often even the record sleeves have the order different from the discs themselves.
It's amazing how good these old cassettes sound, especially when you consider most cassette players back in 1969 weren't capable of producing the sound quality of more modern cassette decks. You wouldn't think they would have been recorded as well as they are.
From what I recall, pre-recorded cassettes started to get _cheap,_ with its audio and the materials used for manufacturing them, by the late 1970s. Home cassette decks were pricy back in the early 1970s; as the only people I knew that owned them were upscale enough to afford them. When I bought my first home cassette deck in 1977, I paid $150 (US) for it, which would equal over $700 (US) in 2023 (US) dollars. So, for the standards of living in the 1970s (US), they were on the expensive side.
The fact they were cheapening out on cassettes, even in 1969 (they are glued or sonically welded) though. Another thing I noticed is that they are very quietly recorded, likely due to the equipment used back then.
wow I didn't know they sold cassettes in the 1960s. I figured the tech was out there but I didn't realize they were mass marketed. And yeah, as you said it is becaue of the 8 track. I figured that was the precursor.
It seems like a lot of them still used cellophane for wrapping instead of modern plastic. I wish we could return to the more enviro friendly cellophane.
I found two used old tapes like this. A Black Sabbath tape and a Moody Blues tape. They both sounded horrible and the Moody Blues' felt pad came loose shortly after playing. But, I keep them as collectables cause they look kinda cool.
I remember Windmills of Your Mind from a doctors office I visited a lot when I was a kid. I guess they were playing the “easy listening” music to help calm down anxious patients.
Interesting. I know that in a few years the earliest VHS videocassettes will be 50, wonder if there are any of those OG 1977/78 Magnetic Videos that are still sealed (not re-sealed). Wonder what it would be like to play those for the first time.
Some of the early 70s cassettes are not recorded at overdrive high levels like much later. So even with dolby they may be a bit noisier for hiss but the sound quality from cassettes recorded at a proper level is quite good, and enjoyable, accepting them for what they are. They slammed the tapes harder later on becuase some people demanded "louder, LOUDER!!" and also to cover up more of the tape hiss background noise, but ended up with higher distortion and more muffled highs.
I have a lot of cassettes to this day, including some soundtracks that are still sealed and my tapes from the 70's and 80's still sound great today. Generally speaking, cassette tapes survived much better than 8-track tapes, the latter of which would inevitably have the tape splice snap apart and the foam pads disintegrate, not to mention how practically every artwork sticker on an 8-track tape has bubbling due to the deterioration of the glue. All in all, cassette tapes were generally well-made and built to last.
With all of that lot being manufactured by the same company in the same year, after the initial pleasant surprise, it's not really unexpected to see them all playing ok after the first one proves to be in perfect shape, but other than that it's an amazing feat!
Back in the early 80's I found an original 1974 cassette of Bryan Ferry's Another Time, Another Place in the discount bin at my local department store. I was a big Roxy Music fan so that totally made my day! It was in a black plastic slipcase and the cassette itself was pink! It sounded pretty good then (only about 10 years old at that point) Unfortunately I tossed it along with all my cassettes when I got into CD's in the early 90's. What a dumbass! It's probably a pretty rare tape today.
Excellent find! I wonder if those tapes (minus Don Ho) were part of a package given away when you purchased an Ampex stereo? The Ampex Micro 85 system we purchased in late 1968 came with four pre-recorded Ampex made tapes (including Mantovani), three blank tapes, speakers and microphones all for about $200. Ampex bundled that stuff up to get you hooked on compact cassettes.
10:34 In Brazil in the 70s a lot of people used something very similar here: they were called "cartuchos" (cartridges) in cars (and only in cars) though I can't say precisely if they were 8-track but they were endless loops too (my father told me when I was a child). As I was a child I can't be sure if they were 8-track, playtapes of some similar format. So it was not only there that they used this format in cars.
WOW!!!! It has been 54 years!!! I remember when these came in long skinny boxes with the cassette sideways at one end. Right next to the record albums! WOW!!! 54 years!!!!! 😐
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Puff (The Magic Dragon)... Hahaha, I will always remember this songs thanks to the film Meet The Parents.
Obviously when the Sides were swapped, Side 2 of the LP was longer than side 1, and it was just easier to have the 2nd side of thee cassette shorter (since you'd probably just FF to the end anyway)
Your channel (and Joe Collins' channel) inspired me to get back into cassettes way back like over ten years ago. It's a fun hobby. I was able to get a nice stock of blanks before the prices got ridiculous. There still isn't anything comparable to cassettes! My current project is to find a NOS cassette receiver to put in my car. Thanks for the fun videos.
Nice job! My dad had that Norelco portable cassette recorder. I immediately recognized the American Pie cassette. I had it! Unfortunately, it contained an edited version of the title cut. Not as truncated as the 45 version, but missing the entire piano/vocal first verse and faded to trim a few seconds off the end. I eventually bought the LP. 🤓
@@Heike-- It was longer than the radio/45 version but shorter than the real album version. It seems to have been an edit done specifically to make the two sides of the cassette have approximately the same running time. There was also a song on side one of the cassette that was repeated on side two. I think it was “Winterwood.”
Watching this while I work. Proud Mary by CCR just so happened to be playing on the office radio at the same time the Proud Mary tape was being tested! 😲
Maybe I’m getting older, or my standards are getting lower, but those old tapes sounded fine to my ears. Of course my old iPhone’s speaker probably masked quite a bit of the inherent inadequacies of ancient tape-but still, not bad at all.
Gotta love how these old tapes feel lip sync-able but modern releases don't (unless you get on something like 439 hz to make it feel real, again). This is because some time down the line the process of up pitching audio by 10 cents A.K.A 0.1 semitones became more and more of a thing.
Very interesting to see these tapes in action, nice to see that most didn’t even need any repairs! As long as they are stored in acceptable conditions, tapes will just keep on working!
I have more and more CDs suffering from disc rot although I always stored them properly. Not a single one of my cassettes (oldest being from 1973) has failed me yet. Even my tapes I stored in my car for countless years in freezing and ultrahot temperatures work with next to no issues. If you keep strong magnets away, this medium is really robust. Also the claim that cassettes get "unlistenable" after 100+ plays is (mostly) BS unless they used really cheap low quality tape. My most played tapes have hundrets of hours on the clock and still sound good to great.
The reason I believe the tapes are authentic in 1969 Warner Brothers was Warner Brothers, Seven arts and it had the logo on all of those tapes. I think Ampex had the market back then as well. They didn't sound too bad, considering they didn't have all of the electronics that the late 70s through 90s had much better sound quality with Dolby B/C HX Pro, or DBX. That was a real game changer. The frequency response got so much better with the newer tape decks, but in the late 60s I'm thinking the high frequencies didn't go much above 10 KHz.
Also I owe you an update on that RS-TR 272 Dolby C version of that similar deck you repaired. The owner doesn't have the money for the repair so I'm kinda stuck with it for the moment. That bad smell I noticed was apparently coming from the decaying rollers themselves, kind of a surprise since they smell like leaking capacitors. No capacitors were leaking, all check just fine. So those rollers are really something bad!, leaving junk on the tape and pulling oxide off of the tape, maybe some chemical stuff going on there also. I'm right on the fence about just fixing this thing for the nice lady if she can pay for the parts. I know of a place where there are belts that likely fit but I don't want to upset a balance by asking for some. So it's a stupid situation, unfortunately. No fault of the owner. When I can I will poke at the resource situation again because this thing is too good to go in the trash (unless the heads are bad, cant test that with no belts; heads look good enough.)
Ampex New Old Stock cassettes? What the heck? I would have been disappointed with the Don Ho tape. Half of the content sounds like the damn audience singing and here I would've thought I was paying for 100% Don Ho. I have an original release 2001 A Space Odysssey Soundtrack cassette which sounds like the company just got a very clean vinyl LP and recorded that to tape. I wonder where I put it. It was obtained years ago in a huge lot of other old cassettes at a salvage business where it was obvious some elderly audiophile had passed away and his family was junking everything he owned. There were a storage box of mini reel tapes which sadly I never got to discover what they held due to an evil family member stealing from me.
my oldest tape is the rock around the clock Bill Haily (I don't know the spelling) and that tape is from 1968. it is one of the best sounding tapes I have funnily enough.
Puff the Magic Dragon always makes me sad because it makes me think of my old stuffed animals and the adventures we had when I was a kid and how - at some point - I played with them for the last time. My first one is still out on a shelf but the rest are in plastic bags in my crawl space. 😢
Fascinating! What you did with the pressure pad on that Mantovani cassette is exactly how I repair any of my cassettes when the pressure pads tend to fall out…
I've got that Mantovani tape! It was my grandpa's. Probably the oldest tape I've got!! By the way, since you got a take n tape, i just got one and i can't find any way to adjust the speed, am i missing something?
Talking of reversing sides withiut track order changes. The UK release of Piledriver by Status Quo has the same. Side 2 the of LP is side 1 and side 1 of the LP is side 2.
