{"id":299,"date":"2007-02-07T00:23:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-07T08:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/?p=299"},"modified":"2015-09-22T08:32:48","modified_gmt":"2015-09-22T15:32:48","slug":"tape-decks-i-have-known","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/2007\/02\/07\/tape-decks-i-have-known\/","title":{"rendered":"Tape Decks I Have Known"},"content":{"rendered":"

And, now while we change servers, we’ll hear this lovely organ interlude…<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

[Update: the move went almost perfectly. It was eerie. Anyhow… no music this post. Your ears needed the rest.]<\/p>\n

Nostalgia: Tape Decks I Have Known<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, before women and the bottle… I had another love…<\/span>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ll spare y’all the 3340-S’s and 3440-S’s, the Series 70 1\/2″ 8, or the 40-4 that is, I think, my last remaining reel machine. (All those were TASCAMs by the way.)<\/p>\n

We’ve all seen our share of most of those, probably.<\/p>\n

But yesterday I was pondering this picture I’d earlier stumbled across on the web of (an instance of) the first tape machine I did an overdub on, circa 1964, Sony TC630<\/strong>. (It belonged to my “rich” cousin and it was an object of great envy on my part. But he was also generous enough to loan it to me a few times, including to do the preprogrammed music for my grandparents’ 50th anniversery party, for which I also recorded my mom dueting with herself on “The Anniversery Waltz” — my first overdub.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

While I pondered the glory that had been the TC630, half-watched on the TV was the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 DVD of The Crawling Hand.<\/em><\/p>\n

I looked up from the photo of the TC630 just in time to see one of the characters in the movie opening a small tape recorder… it took a second but I realized it was a copy of the same, no-name, no-capstan $20 battery powered tape recorder I got for Christmas in 1962 — my very first tape recorder<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nThe Machine That Started It All for Me<\/span><\/p>\n

About halfway through the message he’s taping to tell his girlfriend and her professor uncle that he’s turning into a monster he goes into monster mode and smashes the poor little machine (How poor was it? So poor it couldn’t even afford a capstan. Buh dum.)<\/p>\n

Or tries to smash it. The plastic top goes flying right away — but it was made during the waning days of the overbuilt-metal era of Japanese transistor consumer electronics — and no matter how the teen-monster kicks and stomps it, it remains amazingly intact…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Around the beginning of my senior year of high school I pulled my savings together and bought my own stereo 7″ reel deck, a Sony TC-250a<\/strong>… it was $119, fair trade, IIRC — and it was NO TC630… you couldn’t even record a single track at once — just what was effectively “joint stereo,” so there was no overdubbing possible. That would have been nice but I didn’t play an instrument then and I mostly wanted to make my own mix tapes and… you know… stuff. \"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

My first plug in tape recorder, also a Sony, a little hazy on the number, was a 5″ reel transistor-tube hybrid machine (transistor recording preamps and tube power amp). I HAVE seen a picture of it on the web but foolishly didn’t save it — and haven’t seen one since. It had a molded white heavy styrene top and a coral colored grill and underpan. I really loved that thing but sold it for something like $3.50 at a yard sale in the early 70s. I guess sometimes you gotta let go. The kid who bought it probably had a lot of fun. I hope.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

__________________<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And, now while we change servers, we’ll hear this lovely organ interlude… [Update: the move went almost perfectly. It was eerie. Anyhow… no music this post. Your ears needed the rest.] Nostalgia: Tape Decks I Have Known Yes, before women and the bottle… I had another love… I’ll spare y’all the 3340-S’s and 3440-S’s, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[550,493,549,548],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1352,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions\/1352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}