I originally posted this article on the Como Audio blog (which no longer exists) 2 years ago. In honor of the cassette tape’s Birthday, I’ve updated it and present it here for the first time on my own blog.
In 1964, sixty years ago last month, the same year The Beatles invaded America, Philips introduced the US to the recordable cassette tape (trademarked under the name “Compact Cassette”). Though the new plastic fantastic invention was intended for dictation, two years later, prerecorded music tapes hit the market. For the music enthusiast, the cassette’s size proved much more convenient than 7” diameter reel-to-reel tapes, 12” records, and bulky 8 tracks, with the ability to easily slip a tape in one’s shirt or pant pocket. Reel to reel music tapes were harder to source and the playback machines were expensive, heavy, and occupied considerably more real estate. Records had been the dominant format, and despite the cassette’s obvious advantages, according to vintagecassettes.com, it took a solid twenty years until cassettes finally outsold their vinyl counterparts.
As advanced as cassettes were for the time, they weren’t without their flaws. Almost every cassette owner experienced the tape spooling inside their tape deck or portable player. If you were fortunate enough to catch it in time you could extract the tape and wind it back into the cassette housing by sticking a pencil in one of the reel holes and rotating it. The nightmare scenario was the tape getting mangled around the pinch roller and/or capstan, “eating” the tape, and effectively relegating the cassette to the dust bin.
Tape decks needed attention as well. They had to be cleaned and demagnetized regularly to maintain good performance, and sometimes required head re-alignment and bias adjustment. Cassette owners also had to be careful to keep their tapes away from magnets which could erase tapes (never a concern with records or CDs).
One consumer electronics product to give the fledgling cassette format a shot in the arm was the Model 200 from 1971 which was made in Massachusetts by Advent Corp. I read this model cost $260. If true, that would be over $2,000 today after adjusting for inflation! Advent was founded in Cambridge in 1967 by Henry Kloss and built high-quality home loudspeakers. Advent was also the first company to produce a projection television long before cable or home theater ever became part of our lexicon. But I digress.
From 200 to 201
The 200, which used an unreliable Nakamichi transport, was replaced by the Model 201 which used an industrial-strength, commercial-grade 3M Wollensak transport. It had an analog tape counter, a generously-sized analog VU meter which could be switched between channels or combined to measure both channels, a single rewind/fast forward lever, a removable dust cover, and came housed in real a wood case. These were not the first consumer home tape decks, but the Advent models were the very first high-fidelity home decks to include patented Dolby B noise reduction for recording and playback (reducing tape hiss by 9dB) and CrO2 (chrome) tape support.
The importance of the Model 201 to the evolution of recorded music cannot be overstated. From the Model 201’s original user manual: “…the 201 incorporates more than the usual number of user-accessible adjustments to permit the serious recordist to achieve the recording quality, that, just a short time ago, was thought possible only with the best and most expensive open reel recorder.”
My friend and former long-time colleague, Bruce Gregory, was a young engineer at Advent Corp. in the 1970’s and was asked by Henry Kloss to handle the electronic design of the Model 201. I spoke with Gregory by phone and asked him about that landmark project.
Peter: Advent was your first major engineering gig?
Bruce: “Yeah. They hired me because they went in production with the Model 100 Dolby [Noise Reduction Unit], then they [found] out [it didn’t] work. So, they hired me to see if I could straighten it out, which I did. Then we did the [Model] 101 Dolby which [was] either record or playback but not both. Ray Dolby did most of that and I did some of it. I probably started the [Model 201] in late 1970. It took nine months before production “
Peter: What can you tell me about the design of the Model 201? Was it difficult?
Bruce: “Well, okay, for me, it was hard. The electronics…I had never designed a low-noise pre-amp before. So, you know, I went to my transistor theory book [from] college and read through it until I found out the tape head impedance [was] a real factor and you [could] pick some transistors that [worked] with that better than others…pick the right transistor to get low noise. When we were done, it was substantially better than the electronics in the Revox…It had a regulated power supply in it so line voltage wouldn’t affect its performance. It had adjustments on the back for bias…trim pots for regular tape and chromium tape, so if you wanted to you could adjust your own machine to be super flat. The heads came from Michigan Magnetics who [made] all the heads on, like, your Ampex half inch tape. We had a really good quality tape head. The wow and flutter [were] pretty good. Henry [Kloss] did a kind of unusual board layout. When you [went] from record to play, you [had] to switch about a half a dozen-things. So, we put the switches all over the board and Henry made up this, like, spider steel thing that tied them all together, so when you moved the lever on the top it moved all the switches together. And they had little nylon bushings that it ran in. That was kind of unusual.”
Peter: In those days, the cassette wasn’t really being taken seriously for music until the Model 201. Did Henry Kloss ever explain why he decided to make a hi-fi tape deck?
Bruce: “Henry felt you could get open-reel performance on a cassette deck. And our standard demonstration [was], we’d go somewhere and record a song from the record onto the cassette deck and then we’d play them back synched up and nobody could tell which was the record and which was the cassette. It was really good. It was head and shoulders above everything else out there. The Harman Kardon and the Fisher [decks] weren’t very good.”
Peter: Advent was the first to make and sell their own blank and pre-recorded chromium dioxide cassette tapes. How did that work?
Bruce: “The cassette tape [came] on, like 7” reels, which is thousands of feet cassette tape, it’s really, really thin. So, the operator would put in an empty cassette, splice the leader to the big reel, record it, and then at the end [he] would splice the leader on the other end…The classical music, Andy [Kotsatos] and I recorded a lot of that…We did some live recording at Sanders Theater and at Brandeis Theater…we recorded [the Boston Camerata] in the Museum of Fine Arts so it would sound like it was in a castle. We had one tape of Bob Wier from the Grateful Dead…Anyhow, Henry dealt with, I think, Dupont directly on the tape. I mean, chromium tape was pretty new. Nobody else was really doing anything.”
It Started With Video Tape
According to Como Audio’s CEO, Tom DeVesto, who founded what would become one of Advent’s most successful dealers, The Bridge in North Carolina, and eventually went on to become Advent’s International Sales Manager, Advent’s cassettes originally used video tape. From a vintage Advent advert in Stereo Review magazine: “Although DuPont’s Crolyn tape was being used extensively in video recording applications, and justifying its advance press notices, no one had made the leap to marketing it for audio purposes for home use. We decided to do so because we felt that Crolyn was necessary for the very best in potential cassette performance…and better overall high frequency performance than any other tape we know of.” *
As time went on, the record/playback devices became more sophisticated, offering features like Dolby C, Dolby HX Pro, Dolby S, auto reverse, and multiple motors. One of the better-known manufacturers was Nakamichi. Their top-of-the-line 1000 ZXL sold for almost $4,000 and that was forty years ago! “Nak” as they were affectionately referred to by audiophiles, brought a number of innovations to the table. They were the first to employ three dedicated heads, one each for erasing, recording, and playback. Their transports were so accurate they made the cassette’s pressure pad unnecessary and actually lifted it out of the way. Their head-turning UDAR (Uni-Directional Auto Reverse), as used in three models, physically pushed the cassette out and flipped it around to play the other side, thereby saving the listener a trip out of his chair (and eliminating concerns over alignment issues from a reversing playback head).
Train Your Dragon
Nakamichi’s legendary Dragon cassette deck brought high performance (very low wow and flutter and 20Hz-20kHz frequency response) and a super-sexy style to the consumer tape deck (along with a hefty price tag). I vividly remember drooling over a Dragon at a Tweeter Etc. store in R.I., knowing I would never be able to afford one. One day I was in the store, my heart sunk as a salesman gave a deal on their demonstration model to a woman who was buying it as a present for her boyfriend. What a gift, and what a girlfriend! I bought a used one on eBay (a Dragon, not a girlfriend) about two decades later and still own it today. Based on my success rate, a girlfriend never would’ve lasted that long.
Jukebox
In addition to the Nakamichi Dragon, I also own a Pioneer CT-M66R circa 1990, a kind of cassette jukebox accepting up to six tapes that can be played in order or randomly shuffled. Not to be out done, Mitsubishi’s DT-156/157/160 auto changing models held up to 7 tapes. Sony came out with their TC-C05 in 1992 which housed an internal carousel that accepted up to five cassettes.
It might surprise you to learn that the cassette jukebox wasn’t an invention of the 1990s. The very first consumer multi-play cassette machine actually came out in 1970. Denon’s “Cassematic 12” supported up to twelve tapes, was housed in a wood cabinet, and sported prominent mechanical push button controls typical of the 70’s.
The mother of all multi-cassette players, however, was the Panasonic RS-296 from 1972 which held a whopping twenty cassette tapes in its sleek, rotating aluminum carousel. It’s a rare treat indeed to see one of these babies in action. The push buttons on the right were used to directly select the cassette you wanted to listen to or to program the playback in a specific order. Once selected, the tape would disappear below the carousel to play and then pop back up again when it was finished playing or was stopped and ejected.
You can still find decent home cassette decks being manufactured today by Teac and Tascam, but most others are inexpensive, low-end affairs. Since Dolby noise reduction is no longer available for consumer decks, The Teac W-1200 uses its own noise reduction akin to Dolby B, includes a wireless remote control, has a two year warranty, and is available in black or silver.
The home tape deck gave rise to the “mix tape”. This was a homemade compilation of the listener’s favorite songs culled from other tapes and records. When you got tired of the songs, you simply recorded a new mix on top of the previous set, and presto, you had yourself a whole new playlist. You could trade your tapes with friends and hear what songs they were listening to. These were custom playlists well before playlists were a thing.
Walk this way: My near mint condition Sony TPS-L2 Walkman with the box, included headphones, and still sealed Sony batteries. Photo by Peter Skiera.
Anywhere, Anytime
Another huge boost for the cassette’s public acceptance was the legendary Sony Walkman, introduced in the US in 1980. With the Walkman, which was powered by a couple of standard AA batteries, cassettes were no longer limited to home or studio use, but could now be enjoyed while traveling, jogging, sunning at the beach, riding the bus, lying on the sofa, or rollerblading (it was a thing back then)…just about anywhere you wanted to take your music. Over the course of three decades, Sony sold about 200 million Walkmans (Walkmen?) worldwide according to Wikipedia. Today, first generation Walkmans sell on eBay anywhere from several hundred dollars to upwards of $3,000! Nostalgia is fun but expensive.
If that’s too pricey for you, take heart. There are several companies making portable tape players today, with We Are Rewind and FiiO being the best known.
Knobs, jacks, and buttons, oh my! FiiO’s R13. Photo from FiiO’s Facebook page.
New tape players aren’t just for older folks looking to experience the nostalgia of the past. I’ve read that young people like that portable cassette players don’t use their phone’s battery power as is the case when they play music from their phone, and that they enjoy the tactile sensation of pressing buttons and handling tapes. In the case of We Are Rewind, its player has the added benefit of being able to stream its audio to Bluetooth headphones, earbuds, or speakers. The colors and industrial designs of these players are also very appealing.
On the downside, a lot of reviews complain about the reliability of these players. From a sound stand point, there’s a considerable amount of playback hiss since there’s no noise reduction. There’s also no tape counter which can make finding that particular song you want a hear little harder. If you’re in the market for a portable cassette player and want the best sound, you might have a better experience going with a used vintage player even if it costs a little more and you have to buy batteries for it.
Boxing The Boom
In the early 1980’s, the boombox took cassette tape portability to the extreme. As time went on, boomboxes grew bigger, louder, and heavier. With lighted VU meters, dual cassette decks for dubbing, multiple input jacks (including dedicated phono and microphone inputs), tone controls, Dolby noise reduction, AM/FM tuner (some models included shortwave!), and dedicated tweeters and woofers, the boombox became a full-fledged, shoulder-mounted, hi-fi stereo system. The Conion C-100F, for instance, was a monstrous, 3-way system that took ten D cell batteries! You can’t truly appreciate the sheer scale of this model without being in its presence. It even had a very loud alarm that, when set, would activate if moved. I own the Canadian version which was branded under the Clairtone name.
A few new boombox tape players are still available today like the “Brooklyn” by GPO Retro for $260, but they pale in comparison to their predecessors.
Back then, music formats had a greater chance of success if they could be enjoyed in vehicles. Auto makers began including radios with tape playback in their vehicles allowing cassettes to get out of our dreams and into our cars. There was also a plethora of aftermarket head units. Philips was the first to come out with a car radio/cassette combo back in 1968.
Dead Tapes
One unique activity that stemmed directly from portable cassette recorders was the “Tapers’ Section”. This was a designated area at Grateful Dead concerts where fans were actually allowed to bring in recording equipment and record the live performance. While almost all other bands prohibited recording of their live concerts, The Dead welcomed it, likely making them the most recorded band in the world. Fans would trade their tapes with fellow tapers. Many “Deadheads” have since digitized their recordings and posted them on the web. Archive.org has nearly 15,000 live “Dead” recordings.
Listen To A Book
Tapes weren’t just for music. Over about a ten-year span, from the mid-1980’s to mid-1990’s, publishers released books on tape, with many read by the authors. At its peak, the audio book market swelled to $1.5 billion annually according to Wikipedia. “Readers” could hear a book on tape when it wasn’t practical to actually read one, such as in the car, riding public transportation, jogging, cooking, or doing housework. They were also embraced by the blind and those with reading disabilities. Audio books could be purchased at traditional bookstores and music stores, and were lent out by public libraries. Even the Book-of-the-Month Club and Time-Life got in on the act. Like used music tapes, used audio books can be found at thrift stores and on the web. According to an Audio Publishers Association survey, audio books remain very popular with sales up 9% last year at $2 billion. The survey identified history/biography/memoir as the most popular genres.
DCC
I’m not done with the history lesson. In 1992, Philips took the cassette tape to the next level with a new format called DCC (Digital Compact Cassette), not to be confused with Sony’s Digital Audio Tape (DAT). Don’t feel bad if you don’t remember it or never heard of it. It all but vanished a mere four years later. DCC touted better sound quality since the tapes stored the music digitally like CDs and were 18- bit vs. CD’s 16-bit. The hardware was backward compatible with analog tapes for playback only, not for recording- a rather significant drawback. Tapes were loaded into a slide-out tray, not a pop open door like analog tape decks. Another cool feature lacking from its analog cousin was meta data…the playback machine’s display could show the artist, track number, and song information embedded in the DCC’s auxiliary track of the playing tape, something many CDs didn’t do at the time.
The DCC was not the tape deck’s last gasp, however. In 1996, as the cassette was preparing to meet its maker, Pioneer brought out several new models featuring a 20-bit digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital converter which digitized and processed the cassette’s analog audio and then converted the digital signal back to analog for superior sound. These decks also had Pioneer’s proprietary Digital Noise Reduction which virtually eliminated all tape hiss. Finally, Pioneer included what it called Digital FLEX which measured the tape’s frequency response and automatically “filled in” any missing high frequencies. With Dolby C engaged, these Pioneer decks could achieve a signal-to-noise ratio of 90dB, approaching CD-quality. Unlike the DCC format, Pioneer’s new technology was designed to work with standard cassette tapes. I have a gently used Pioneer Elite CT-05D I bought on eBay which has the same suite of digital features. The Digital Noise Reduction feature is quite remarkable. I well remember selling these Pioneer decks when I was the Assistant Manager at Cambridge SoundWorks in Portland, ME. We did not sell many, but kudos to Pioneer for having dug deep into their bag of tricks to try to rescue the cassette deck. Unfortunately, it was too late for the tape.
In the musical words of George Harrison, all things must pass. When the compact disc burst onto the scene in the early 1980’s in all its shiny, futuristic glory, it was the nail in the cassette’s coffin, metaphorically speaking. Analog tapes had a warmer sound compared to the CD’s colder, digital sound, and made recording easy. But let’s face the inconvenient truth- the cassette didn’t stand a ghost of a chance against the CD. By 2003, the cassette tape had all but vanished from the major music labels’ catalogs.
Like records, the cassette tape has been making a comeback of late, albeit on a considerably smaller scale. As the song goes, everything old is new again, or as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Last year in the US, 436,400 cassette tapes were sold. There’s even a Cassette Store Day (CSD), though it has not enjoyed nearly the same traction in the USA as Record Store Day has.
Top 10 List
Naturally, you can source used tapes on eBay, at your local thrift store, and on-line from web shops like 3rd floortapes.com, tapeheadcity.com, and Etsy.com, but some chains like Urban Outfitters and Newbury Comics sell new cassette titles by artists such as Dua Lipa, Harry Styles, and Taylor Swift. You will even find cassettes at Walmart.com and Amazon.
Here are the top 10 tape titles from last year according to stereogum.com ranked by highest to lowest sales:
1. Various Artists – Guardians Of The Galaxy, Vol. 1: Awesome Mix Vol. 1 (18,000 copies)
2. Taylor Swift – 1989 (Taylor’s Version) (17,500)
3. Various Artists – Guardians Of The Galaxy, Vol. 2: Awesome Mix Vol. 2 (16,000)
4. Various Artists – Guardians Of The Galaxy, Vol. 3: Awesome Mix Vol. 3 (13,000)
5. Taylor Swift – Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) (11,500)
6. Nirvana – Bleach (8,000)
7. Metallica – 72 Seasons (7,500)
8. Various Artists – Guardians Of The Galaxy: Cosmic Mix, Vol. 1 (6,000)
9. Various Artists – Barbie: The Album (5,500)
10 Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher (5,500)
In a race to the bottom, like new tape decks, new cassette titles are not encoded with Dolby noise reduction because the Dolby chip set was discontinued years ago. Call me old school, but new cassette releases without Dolby is like Las Vegas without gambling.
Be that as it may, tapes are like musical comfort food, and a tape collection will occupy less space than records. They also require less cash, as most new titles retail for much less than new vinyl records. That’s because cassettes are inexpensive to make, even in short runs, making them a “reel” deal. Used tapes, however, are the ultimate bargain. I bought a half dozen used music tapes at a local thrift store for $1 apiece (and they have Dolby NR).
Bid Early And Often
Of course, you can spend much more if you wish. How about a tape of Aerosmith’s “Just Push Play” for a mere $50,000? Too expensive? There’s a cassette of Led Zeppelin’s “Physical Graffiti “ going for a cool $2,800. If you’ve got a box of old tapes in your attic or basement, you might want to go through them before you drop them off at the Salvation Army.
Sourcing blank audio cassettes for recording is a different story. Maxell’s blank chrome and metal tapes were highly regarded back in the day. Who could forget the iconic black and white Maxell advert of the cool dude in dark sunglasses holding on for dear life in his high arm chair while getting blown away along with his martini (complete with flying olive) by his JBL loudspeakers? You can still find Maxell’s Type I blank cassettes for sale, but their Chrome and Metal tape formulations have been out of production for some time and are quite expensive today on eBay.
A New Take On Tapes
National Audio Company is one of only a handful of US companies that still make cassettes and is the last remaining company in the US to manufacture its own tape. The family-owned, 135,000 square foot factory is located in Springfield, MO and has been in business for 55 years. They exhausted their supply of consumer-grade audio tape about three years ago but developed a new Type 1 formulation which they say is “designed specifically for maximum performance when recording on real-time consumer cassette decks.” They also developed a new Type II formulation which uses cobalt instead of Chromium Dioxide, yet uses the same bias and equalization as Chrome. The company claims their new recipe results in better frequency response and improved bass.
Music tape duplication accounts for most of NAC’s business. They made the best-selling Guardian of The Galaxy tapes. NAC has done cassette projects for Pearl Jam and the Smashing Pumpkins and they have partnered with Disney, Sony, Universal, and several independent music labels.
I interviewed NAC’s President, Steve Stepp, for this original article but that information is outdated so I’ve removed it. I asked Stepp a new set of questions for this updated article but he refused to respond in writing. I guess he wanted me to buy one of his tapes and tape the interview.
Why is a 60 year old music format popular again? Perhaps it’s nostalgia. Perhaps it’s because they’re cheap. Perhaps because, unlike playing a digital music file, they provide the full sensory experience…ripping apart the cellophane like unwrapping a Christmas gift, popping open the plastic case, unfolding and reading the artwork insert, and finally, grasping the tape and inserting it in the player, and pressing the Play button. See me. Feel me. Touch me. Heal me. Or, perhaps it’s simply because they’re analog. After all, our ears are analog. We weren’t born with a DAC in our brain. Whatever the reason, know that cassette tapes completely altered the music landscape, in a good way, and they’re still relevant for many music lovers, yours included. Long live analog.
*Dobly is a trademark of Dolby Laboratories. Crolyn is a trademark of DuPont.
Trivia (from to Wikipedia): The 2010 Lexus SC430 was the last domestic car to include an in-dash radio/cassette combo player as standard equipment.
Trivia: A C60 cassette (30 minutes each side) contains a total of 279 feet of audio tape.
Trivia: According to bands.co.uk, if every cassette sold from day one until today were placed end-to-end, they would stretch from the earth to the moon and back again four times. Houston, we have a resurgence.
Trivia: In a previous life, Bruce Gregory sold and repaired marine electronics, and was one of the last to be on and off the Andrea Gail before she was lost at sea with all hands during the perfect storm of 1991.
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