Kate's Track Shack 8-Track Memories Page 3

I just wanted to share my own, somewhat unusual history with 8-tracks.

Being an 80s kid, I discovered 8-tracks long after they were gone from music stores. As I recall, I got my first stereo with 8-track and a lot of tapes in late 1990 or early 1991. I was instantly fascinated by the player and tapes, wondering how I could switch from one song to another so quickly. Unfortunately, the player didn't last long and it was quite some time before I got another one. The best of the bunch was the Panasonic RS-806US 8-track recorder. One was given to me by a fellow who lived in my building, and I found the other at a thrift store. That one was part of a window display and wouldn't be for sale for another few days.

I grew up around a lot of older stuff. Even the building I lived in was built in the mid-60s, going by the year seen on a telephone junction box in the basement. Vintage was in my blood, and for a long time 8-tracks reigned supreme.

Eventually I took a long break from anything vintage, not really caring what I had as long as it worked. It's like there was something missing during that time, I couldn't really articulate my major interests and felt like a very boring person.

Gradually I got back into 8-tracks, starting with Ford AM-FM 8-track stereos purchased from eBay. It was slow at first, then it just snowballed and I now have seven whose model years range from 1975-1983, all with dial tuning. I rarely saw these locally, and the two I was able to get when I was younger were broken. I put off getting another component deck for ages, sometimes hooking up the car stereos indoors. I finally got off my hands and got another Panasonic RS-806US, the nicest one I saw on eBay at the time. Shortly after though, an even nicer one showed up so I grabbed it as well, so now I have twin Panasonic decks just like I did as a teen.

I will never again leave 8-tracks behind, or anything else vintage as long as I can use it. If it's new, it usually isn't worth having to me. My other major electronic interest is color TVs made from the late 60s to about 1980. - Jon Adams, Nova Scotia, Canada

Kathy and Dan,

I thought you'd like to hear about my encounter with the members of Cheap Trick last night. I went to see them in Port Chester New York. They put on an excellent concert. As you may know being 8 track aficionados. Into 2009 they found a small company in Texas that actually put / produced a small number of their newest album The Latest on 8 Track Tape. Their cost was $15 a tape so they sold them for 30 on their web site. I bought one and wanted to buy more but they were gone by the time I went back to get several more tapes. After the show there was a group of people hanging out at the side of the theater where they loaded up the gear from the stage. The band came out first Rick Nielsen the guitarist. I got him to sign the tape. Then after a little while Robin Zander delete Singer came out.when I handed my 8 track tape to him, his face lit up and he smiled saying " wow this is great" He then told a quick story among the crowd that they sent the tape out to radio stations and the radio stations thought it was a joke and send it back to them saying "we don't play this form in anymore we don't even have players to play the tape" I bet I was one of the very few people over the last six years and actually brought one of the 8 Tracks for them to autograph. I'll send pictures separately from this email - Peter, NY

Peter - Cheap Trick Pic 1 Peter Cheap Trick Pic 2 Peter Cheap Trick 3

When I was in high school I used to have quite a few 8-tracks (Grand Funk!!) and this rather nice Craig player but as they got played, they started sounding poorly due to me not knowing much about maintenance and the pads getting smashed up. Then, if I remember correctly, the player belt gave up the ghost and that's when I threw the lot in the trash. By then I was collecting LP's so that also had something to do with pitching the 8-tracks.

Recently however, our local church had a rummage sale, and I got like 30 8-track tapes for $1 or something incredible. They were mostly Montovani and stuff like that, but there were a few rock titles in the batch also, Mike Oldfield and CCR plus some others. Concurrently, there was a gent on eBay selling off a lot of players that all needed repairs or some sort of attention, and I managed to get six players for $80 shipped. I have managed to get every one of those going again except for a quad player that refused to play tracks 3 and 4 on a regular stereo tape no matter what. Also on eBay, I discovered some vendors who sell replacement pads and switching splice tape, and what do do you know? I am back into 8-tracks again.

My huge (re)discovery has been that if the players are serviced and aligned, and above all else, CLEAN, and the tapes have good pads and splices, most of them sound just a nice as they ever did and are they are absolutely as good sounding if not better than cassettes. Plus, after working on numerous highly complicated cassette decks through the years, the incredible simplicity of the typical 8-track player mechanism is a real joy to work on. So, that's my story... Mike Murray, Macomb, IL

When I was a kid (back in the early 80’s) we used to have an 8-track player in our car and some cool tapes. One of them was Engelbert Humperdinck’s “In time” album. Now, I don’t remember at which track/program it was, but there was (as it often goes with 8-tracks) a song called “Without you” that had the first part at the end of a certain track and the second part at the beginning of the next track. The ending of the first part was quite abruptly and so, being a kid, I asked my father: “Well, why is that music cutting out here and fading back in after the track changes?” Well, my father replied: “Oh eh, there’s a piece missing I guess.” So, afterwards I went into the car as it was parked in the garage and looked for that spot on the tape and as the song cutted out, I pulled the cart out of the player and I really expected to find no tape at all on the part of the cartridge where the pinch roller, the pads etc is located, because my father said there was a piece missing… But, there was tape and so I couldn’t understand it… I don’t remember if I spoke to my father about this again, but when I recently read some stuff about 8-tracks and how they sometimes got around the limitations of the format switching track lists around and dividing songs by a track change, I recalled me looking at that tape and wondering why there was tape on a spot where there was a piece missing. J