Hall O' Tunes

[62vauxhall]

This contains content conderning 8 track tapes so parents, take your children out of the room.

Actually 8 track storage. Over the past few years, I've accumulated a fair few and knew early on if I was going to persist, I had to keep them in something. I took advantage of a friend's woodworking shop and built myself five stacking trays with a capacity of 168 cartridges each. Then had a piece of 1/2" acrylic cut to serve as a table top of sorts and put rubber casters on the bottom tray. Problem was, whenever I had more tapes ready to file away, I had to lift trays off of each other and considering I have them alphabetized by artist, that usually meant all of the top four. 168 cartridges weighs a fair bit so not something I did at the drop of a hat.

Today I made some footings (ripped/planed/crosscut/dadoed) from 2" red oak, appropriated a hallway wall and stacked them on edge. Now at least I can access the tapes without the grunt work. Only took me about three years to get motivated.



Next I must take on making more CD storage. Since used vinyl has been getting harder to find, I've been buying these. Much more plentiful and often cheaper than records. Plus I'm getting new to me music from the 80's & 90's the was never on vinyl.



No photo of my "record rack". It's a combo of fairly new DIY (nice) and older re-purposed (not so nice) so not a thing of beauty.

 

[orange]

Oooooh. That's about 5-6x the number of carts I have...you are definitely diseased

 

[Fast Forward]

The last time I saw that many 8 Tracks was under the seat of my 56 Ford

 

[Bradrock]

Wow! Way cool! Do you collect matchbooks also?

I always had to shove one on the top or bottom of cart. To get 'On Track'

 

[62vauxhall]

Wow! Way cool! Do you collect matchbooks also?

I always had to shove one on the top or bottom of cart. To get 'On Track'

Except for a negative ground Muntz under-dash player I laid in the passenger side floor mat of my positive ground 1962 Vauxhall (hence the handle) Victor station wagon and the Roberts in-dash receiver I installed in my wife's 1973 Pinto, I gave 8 tracks a miss back then. Total number of tapes was maybe four. I never had to participate in the matchbook ritual.

This "thing" began more recently in 2012. Happened to see an Akai 8 track deck (turned out to be a CR-81D) in a used furniture store for $45 which I thought was outrageous. That started me investigating 8 tracks online, discovered the format had a niche following and that the Akai deck I saw was considered highly desirable. Went back to that shop a couple of days later but it was gone. Then the obsession started. A Realistic recorder on e-bay for $25 and about a dozen more afterwards. First tape purchase was over 200 sight unseen for $20. Only kept about 20 and gave the rest away. Learned how to recondition tapes and to date have done over 2,000. What's in the photo are those I've kept - current count around 750. Still look for more but being selective in the tapes I buy - running out of space.

 

[orange]

I honestly don't have more than 175 and that probably includes most of the blanks.

I added a BASF Sound Loop 8+ 90 min a couple weeks ago from a local thrift store.