# What do you do with your old cassettes and LPs?



## PlaySalieri

I was clearing out the garage yesterday (the wife is away for a week) and I managed to dump all sorts of junk that will not be missed. Looks a lot better now!

I came across some boxes of classical cassettes - some recorded by myself from my LPs/CDs and many commercial DG, Decca cassettes. I never used to buy new cassettes as I considered them a rip off at 10 to 15 pounds a piece. I used to go to Oxfam or other charity shops and get them for 50p each. Anyway I decided to trash a lot of the cassettes which i recorded - I no longer have a cassette option in the car - and am unlikely to play them in the house - so I dumped nearly all of them - but kept the nice looking commercial cassettes. Sad in a way to do it. 

So what do you do with your old formats which you are unlikely to play again? Trash them - or hoard them?


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## Il_Penseroso

Trash them !!!!????  Such treasure !!!!????


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## Ramako

stomanek said:


> So what do you do with your old formats which you are unlikely to play again? Trash them - or hoard them?


Digitize them


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## PlaySalieri

Il_Penseroso said:


> Trash them !!!!????  Such treasure !!!!????


My cassettes which I recorded from LPs are about 20 years old - I find a lot of them have oxidised up anyway.


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## Ukko

The cassettes I keep, and listen to occasionally - when they are playable; a significant percentage of them aren't. The LPs undergo triage; there is a to-be-transferred pile, and the _other_ pile. That _other_ pile gets fed into the trash gradually. One of my wintertime hobbies is the transfer of music from LP to CD-R. After transfer there is a second triage, resulting in a to-be-stored-just-in-case pile.


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## PlaySalieri

Hilltroll72 said:


> The cassettes I keep, and listen to occasionally - when they are playable; a significant percentage of them aren't. The LPs undergo triage; there is a to-be-transferred pile, and the _other_ pile. That _other_ pile gets fed into the trash gradually. One of my wintertime hobbies is the transfer of music from LP to CD-R. After transfer there is a second triage, resulting in a to-be-stored-just-in-case pile.


Does it make sense to transfer LPs? Many old performances you can get on CDs for a few pounds on ebay or amazon - it can take an hour to do a transfer.


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## Krummhorn

Donate them to a charity or thrift shop if they are still playable. I work as a volunteer in a local charity/thrift store, and cassettes and old LP's are a really hot item. We price cassettes at 50 cents (US) and LP's at 25 cents (US) and all proceeds from our sales (after expenses like rent, electricity, etc) flow back into the local community to aid the poor people.


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## Ukko

stomanek said:


> Does it make sense to transfer LPs? Many old performances you can get on CDs for a few pounds on ebay or amazon - it can take an hour to do a transfer.


1) Many 'old performances' you can _not_ get on CDs - for any price. I usually check before transferring.

2) If the LP is well cleaned and in good condition, an hour's _attention_ isn't required to do a transfer.

3) I enjoy the process.

4) In wintertime I have lots of indoors time to 'waste' on transfers.

5) I often don't make 'external sense', i.e. what makes sense to me is often incomprehensible to others. (You may have noticed that phenomenon in some of my posts.)


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## PlaySalieri

Hilltroll72 said:


> 1) Many 'old performances' you can _not_ get on CDs - for any price. I usually check before transferring.
> 
> 2) If the LP is well cleaned and in good condition, an hour's _attention_ isn't required to do a transfer.
> 
> 3) I enjoy the process.
> 
> 4) In wintertime I have lots of indoors time to 'waste' on transfers.
> 
> 5) I often don't make 'external sense', i.e. what makes sense to me is often incomprehensible to others. (You may have noticed that phenomenon in some of my posts.)


OK if you enjoy it. 70s and 80s LPs generally seem to be in good condition - but 50s/60s can be a pain - and I used to find myself messing about with Audacity to get rid of little clicks here and there. I gave it up as a bad job.


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## Ukko

stomanek said:


> OK if you enjoy it. 70s and 80s LPs generally seem to be in good condition - but 50s/60s can be a pain - and I used to find myself messing about with Audacity to get rid of little clicks here and there. I gave it up as a bad job.


The decade of issue doesn't matter much - except during the vinyl shortage ('60s?). There was a tape hiss issue until DAT came along - pretty close to CD time. In general, classical music LPs have less wear than the more popular genres, but dirt induced pops/crackles can still make me change the 'pile' designation. The music has to be 'special' to warrant digging down to get at stubborn pops/clicks.


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## mtmailey

You could try to sell them on EBAY


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## bigshot

I have a boom box that plays cassettes and runs on batteries. Perfect for my old cassettes. I find amazing stuff I don't remember taping!


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## bigshot

Hilltroll72 said:


> The decade of issue doesn't matter much - except during the vinyl shortage ('60s?).


It was the oil crisis... Mid to late 70s. Things didn't get a whole lot better at the end of the era either.


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## moody

stomanek said:


> OK if you enjoy it. 70s and 80s LPs generally seem to be in good condition - but 50s/60s can be a pain - and I used to find myself messing about with Audacity to get rid of little clicks here and there. I gave it up as a bad job.


What's the problem with little clicks here and there?


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## moody

Hilltroll72 said:


> The decade of issue doesn't matter much - except during the vinyl shortage ('60s?). There was a tape hiss issue until DAT came along - pretty close to CD time. In general, classical music LPs have less wear than the more popular genres, but dirt induced pops/crackles can still make me change the 'pile' designation. The music has to be 'special' to warrant digging down to get at stubborn pops/clicks.


Buy a Nitty Gritty cleaning machine they are made in the USA.
Is the oil crisis the reason HMV's pressings were so dreadful about then and the reason for RCA's flipper floppers ?


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## elgar's ghost

I have very few classical albums on vinyl and they are imprisoned in an inbuilt wardrobe with hundreds of my pop/rock albums where they have forlornly sat since I decommissioned my turntable back in the 90s. I am incrementally selling them by the boxful to an ex-colleague of mine as I need to use the space for what it was intended for - clothes. What few cassette tapes I had I threw away some years ago - I never really did like the format. After an initially awkward (and expensive) transition to CDs I no longer have any nostalgic yearning for vinyl at all - the only ones I'm likely to keep are the handful of rarer ones which I might give as surprise gifts to people who I know will look after them.


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## Ukko

moody said:


> Buy a Nitty Gritty cleaning machine they are made in the USA.
> Is the oil crisis the reason HMV's pressings were so dreadful about then and the reason for RCA's flipper floppers ?


I have a Nitty Gritty off-shoot. Saving vinyl was mentioned by RCA in the limp LP adds. I haven't read up on the 'whys'. Italian-made LPs had a 'special' reputation for noisy surfaces due (supposedly) to bubbles in the liquid vinyl that got trapped in the pressing.

_@bigshot_, do you have the nitty gritty on that?


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## joen_cph

I keep and expand my LP collection, but also reducing it now and then by getting rid of recordings that are disappointing. It is extremely rare I keep any LPs with poor surfaces though. 

Recently held a small street sale in front of our block on a sunny morning and sold 90 of them for about 60 €, more than would be obtained from a record shop. Still have a large pile I´ll be getting rid of gradually, though.
I have transferred a good deal of the rarer ones to digital format ussing Audacity. In time it might happen to all of the interesting ones, but it takes time & I´ll possibly find something more valuable to do.

As regards cassettes, I have a few hundred, mostly recorded from radio etc., but literally haven´t heard them for 10 years or more ...


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## kv466

*What do you do with your old cassettes and LPs?*

I pop them in and listen to them.


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## Audiotom

Why would someone get rid of lps.
Analog sounds infinitely better on good equipment
I love picking up boxsets for little expense and enjoying their vibrant sound


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## KenOC

moody said:


> What's the problem with little clicks here and there?


If you were subjected to them at a concert, you might want a refund!


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