Wait in the study!

 Well apart from the little matter of England losing the Euros which is a shame something else happened on Sunday here.

The replacement cassette machine for the faulty one arrived well packaged in a big thankfully not that heavy box thanks to Royal Mail.

Connected around this is the vexted question of what to record onto as the high street is very different than even the start of this century nevermind cassette's heyday of the 80's up to the mid 90's when there were shops that sold blank tapes and quite a variety of different ones available.

A common idea - I'd call it a romance - is the notion of putting an album on a period tape as if you had it back then but this notion has its risks and issues.

That is tape I recall from 1971/2 and the first shoe box cassette record I had then and budget tapes back then were noisy and limited in fidelity and indeed even the big brands of the day such as Philips, TDK and EMI were a good way removed from what they achieved by 1978/9.

Thus using a 1971 tape to put your James Taylor and Carly Simon albums on really wouldn't sound good as even when new they weren't good and tapes are subject to varying levels of deterioration.

As it was the new machine dual capstan mechanism objected to the stiffness of a otherwise well look after TDK SA tape from 1977 and chewed it out!

And that's really the thing, the "knock it on the head" moment about that period tape business, it's not practical.

You can find still a good amount of tape from the early 80's to around the turn of century which provided it hasn't been in damp shed or o.ven like loft still is pretty good that I have a good amount in stock of.

But what about actual new, still being made tape?

Well actually some is being made completly from scratch, not using big "pancakes" of new old stock tape in the United States and in France.

Recording The Masters make studio quality open reel tape for studios that still record on tape and a sideline of that has been making brand new cassette blanks based on old BASF LN formulations and they can be recommended as while not cheap it will work perfectly and do sound better than post 2000 budget tape such as Maxell UR (the 90's UR wasn't bad) and chinese made brands you see on Ebay and Amazon.

They will play on anything.

Initially only made in C60 lengths last a half hour per side, they have commenced making C90's , the length we often used for either putting two records on or making our our compilations in the last 18 months or so.

The idea of making or remaking your favourite tapes and enjoying playing them is great but when old tapes may be in a poor state (and not that great even new) I feel it's best to use newer if not new tapes whither or not you have a reconditioned and serviced machine like me or one of the new Teac decks.

Boyhood audio

Things from the past this week.

As soon as I was able to get past the AM and stereo Record home made stereo with a main unit with turntable, radio amp and speaker in on main unit and right speaker I'd had since the age of nine to the world of separates I did normally involving either second hand or handed down components.

By about the age of fourteen I'd actually had a set up rather like this, a Goldring-Lenco turntable  with an Audio Technica arm fitted, a "home brew" phono preamp which went into my Rodgers Cadet II tubed (UK: Valved) matching control unit and power amplifier.

I had a small Realistic (the Radio Shack/Tandy own brand) FM Stereo and AM radio tuner which was suprisingly good for the modest cost to listen to Radio Three, Two in high quality stereo and One for Pop programs in mono

The amplifier had a relative small foot print unlike most even allowing for its power and output transformers and a Din socket at the front for connection to a tape unit such as originally my ITT Studio 73 portable stereo cassette recorder used at boarding school and later the Narional Panasonic RS600 US home deck.

By the mid 1980's that was supplemented by a Toshiba cd player as many important classical recordings became cd and tape only.

Sadly while ungergoing repair work the amplifer went in a freak shed fire on February 28th 1998.

For me that early hifi seperates part restored from second hand units was really more about having the means of exploring and appreciating music from the pops of the day to getting past the major classical works building up collections, the bulk of which remain with my current system from discovering Elvis Costello and Ian Dury to Mozart String Quartets.