Going back to cassettes

[sierraman]

When we bought mrs sierramans Focus, it was fitted with an awful JVC CD player, the buttons were so small as to be distracting whilst driving. Anyway I'm a stickler for originality so at a recent car boot managed to pick up an original Ford set with cassette as fitted when new for a paltry £1. No code but no problem looked it up on Internet.

 

Now I'm enjoying the cassette experience again, which is fortunate as most of the music I like was available on cassette. Who else is a fan of going back to cassettes?

[dollywobbler]

Yup. I like 'em. Mainly because they don't skip! Made a couple of mixtapes for our Cornish trip. You learn to ignore the hiss after a while (record volume was set a little low - the new world of recording from YouTube onto cassette!)

[DVee8]

The mgf ate my story of the Clash tape

[barefoot]

Aren't they the things with two holes in them?

[Six-cylinder]

The 2CV I bought last week has been fitted with a 80s Radio/Cass to look period to the car, which is not a problem for me because I have keep my cassette collection some of which are over 40 years old. The seller was a bit of a geek and has fitted a small pin plug connected to it, so you can plug in your i phone which is a problem because I don't have one!

[sierraman]

It's even got switchable Dolby on it, with Autoreverse.

[TRW]

Going back? I never left them.

[Taff]

Aren't they the things with two holes in them?

 

no, that's women your thinking of

[Matt]

Do they come with a USB plug?

[castros_bro]

 

 

I use one of these then plug it into a £3 mp3 player with 10 billion tunes on. Last year I sold more then 1500 blank audio casettes on Fleabay so if anyone wants the remaing 100ish, individually sealed of various types just the postage or collect in the next couple of weeks  GU2 7XH

 

 

[barefoot]

no, that's women your thinking of

 

 

Do they come with a USB plug?

 

Confused dot com!

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Cassettes were shit in the 80''s and I'm pretty sure that they haven't improved by sitting in damp glove boxes and dusty drawers for 30 years. As a method for adding period misery to shite they're perfect, for actually listening to music in 2015 not so much.

What's the newest car anyone here has with a cassette? Mine is a 2001 S-Type , that's got cassette and boot changer, I'm pretty sure my 2003 e39 had one too. Apart from some opera cassettes that came with the e30 316 I haven't played one since about 1987.

[MarvinsMom]

i find that i have, in the 75, gone back to cassettes.

 

the original (giffer?) owner who ordered said car spect it up the auto wipers, eleccy memory seats and the drivers info thing in the dashboard plus the nicer alternative set of optional alloy wheels, but stuck with the standard cassette player!

 

its a symphony one, which is i think an alpine and actually has a really nice sound kwaliti to it, but even so, on what was a reasonably dear car, to not order the cd player??

[Matt]

What's the newest car anyone here has with a cassette?

 

I'm sure quite a few VAG cars until 2003/4 still had cassette players meanwhile the Nissan Figaro got a CD player as standard in 1991...

[Six-cylinder]

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

After we eradicated Smallpox we should have turned our attention to cassettes. Making mix tapes is fun when you're 13, it's a fucking chore if you just want some music to listen to in the car. You can't easily skip tracks, they rattle in glove boxes and unspool inside players. The only good thing about cassettes is that you can use one of those (also staggeringly shit) cassette adaptors to play your mp3 player in the car. 

 

But the WORST is the generation of cars around the mid 00s with only a CD player and no way of connecting an external source. And don't mention those FM transmitters, they're only useful if your route is entirely contained within some kind of MOD maintained radio signal quiet zone. 

[Ditchfinder General]

What's the newest car anyone here has with a cassette?

 

My Audi TT Mk1 3.2 V6 on 04 plates has a tape deck.

 

Mental.

[alf892]

Agree about their shitness. Only good when viewed through rose coloured specs really

 

Only good thing I remember is they train you to listen to a whole album rather than just instantly flicking through favourites.............simply because you can't easily flick through when the tape is older and doesn't like winding.

 

in this way I have found a lot of new favourites.

 

Auto reverse can be a right pain on a tight tape as it thinks it reaches the end and reverses..........over and over

[Honey Badger]

Cassettes were shit in the 80''s and I'm pretty sure that they haven't improved by sitting in damp glove boxes and dusty drawers for 30 years. As a method for adding period misery to shite they're perfect, for actually listening to music in 2015 not so much.

What's the newest car anyone here has with a cassette? Mine is a 2001 S-Type , that's got cassette and boot changer, I'm pretty sure my 2003 e39 had one too. Apart from some opera cassettes that came with the e30 316 I haven't played one since about 1987.

 

2005 Lexus RX with a Mark Levinson stereo has a tape player, so you can hear the hiss in pin sharp 97 speaker audio.

 

didn't DaveBeForSeven post a link to a Bluetooth cassette adapter recently?

[Station]

There's a little switch when you put the cassette in - if you need to convert to have a little 3mm auxillary jack, connect this to a switch, and then wire in the jack to the split between the aerial and cassette split. It's easy to do - I have a cassette adapter, but found the quality isn't very good at all. Aerial adapters are good, but you get a bit of interference. Auxiliary inputs are perfect.

[Station]

 

Only good thing I remember is they train you to listen to a whole album rather than just instantly flicking through favourites.............simply because you can't easily flick through when the tape is older and doesn't like winding.

 

I agree with that, I always found I listened to tapes more than CDs as you couldn't skip them!! As soon as I got them on CD I stopped listening to the album because I got bored of it.

[dave21478]

Im another in the "they were shit back then and still shit now" camp. Casettes are fucking trash - terrible sound quality, fragile, a pain to store and just generally rubbish. Each subsequent copy deteriorated the quality further until you were left with an un-listenable moaning noise (and that not just the Beatles albums). They also made a hellish mess when flung out of car windows in a rage, which apparently happened quite a lot going by the hundreds of feet of unspooled tape you used to see along motorway verges.

 

Even CD`s are pish - probably even more fragile than cassettes. I like to have a lot of music in the car and dont want to have one of those fucking huge books in the glove box with hundreds of sleeves to store your CD`s as they invariably get scratched no matter how careful you are.

 

Digital is where its at - get a mech-less player for under £30 and bang your music onto a USB stick or SD card and have tens of thousands of songs stored on something smaller than your thumbnail. If you want the retro look, stick with your old casette deck but buy a wee mp3 player from ebay for about a fiver shipped from China. Wire its charger in permanantly and splice a headphone lead into the amp of your old player.....everything is fitted out of sight and you have the best of both worlds, if thats your thing.

[mercrocker]

Cassettes were always shit, those in cars even more so. Mediocrity when brand new turned to unlistenable muffled dirge once the heads got a bit shitted up (Usually after about 20 albums). Prone to jammage in a car (remember those miles of thin brown magnetic tape along the hard shoulder - at least 15 of those were mine...) and creating a storage problem that never existed in Light and Third programme days.

 

They were even shit at home, too, effectively reducing any stereo output by about 15 watts per channel. You couldn't roll joints on the covers or read them when you were stoned.

 

Of course the 190E still has a tape player and a glovebox full of Buddy, Chuck and Elvis. It still sounds shit even with the original Blaupunkt and four (count'em) speakers supplied at huge extra cost by Stuttgart. The only conceivably good thing about having tapes in the car is that it makes you have a pen handy. Tape-ists will know what for....

[jonny69]

I preferred tapes to CDs but ultimately the convenience of CDs and then the ability to record to them spelled the end of the tape for me. MP3 hit the final nails in the coffin.

 

I maintained for some time that the sound quality of tapes was better than CD despite the hiss. They had bigger balls and you got much deeper bass on them. I recently pulled some of my tapes out the loft and I stand by my claim - CDs sound metallic in comparison. MP3 really is a step backward in sound quality though. I've learned to put up with it on my earphones, but on the home hifi and in the car they sound awful.

 

For the record, the chrome and metal tapes I have in the loft still play back just as well as they did 20 years ago. I was quite surprised.

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

The only conceivably good thing about having tapes in the car is that it makes you have a pen handy. Tape-ists will know what for....

 

All tape-ists remember the pen! You needed it for writing your suicide note after trying to use a cassette. 

[RichardK]

adaptor.jpg

 

 

I use one of these then plug it into a £3 mp3 player with 10 billion tunes on. Last year I sold more then 1500 blank audio casettes on Fleabay so if anyone wants the remaing 100ish, individually sealed of various types just the postage or collect in the next couple of weeks  GU2 7XH

 

 

ieek.jpg

 

Cor, I would like those. Now I gotta read the thread and see if anyone else bagged them. I still make mixtapes, though it's all iTunes and two playlists rather than working out track durations from LP/CD and EQing to suit the car...

[daveb47]

2005 Lexus RX with a Mark Levinson stereo has a tape player, so you can hear the hiss in pin sharp 97 speaker audio.

 

didn't DaveBeForSeven post a link to a Bluetooth cassette adapter recently?

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/ion-in-car-bluetooth-cassette-adapter-a21zt?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=16P02_W1_D1&utm_content=Cat-1&utm_campaign=16P02-18

[oldcars]

I remember Dad went mental, the Sierra "ate" his Neil Diamond tape when we were driving to France with the caravan. He was angry for hours 

[Taff]

 

 

Digital is where its at - get a mech-less player for under £30 and bang your music onto a USB stick or SD card and have tens of thousands of songs stored on something smaller than your thumbnail. If you want the retro look, stick with your old casette deck but buy a wee mp3 player from ebay for about a fiver shipped from China. Wire its charger in permanantly and splice a headphone lead into the amp of your old player.....everything is fitted out of sight and you have the best of both worlds, if thats your thing.

 

assuming that this can be done to any car stereo, can you provide a diagram mate? I would like to run my iPhone (and thus my music library) through the head unit in the MG.

 

I'll pay you in beans

[strangeangel]

In the 80s I had a Curver box and passenger footwell full of cassettes. Eventually the tapes got eaten by the machine or it shat the playback head up with oxide from the crumbling tapes.

 

In the 90s I had a Curver box and passenger footwell full of CD-Rs. Eventually the discs got scratched and wouldn't play and then the player started skipping on any disc you cared to insert.

 

Nowadays I have two or three SD cards in the little tray in front of the gear lever. No moving parts to stuff up, 320Kbps MP3s and a pair of old Rotel bookshelf speakers thrown in the back FTW. As well as SD cards, it can play stuff off memory sticks, or my MP3 player via a line input. And there's Bluetooth handsfree, not that I know how that works

 

Can't see me going back to tapes anytime soon