Cassette Tape Ads

After my comments about the high prices of "budget" LPs in the turntable thread, those prices are interesting.With 20 shillings in a £, the C60 was almost the price of a budget LP. To put things in context my parents moved upmarket to a house costing £5000 (or 4000 BASF C90s) in 1968. If those tapes had gone up like houses they would be £100 each.

 

Either that or make your own Album. In the late 1960s my Father had a Grundig DC cassette recorder back then. Things I recall it being used for were

• Taking it to a steam rally to record the Fairground organs there
• Secretly taping my Grandmother when she told one of her long family stories
• Recording The Seekers farewell concert off the TV (with the microphone in front of the speaker and everyone having to stay quiet. I don't recall it being used to record from the radio but that must have been a big use. People were doing that using reel to reels years before cassettes were invented.
  
• My Mother (who wad a teacher) borrowing it to play the music for school productions.

A few years later my Mother would get her own Sanyo Radio Cassette which she would use extensively at school. By then I can recall various companies advertising discounted brand name tapes.

p.s isn't Wikipedia amazing. It has the date and details of the concert I mentioned
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seekers#Return_to_Australia_and_breakup

 

I honestly don't know if that was a joke or a serious question.

From the 1950s onwards until cassettes took over reel to reel was by far the biggest home recording medium. So much so that some small Japanese company who had previously only made electrically heated cushions and rice cookers launched one as their first electronic product
https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/History/capsule/23/#:~:text=In 1950, Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering,That was 60 years ago.

Funnily I have actually cut a record along with my sister. That was in a "Cut Your Own Record" booth similar to a photo booth booth at a major railway station. That must have been in 1966 or maybe 1967 as we sang the Beatles Yellow Submarine which was getting loots of airplay back then. I have never seen such a machine since and don't know what happened to the disc, but there are articles about them https://magazine.vinylmeplease.com/magazine/history-those-recording-studio-booths/

 

I knew portable machines existed but have never seen one. Have you seen the film "The Kings Speech". One plays an important part in the plot.
However, I guess you had to be the Kings personal Speech therapist to afford one. In the film the Lionel Louge (speech therapist) character describes it as "The latest thing from America".

During WWII allied reporters also used portable disc cutting machines.
Check out "Hearing from the front line" in http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/history/story/2007/02/070122_html_40s.shtml
The information about the 40lb (18Kg) machines is also interesting.

However, in 1945 the Allies discovered the Germans had far superior recording technology using tape
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_recorder#Modern_tape_recorders

 

"Music on bones" - it reminded me of old times in the USSR where they managed to cut records on X-Ray films in 50-60s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribs_(recordings)

 

"grooves were cut with the help of special machines made, they say, from old phonographs by skilled conspiratorial hands" "The quality was awful, but the price was low. The disks could really only be played five to ten times." — enough to make five or ten quality copies on Metal tape.

Regarding Sony's high and higher fidelity tapes: it seems they considered ferri-chrome as higher fidelity tape than pure chrome.

 

Since we are still discussing record cutting two videos


Both pieces of equipment make a Crosley sized tape recorded look portable.

@Mister X Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find an advert from the last century for record cutting equipment.

 

^ I almost got a heart attack seeing this ad for "twin packs of Sony UCX-90 cassette tapes". But seems it was not Sony who published this advertisement, but a British supermarket network. After all, why should one expect good grammar from a shop if even the BBC cannot do it right?

 

It is as Sony ad as Boots, Comet and Dixons are completely separate large U.K retailers. I also don't see what is wrong with the grammar, unless you mean the extra s, although in a shop you would hope there would be lots of packs. Everyone here knows what it means .
https://www.travisperkins.co.uk/pro...ar/power-tools/kits-and-twin-packs/c/1500474/
Now I will have to seek out this book. I have the similar Rock and Pop review they did at around the same time.

 

I was surprised to not find any on eBay but there were three on Amazon so I ordered one.
In real terms about the same as the £1.25 Sony claimed the book was worth, and even better it was a Charity selling it so the money will go to a good cause. When it arrives I will post some pictures.