I have a Sony similar to the one mentioned at the end of the article (Edit: TC FX 420R https://www.cassettedeck.org/sony/tc-fx420r). It's been a bit of a journey, replacing the power supply so it can run at 230V, replacing belts, and fixing the autoreverse. It is fairly user serviceable but you need to have a degree of knowledge, a steady hand, and a soldering iron and other tools. Also you'll want to check you can download the schematics and service manual before you buy. That was a huge help for this Sony.
Looks really cool when it's running, but not massively practical unless you have lots of tapes that you took good care of.
Edit: And it's going to need recapping one day.
Good quality 1970s/80s cassette decks in working order on eBay are not cheap these days.
I still have my Technics 646 I bought new as a student, but do I use it? Barely. Chrome tapes seem to be a thing of the past, forget Type IV, and I don’t think I could spare the time anymore for anything less! Lol.
A lovely medium, but my favourite memory of them isn’t a Nakamichi-scented one. It’s a Sony Walkman-centred world that I miss! If only I still had that Sony DC2, I could retire.
Edit: my mate tells me to STFU, he can bring me some new Type IIs from Greece or Turkey. Result! Back in business!
The world of cassette tape is weird. You can still buy new Maxell UR60/90 type 1 tape but the tape you get in Europe or the US is made in China or Thailand or such and is packaged in red wrappers. The same UR60 if you buy it in Japan is in purple wrappers and in different shells (screws versus glued) and is manufactured in Indonesia and apparently much better quality
I think Type I tape has a fairly low ceiling, my old TDK AR-X were as good as they got, and I can’t imagine these Maxells are any good these days regardless of where they come from. Any other tips?
I work in an art university and a surprising amount of new (underground/experimental) musicians release their music on casettes.
If you wanna sell music on concerts vinyl is too expensive/you would have to upfront too much money, CDs are dead, casettes however had some sort of revival. Vinyl is still king in those circles, but it requres you to be able to realistically finance and sell a run of 250 pieces to be economical.
I saw people buy casettes (with a download code) while not having a player — it is a neat physical artifact for some.
Niche physical releases are cool because they're intentionally obscure and for fans, by fans, and explicitly for certain subcultures or even collectors within those subcultures. I've seen floppy disk and Nintendo DS cartridge releases.
There are even more formats out there you can (re)release on:
Um, CDs are also "niche physical releases" these days. They're not quite as old-fashioned as cassettes or vinyl, but they're still generally considered "obsolete" now with streaming music services.
Most of the artists I'm familiar with that release on cassette tapes are vaporwave or adjacent and sell their work as DRM-free lossless FLAC files on Bandcamp as well, so there's really no downside for the artist or the audience.
I can understand the attraction of a set of needlessly complicated physical contraptions that outweighs the appeal of the actual outcome - and not talking about making coffee here - so cassettes make a lot of sense, they’re unusual, uncommon, and look better on a shelf :)
Oh! Only a few hours ago I was lamenting I never had a cassette deck; I was born in the 70s and went from [0] (like the top picture) straight to cd. So I never had anything for playing or making cassettes like the other kids. I made mix tapes on this enormous thing which no one else could play.
I've seen one of those at a music shop once, it seemed to be studio grade equipment. The book it came with had the electrical diagrams of the whole thing, so you could in theory repair / re-engineer its electrical components. That was a rare thing to see.
I believe including diagrams for the ease of repair was actually quite common back then before all production was heavily automated and moved overseas.
My dad had something like that too. We got to play a bit with it but mostly used to record conversations with old relatives or musicians in the family. I think it had 4 channels that you could switch between separately. We got normal tape recorders pretty early so it was more a fun thing for us to play with.
I have a Sony similar to the one mentioned at the end of the article (Edit: TC FX 420R https://www.cassettedeck.org/sony/tc-fx420r). It's been a bit of a journey, replacing the power supply so it can run at 230V, replacing belts, and fixing the autoreverse. It is fairly user serviceable but you need to have a degree of knowledge, a steady hand, and a soldering iron and other tools. Also you'll want to check you can download the schematics and service manual before you buy. That was a huge help for this Sony.
Looks really cool when it's running, but not massively practical unless you have lots of tapes that you took good care of.
Edit: And it's going to need recapping one day.
Good quality 1970s/80s cassette decks in working order on eBay are not cheap these days.
Site is having Cloudflare SSL handshake errors (Error code 525) for me. Struck out on archive.org and .is, so here's Yandex:
https://yandexwebcache.net/yandbtm?fmode=inject&tm=172984247...
I still have my Technics 646 I bought new as a student, but do I use it? Barely. Chrome tapes seem to be a thing of the past, forget Type IV, and I don’t think I could spare the time anymore for anything less! Lol.
A lovely medium, but my favourite memory of them isn’t a Nakamichi-scented one. It’s a Sony Walkman-centred world that I miss! If only I still had that Sony DC2, I could retire.
Edit: my mate tells me to STFU, he can bring me some new Type IIs from Greece or Turkey. Result! Back in business!
The world of cassette tape is weird. You can still buy new Maxell UR60/90 type 1 tape but the tape you get in Europe or the US is made in China or Thailand or such and is packaged in red wrappers. The same UR60 if you buy it in Japan is in purple wrappers and in different shells (screws versus glued) and is manufactured in Indonesia and apparently much better quality
I think Type I tape has a fairly low ceiling, my old TDK AR-X were as good as they got, and I can’t imagine these Maxells are any good these days regardless of where they come from. Any other tips?
I buy NOS chrome tapes on eBay. They sound pretty darn good.
I work in an art university and a surprising amount of new (underground/experimental) musicians release their music on casettes.
If you wanna sell music on concerts vinyl is too expensive/you would have to upfront too much money, CDs are dead, casettes however had some sort of revival. Vinyl is still king in those circles, but it requres you to be able to realistically finance and sell a run of 250 pieces to be economical.
I saw people buy casettes (with a download code) while not having a player — it is a neat physical artifact for some.
Frustrating that MiniDisc was always a niche thing - those were cool looking physical artifacts and even practical.
Of course real hipsters do FLAC on Iomega ZIP drives.
CDRs just make more sense here in every way. Higher quality, cheaper to produce and les degradation. Fucking hipsters.
Only if you assume people are after the music and not a cool artifact, memento or souvenir.
How is a CD-R not also an artifact, memento, or souvenir?
It misses the "cool" bit
To follow-on:
Niche physical releases are cool because they're intentionally obscure and for fans, by fans, and explicitly for certain subcultures or even collectors within those subcultures. I've seen floppy disk and Nintendo DS cartridge releases.
There are even more formats out there you can (re)release on:
https://www.dookiedemastered.com/
Previously on HN (788 points 16 days ago 205 comments):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41790295
>Niche physical releases are cool
Um, CDs are also "niche physical releases" these days. They're not quite as old-fashioned as cassettes or vinyl, but they're still generally considered "obsolete" now with streaming music services.
Most of the artists I'm familiar with that release on cassette tapes are vaporwave or adjacent and sell their work as DRM-free lossless FLAC files on Bandcamp as well, so there's really no downside for the artist or the audience.
I can understand the attraction of a set of needlessly complicated physical contraptions that outweighs the appeal of the actual outcome - and not talking about making coffee here - so cassettes make a lot of sense, they’re unusual, uncommon, and look better on a shelf :)
Oh! Only a few hours ago I was lamenting I never had a cassette deck; I was born in the 70s and went from [0] (like the top picture) straight to cd. So I never had anything for playing or making cassettes like the other kids. I made mix tapes on this enormous thing which no one else could play.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_recorder
I've seen one of those at a music shop once, it seemed to be studio grade equipment. The book it came with had the electrical diagrams of the whole thing, so you could in theory repair / re-engineer its electrical components. That was a rare thing to see.
I believe including diagrams for the ease of repair was actually quite common back then before all production was heavily automated and moved overseas.
My dad had something like that too. We got to play a bit with it but mostly used to record conversations with old relatives or musicians in the family. I think it had 4 channels that you could switch between separately. We got normal tape recorders pretty early so it was more a fun thing for us to play with.
It's not really relevant to the article, but I find the orange lighting and brushed finish of a Nakamichi Dragon beautiful.
Nakamichi is what we used in theater tech in the 80s and 90s.