[78-L] The audio casette is making a comback

Thu Oct 20 19:05:13 PDT 2011

Thankfully both of my Nak Dragons still work. What I liked about them is I could set the record bias for any tape I put in it & I used just about everything. From major brand ferric & chrome tapes (I even used one for a pair of ferrichrome tapes many years back) to lower quality tapes including the 3 for a buck stuff. Just about all of it gave me very good recording & playback results but then I've also used other cassette machine brands (don't remember which ones) before I bough the 2 Naks.

As far as open reel goes just about any 2 track stereo deck will sound better than a quarter track open reel deck with both being used at 7.5 ips. Of course if you run the 2 track deck at 15 ips it will leave the quarter track deck sitting in the dust as the 2 track takes off & burns rubber down the road!!

I've found that most 2 track (inline) prerecorded tapes sound really good but some sound a little less good sort of the better quarter track tapes recorded at 7.5 ips would. 

The 7.5 ips quarter track tapes vary in sound quality. Some sound fairly good & others not. 3.75 (3 & 3/4ths) ips doesn't compare to the 7.5 ips tapes at all. Some are good but not great while others are much worse. Blame the high speed dubbing if you wish like I do.

Recently I drove out to Needville Texas (farm & ranch country) to pick up a few hundred lp's & 45's for free. No 78's but I did get a pioneer quadraphonic reciever, a Dual 3 speed (yep it can play 78's) plus a Sharp cassette deck & a pair of nice speakers (not mega buck expensive like my B&W's though) which I gave to another record collector friend of mine who's all in one cassette/8 track/turntable system quit working well. Brought some extra RCA patch cables for the cassette deck plus an 8 track player & a DVD player that she wanted for CD playback. Everything worked great at my house (I hooked it all up & cleaned the cassette & 8 track heads at my place first) so I took it to her home & she was very pleased with it. Could have sold it all on fleabay I guess but since a friend wanted it I said why not? After all I got it all for free (including the DVD & the 8 track player which I got at different times) so might as well give it to a friend. She does
 have some 78's so I told her I'd look for a cartridge for the Dual & the 78 rpm needle that way she won't tear up the LP needle trying to play 78's with it. I also gave her about 2/3rds of that record haul (what I didn't wish to keep out of it for myself) that she could pick through for her own collection then sell the rest on fleabay plus the local Houston record collector shows every 2 months.

I bought a CD on Amazon that our good friend David Lennick did the transfers for. Don't remember which one it was though although sadly it's long out of print. Might have been some Nat King Cole material or perhaps something else. Whatever it was sounded pretty goos as I remember.....

>________________________________
>From: "bradc944 at comcast.net" <bradc944 at comcast.net>
>To: 78-L Mail List <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
>Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2011 7:52 PM
>Subject: Re: [78-L] The audio casette is making a comback
>
>Kind Sirrah Mr Lennick:
>
>While I have a Nakamichi sitting around here somewhere (faulty logic control board), I find that my Kenwood KX-5530 with auto-reverse-that-actually-works is more than suitable for any cassette transfers-to-be-made.
>
>Reel? Different story :) Love it, esp. the 2-track stuff. My Otari craves 2-track goodness, in the good, moral way :) Even crap Ampex dubs of pre-recorded tapes can be made to sound good.
>
>Non-sequitor: I was at my local library today, and guess what I found? A Naxos Nostalgia CD of "Greatest Hits of 1930". And who did the transfers? Some chappie by the name of David Lennick. Brilliant liner notes, by the way, and EXCELLENT discog info. I'll be using that as my standard from now on. Haven't changed needles in the crank-up CD player yet, maybe later tonight I shall sample the audio goodness.
>
>BC
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
>To: 78-L Mail List <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
>Sent: Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:46:08 -0000 (UTC)
>Subject: Re: [78-L] The audio casette is making a comback
>
>I haven't had a cassette player in the car since who knows when..there are 
>still a couple of working players (and a good boom box) around the house for 
>when something needs to be transferred. But I also have sets of OTR from Radio 
>Spittoons and a few books-on-tape that have had as much attention as my laserdiscs.
>
>dl
>
>On 10/20/2011 12:36 PM, Robert M. Bratcher Jr. wrote:
>> A good high end cassette deck (like a Nakamichi Dragon for example) with type 1 (ferric) low noise tape adding Dolby B or C if you wish can sound pretty good. Chrome tapes can sound even better. But since the cassette stereo I had in my truck died I replaced it with a CD deck&  haven't recorded on cassettes ever since nor do I collect prerecorded cassettes. Other than playing back cassettes of classical LP's I borrowed from the library to me the format is dead&  can stay dead. Prerecorded cassettes? Forget it. I'm not interested in those.
>>
>> Open reel is a different story as I like to record classical music from FM on 2 track stereo at 7.5 ips with older Ampex&  Scotch tapes like the Ampex 600 series of tapes plus the Scotch 100&  some of the 200 series. I also collect early 50's 2 track stereo (inline) prerecorded tapes played on my 2 track deck as well as the quarter track tapes sold later in the stores played on a quarter track Pioneer thats used for playback only. Sure open reel is a dead format but I still like it.
>>
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