50 years of the Audio Cassette

Yes it is 50 years since the first audio cassette appeared.

Do you remember them? What did you do with yours?

Buying music on cassettes - never was as good as records then CD's killed them both.

Recording from the radio/copying your mates Cassettes/LP's - yes that was great.

You didn't really mind the wow, hiss and flutter. After all the players were that tinny anyway.

I got a Chrome/Metal tape deck for my Hi-Fi, just meant I could hear the wow, hiss and flutter better.

Then do you remember un-jamming the cassette recorder.
Using a pencil or biro to rewind the tape? Hopefully it still played. I even resorted to cutting out the ruined bit and slicing them up with a razor blade and sellotape - it worked after a fashion.

C90's were best - C120's seemed to be the worst offenders at jamming - I suppose they were thinner.

Then there were the games - loading you Jet Set Willy game on the Spectrum  20mins of screeching and the  "load error"!! Arrrrggh! Start again. 

Ah those were the days (I don't think so).

Peugeot 208 - Jeremy Clarkson

I don't normally like Jeremy Clarkson, despite him coming from near my home town Doncaster.

I know he's opinionated (so am I) and he does it for publicity (I don't like that), but his article in yesterdays Sunday Times rang true to me. He talked about building his HiFi, I did so too.

When I was at Uni in the late '70's I banked my Grant Cheque and thought "what could I buy now I have money?". No thought of how I could live for the next 3 months. £200 seemed like I'd won the lottery. Any way sense prevailed and I managed. I listened to my "mono" Pye, radio cassette recorder and even rigged up an external speaker, which I built myself from an old quality radio speaker and built its case myself from thick plywood, to supplement the sound quality via the "ext" socket. Remember those days you had a choice of Mono or Stereo LPs. Stereo was the Blu-Ray of the day.
Any way as time passed I realised that decent sound was an essential for student life holed up in my hall of residence "cell". So I formed a plan. First some speakers - a Wharfedale kit! I got them and over the summer hols built the cabinets myself from "chipboard" . I connected them to the home "stereo" and vastly improved the sound quality of the "bush" radio-gram.

In the 3rd year I planned to buy an amp and a deck, for my flat  So there it began. My hi-fi system. Pioneer PL514 belt drive deck, Sure M75ED cartridge, Trio amp, (30 watts RMS per channel). I took back my Wharfedale speakers and left the Bush back with the original speakers.

Now I could sit back and listen to my Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Roxy Music and Simon and Garfunkel LPs in glorious stereo HiFi. With little rumble or hiss, or Wow and Flutter. This was all essential in the 70's.

Next I added a tape deck, Sharp. Metal capable of course.
This system has followed us around (through my marraige and various homes) like our "first child". It was years before I added the always wanted, Tuner (Denon). Then in the 90's CD's were dominant and so a CD player had to be added, Technics.  Funny there are only so many "phono" plug sockets built into the Trio amp, but it does the job - enough is OK. 

Then at our 25th wedding anniversary. Disaster. After  great night something was wrong - the sound was gone. Luckily not the amp but the old faithful Wharfedales had blown. So they were replaced with some 100watt Missions. My, how technology has changed. A new life in the old system. Maybe we'll get another 25years?

Oh, and by the way I like the Peugeot 206 best Jeremy.