# Collecting cassettes



## Hazel (Oct 23, 2010)

People collect LPs. People collect CDs. Does anyone here collect casettes?


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I used to, but they break.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Back in the day, I transferred music from LP to cassette, so that I could listen in my car, and also as 'borrowings' from the LP owner. I still have quite a few of those cassettes, but -going by intent - I am not collecting them.

*News flash* Cassettes are more prone to deterioration in storage than are LPs or CDs.


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## jurianbai (Nov 23, 2008)

i still have boxes of cassette. don't you love the idea you can listen to different music by flipping the side? 

Cassettes extra function: Kids can use the ribbon and its scroll to play kite (popular happening here!)


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

Geeez, I've still got some 8 tracks...thing is, I am also very much a deadhead and thus I own over 600 tapes and these are just concerts...stuff I've recorded live adds up to at least another hundred....cd's, I prolly have in the thousands...records I have the least and are about 400 or so but then there are minidiscs...I've recorded hundreds of gigs on minidisc and thus I have at least 2000 minidiscs and about 20 blanks left only (!!!)...still, they say you can record over them a million times without loss of quality....oh, then there are dvd's and vhs tapes but I don't wanna go there!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

A friend of mine has a boatload of cassettes he bought in the 1980s - a lot of good music in there. But I often wonder whether they'll actually sound good anymore. 

It is probably a good thing he has so much music to listen to that he's not popping those old cassettes in.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

i used to own maybe 100 cassette tapes which i bought new back in the '90's. i still buy them for second hand for like 50 cents to $1 each. mostly, they are in good condition, sometimes they're not. but it's good getting something for such a low price just to be able to hear the music first, & later then shell out much more money to buy it new on cd if i really like it...


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

science said:


> A friend of mine has a boatload of cassettes he bought in the 1980s - a lot of good music in there. But I often wonder whether they'll actually sound good anymore.
> 
> It is probably a good thing he has so much music to listen to that he's not popping those old cassettes in.


If your hearing is still good in the higher frequencies (over 10kHz), tape hiss may be distracting now, even if you were used to it back in the day.

[Tape hiss, and everything else over 10kHz, is just a memory to me now. High frequency hearing loss with age runs in my family anyway, but the jet engines and target practice _probably_ had an influence.]


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## Rangstrom (Sep 24, 2010)

I still have quite a few cassettes, but the failure rate is distressing. I have replaced quite a few. As to tape hiss, my hearing is probably not what it used to be, but dolby processing also cuts down hiss to comfortable levels.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

Hazel said:


> People collect LPs. People collect CDs. Does anyone here collect casettes?


Well...

Funny you should mention that. Earlier last week, I fell prey to a pernicious "nostalgia attack." It was really bad (in fact, bad enough that I considered using the 'blog' function to discuss the malady!). At any rate, there was some music I was jonesing for that (in the context of my personal collection) was ONLY available on cassette. And (I'm sure this'll come as no surprise to people experienced with this medium) my 'personal-use home-tape' cassettes seem to have held up well over the years, but one of my store bought cassettes was unsalvageable on multiple levels, and had to be binned.

It looks like the 'home-tape' end of my modest cassette collection will survive to the end of my days...[:cautious optimism:]


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Chi_townPhilly said:


> [...]
> (I'm sure this'll come as no surprise to people experienced with this medium) my 'personal-use home-tape' cassettes seem to have held up well over the years, but one of my store bought cassettes was unsalvageable on multiple levels, and had to be binned.
> [...]


The 'home tape' - commercial tape survival difference has been my experience too, approximately. One once well-known but now perhaps forgotten procedure that can save a tape now and then: run the tape in fast forward to its end, and then rewind it, before playing it. (I always do that for video tapes too, though in a dedicated wind/rewind machine.)

:tiphat:


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