8mm Forum: 8 Track Tape Users?

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Topic: 8 Track Tape Users?

Simon McConway
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1085
From: Doncaster, UK
Registered: Jun 2004

posted September 27, 2017 03:26 PM

Does anyone else here still play 8 track tapes as I do?

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Mathew James
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 740
From: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2014

posted September 27, 2017 03:35 PM

This is my favourite 8 track of all time. If you can get it, you will not regret it:
https://www.discogs.com/Various-Looney-Tunes/release/5466297
[Smile]

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Cheers,
Matt 📽

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Joe Taffis
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1592
From: United States
Registered: Jun 2003

posted September 27, 2017 04:19 PM

I still have my player/recorder. It will play and record except I'm not able to record all four programs. The 1,2,3,and 4 program lights work when the program button is pressed, but something is not shifting the position of the recording head

...

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Joe Taffis

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Lindsay Morris
Film Handler

Posts: 87
From: Darlington, WA, Australia
Registered: Jul 2013

posted September 27, 2017 11:56 PM

Love the 8 Tracks & have a stack of them that I often play before a show in the home cinema.
Have 2 quite good 8 Track Record/Player units both of which are fully operational.
The track changing is usually done by a small solenoid that is pulsed either by pressing the Track button OR the machine senses the track changing foil & signals the solenoid to pulse.
Each pulse steps a mechanical interlock assembly that jacks the head up and at the fourth pulse it drops the head back down to scan track 1.
That assembly often gets gunky with dried out grease OR the solenoid plunger is NOT being activated due to the coil being burnt out or simply that the plunger is jammed.
When you press the track change button is there a pronounced CLUNK from inside the thing??
I spent many years living in the northwest of Western Australia where during summer the ambient temps were often well over 40C so inside a car it was even hotter. The 8 Track units rarely batted and eye unlike the cassette decks in cars with weenie rubber bands for belts that just fell apart due to the heat. 8 Tracks just kept on rolling & if a cart jammed most were easy to pop open & sort out..Super reliable units I found.

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Lindsay

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Winbert Hutahaean
Film God

Posts: 5468
From: Nouméa, New Caledonia
Registered: Jun 2003

posted September 28, 2017 05:43 AM

I have 8 track player/recorder and some tapes for my collection only.

To date I still don't understand why they make this product when the MC (Music Cassette) tapes were already around.

What is the advantage of 8 track? It is gigantic size, cannot be rewinded, sound wise not any different with MC sometimes it even worse.

Your opinion guys.

Cheers,

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Winbert

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Mathew James
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 740
From: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2014

posted September 28, 2017 06:57 AM

it is kinda like the Betamax/VHS argument.
Beta was a better technology yet VHS came out and goodbye Beta.

With me, the concern these days is finding good tapes. Many of these tapes were bought to be used in car/van players. I know that is how we grew up with them...but leaving them in the aweful heat etc... hard to find any without degradation after this many years.
Many of my standard cassettes have sound...yet, i was fortunate to transfer them to digital when it first started, so i save everything... 8 tracks degrade as well...
However, I hope they remake some 8 tracks again with a retro player because they are cool. I like them big and bulky too, just the same as i like big bulky records over little cd's [Smile]

Here is a nice little collection:
http://theretrodad.blogspot.ca/2014/12/my-nifty-8-track-collection.html

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Cheers,
Matt 📽

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Steve Klare
Film Guy

Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted September 28, 2017 08:56 AM

I hope they made the better 8 track players with a setting to play all four tracks and then stop. We went on vacation at an Aunt's place up on Lake Ontario when I was maybe 12. She had an 8 track player and the same Roy Clark tape played the entire week!

-it's strange...up until then I actually liked Roy Clark!

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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...

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Winbert Hutahaean
Film God

Posts: 5468
From: Nouméa, New Caledonia
Registered: Jun 2003

posted September 28, 2017 04:45 PM

Hi Mat,

I understand the war between Beta vs VHS, and technically Beta would beat VHS in any aspecs (picture and sound), in fact Beta is one of the broadcast standard during that day. The loose in war against VHS merely because of the lack of marketing as well as the equipments were dominated by VHS (Panasonic) vs Beta (Sony). When Panasonic did not make any Beta player, Sony did.

But for 8 track vs MC tapes, how do you see?

I am curios, say that everyhting is equal, would 8 track sounds better than MC?

BTW, I found this interesting article:

https://flashbak.com/the-eight-track-miracle-8-reasons-it-failed-2034/

cheers,

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Winbert

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Ty Reynolds
Film Handler

Posts: 93
From: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Registered: Nov 2015

posted September 28, 2017 06:50 PM

Betamax was never a broadcast format. Consumer Betamax and broadcast Betacam are two different animals, despite the similar names. You could, in a pinch, use a Betamax tape in a Betacam camera (and fill the cassette in 20 minutes), but you couldn't then play the tape back in a Betamax player.

Betamax failed because Sony was stingy with its licence, whereas JVC allowed many more manufacturers to produce VHS VCR's. Market saturation killed Betamax.

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Winbert Hutahaean
Film God

Posts: 5468
From: Nouméa, New Caledonia
Registered: Jun 2003

posted September 28, 2017 07:57 PM

Ty, CMIIW, I wasn't saying Betamax, but only Beta as a system invented by Sony. I don't know if this is a correct term.

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Winbert

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Lindsay Morris
Film Handler

Posts: 87
From: Darlington, WA, Australia
Registered: Jul 2013

posted September 28, 2017 08:43 PM

Re Betamax.. I can remember trying out side by side comparisons of Beta tapes V/S VHS tapes and the Beta tapes had far better fine detail visible on screen when running the same movie in the 2 different formats. From what I understood at that time the Beta system of the actual recording/replay process was superior to the VHS system PLUS the Beta tape threading process was easier on the tape itself whereas the VHS loading was rather tortuous.
But JVC were more far generous with their licensing so they won out easily...Sony were again rather restrictive with licensing with their SDDS 35mm sound track system & it went the same way Beta domestic tapes went.

The 8 Track cartridge as compared to Cassettes has a far better frequency response & it approaches that of reel to reel tape response @ 3.75 IPS. The Cassette on the other hand is well down in the top end response & unless my memory is really failing the cassette tape speed was 1.875 IPS someone else may know the exact speed.

The 8 Track was similar to cartridge tapes used for years in the broadcast industry and only differ in construction with the 8 Track having the pinch roller inbuilt whereas the broadcast carts had the pinch roller in the player & it swung up to press the tape up against the player capstan.
The BIGGEST failing of both types of carts was the pressure pads as originally both used springy brass strips with felt pads glued on which virtually never wear out. These were replaced after a few years by a crude plastic springy back strip and pads of foam plastic which went to a gooey mess after a few years. That rendered the cartridge unplayable & I have quite a few here like that & when I can find a cartridge that has the original style of felt pressure pads & has failed for other reasons OR I simply do not like the music content on that cart I swap the tape from the previously unplayable cart to the older style cart & I am back in business [Big Grin]

Most 8 Track players in cars that I ever encountered all had the option to Repeat the program or STOP after the fourth track set was played.
There were some cheaper units that DID just go on and on so I know where Steve is coming from.

Interesting comments on those links posted & it was simply market forces that spelt the end of 8 Tracks as the makers made the players of Cassettes so small there was no way an 8 Track could possibly compete so it died out.

There were quite a few long play 8 Track carts available & Tandy (Radio Shack) sold quite a lot in Australia & these were blank carts of 80 minute duration that one could record your own selections (if you had a suitable record/player). However most in car players simply did not have the torque to be able to pull that much larger tape mass thru & maintain correct speed so the results were very mediocre. Given a good player they worked fine and unlike the commercially made carts that just squeezed or spread out the songs on each program OR faded them down and then up after the track change I used to let the tape run & change automatically during the recording process. The track switch happens so quickly the change is barely discernible unless you are listening intently. [Wink]

Audio Telex used to market a carousel 8 Track player which was used to supply background music to commercial properties/shops etc. You loaded this thing with 10 or 12 8 Track carts & let it rip & you could set that to play all programs on each cart or just one program & step onto the next cart...the forerunner of the now common shuffle one gets with CD players or MP3 players.
The Audio Telex machine had an inbuilt 15w stereo amp so could drive a reasonable number of speaker sets in shops etc or for bigger setups they used the preamp outputs & fed those into higher powered 100v line distribution amps.
It was a fascinating thing to observe when changing carts as it could sense if a cart slot was empty & simply step past it. [Cool]

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Lindsay

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Bill Phelps
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1482
From: USA
Registered: Jan 2009

posted September 28, 2017 09:08 PM

I have a small collection of 8 tracks and 2 players but both have a tendincy to start bleeding the tracks together after playing ok for a short time. I'm guessing the heads are probably worn out and they are low end units.

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Lindsay Morris
Film Handler

Posts: 87
From: Darlington, WA, Australia
Registered: Jul 2013

posted September 29, 2017 02:13 AM

Bill,

With all thing electromechanical there is room for things to get out of whack and if your tapes ALL play the same on both machines with track bleed through then both machines need a very SMALL adjustment to the head tracking.
It IS a very fine line between tracking correctly or not.
There are or were a LOT of cartridges out there that had been recorded on machines that were slightly out of whack so if you "tweak" a track changing mechanism to give you zero bleed through using one of those carts then all the rest of your carts will bleed thru.
I have a couple of hundred carts and about 6 are little bleeders and I simply put up with it OR when desperate to fix another really good cart that I wish to keep I use parts of those bleeding carts to fix others.
But the technology is now quite old parts are almost impossible to source unlike a lot of old reel to reel machines & the track changing mech on some models was rather crude & very variable.

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Lindsay

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