So in 2018 where do I get a 8 track player? So I know vinal is back and I can get record players..I checked with my local junk yard in S Buffalo and no luck. What was the adavantage of 8 track anyway? Got Tom Jones, some Elvis and Neil Diamond.
Your best choice is eBay (or a similar service); the ones you'll find in typical thrift stores will likely as not be clapped out. Or buy a '70s boat-size car.
i have yet to find an 8-track tape out of a random box that will play for very long. The player will strip the loop out but the continuous rewind will stick where it pulls out and the internal tape reel will not wind; the result being buckled tape all through the mechanism. A big thing is that the pad that cushions the tape against the traversing head is often made of that funky foam that half-hardens into sticky goo with age; it doesn't take much to jam and you will have to open the shell to wind it back -- this ain't trivial or for the faint hearted.
It was not the end of the disco era that spelled the end of the 8-track format.
The perceived advantage as a consumer format was that it wasn't fiddly like, say, the Ohilips Compact Cassette, used reasonable tape speed for better music quality (!) and did not involve rewinding for track selection. This made it a better alternative for cars with enough dashboard space for the big stick-in slot.
The Achilles heel for me was the absence of a positive pinch roller system as in a radio cart machine, where the rubber roller cams up through a hole in the shell and clamps the tape against what amounts to a guide machined in the capstan. Then head alignment is not a major concern when you step it from track to track.
There is probably an 8-track enthusiast community out there that can knowledgeably tell you how to find modern replacements for all the deflicted stuff.
Yes Cadillacs came with 8 track players in the 1970s
If I recall the 8 Track Tape was popular with truck drivers as the 8 track would stand up to the bouncing around of trucks in that day.
Who cares about the 8-tracks, what kind of O gauge goodies were in the box?
In junior high I helped a rancher who had a contract to mow ditches. You can't imagine the number of 8-track tapes with a half mile of tape strung out of them we would find in that people had tossed out the window.More than a fee........{CLICK!}....ling when I hear that old song.....garble.....chuuuuuu.... %$#&@! Out the window it goes.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Even if you find a player for those tapes, the tapes are likely 40 years old or so, and there's a good chance they have deteriorated to a point where they won't play, and maybe they will even gum up the works, especially if they have been stored in somebody's hot garage or attic.
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"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
Had somebody come to our garage sale a few years back and kiss a Deep Purple 8-Track. Bought em all because he has several players at home. They're out there, you neven know what people will buy! Or KISS!
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Also, search eBay for "Lear Jet" brand 8-track players. It's a little more obscure but possibly more easy to find. I once had a table-top Lear Jet player in those weird 1980s.
The single most vexxing problem was how the spooling was designed. It's just one spool, and the inner end was kind of "peeled out" of the spool in a weird loop. After restoring two or three mangled tapes I swore off the format forever. Today, the foam pad is the main impediment because it transforms into some kind of "goo" after so many, many years.
Fun fact: The newer Stereo 8-track format is why many releases from that era (Barry Manilow, Hooked On Classics, ABBA, Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, lots of progressive rock, and most classical music, etc.) have a premature "outro" followed by silence and then another, longer "outro" because the song was too long for one track. The original monaural 8-track was 11.6 minutes. The stereo 8-track was 5.8 minutes. The problem wasn't the length of the track, but that a track that started near the end of the original LP's "A side" would be too long for the remaining tape, and required the gap. Other releases took this into account so it is not as noticeable.
Another fun fact: 8-track porn tapes were a real thing. Lots of them can be listened to on YouTube.
Murphy Siding In junior high I helped a rancher who had a contract to mow ditches. You can't imagine the number of 8-track tapes with a half mile of tape strung out of them we would find in that people had tossed out the window.More than a fee........{CLICK!}....ling when I hear that old song.....garble.....chuuuuuu.... %$#&@! Out the window it goes.
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."-Albert Einstein
http://gearedsteam.blogspot.com/
"Today, the foam pad is the main impediment because it transforms into some kind of "goo" after so many, many years."
Should be easy to kitbash. Plastics degeradation has been a problem that the Polmer science department at the Univeristy of Akron can never seem to solve. Just look how vinal dashboards in cars fade and crumble after so many years.
Look at these sky high prices for 8 tracks on E-Bay and yes the Lear Jet 8 track was invented by a executive at Lear Jet. Again probaly looking for a robust enough music player to withstand aerospac conditions
https://www.ebay.ca/sch/i.html?_sacat=0&_nkw=lear+jet+8+track
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