Hello all. While talking about the crazy prices of vintage gear these days (thread here) I realized it would be nice to see how do you fill up your mixtapes (I mean, the J-card) and don't forget to show us how do they look when they are a pile, just like this (seen on pinterest): Also, please tell us a bit of how did you do the process and add as many photos as you like. Add as many details as you wish: the more you tell the more enjoyment: what's the chronology, where did you record them, why did you choose those tapes, what equipment did you use, which was your sources, how did you label them and why... In my case I have 4 different categories: First when I started to record my own cassettes I just was buying different tapes each time. Now a type I SONY, then a type II TDK, then a BASF, and so on... Lately I realized I wanted to have a good looking collection of mixtapes, so I need to choose ONE good tape and buy the same each time. I started to do this with TDK CDIngII. Then Fuji released the JPII with thin case and I thought it was so cool and allowed me to wear more tapes in my pockets/backpack, so I switched to this one. Finally SONY released the CDIt II with a slightly more clever case than Fuji's one, algo good sound quality and I think slightly cheaper so I switched to this one. And finally MiniDisc came into my life when I bought a super-cool SHARP MS-702 and I left cassettes in flavour of MD... until present . I started recording the first ones in my beloved Hitachi 3D75 boombox. It had 5 radio presets so quickly switching between stations to find a suitable song to record was a pleasure to me. It has 5-band EQ and also tape selector, and I was very proud in those days to have probably the best boombox out of all my friends, considering I was living in Ponferrada, a small city in the province of Leon, Spain. Here you can see the presets: So, here is the first batch 1) where I was jumping between different brands/models: Most of the music was recorded from the radio with my boombox. Very little spanish music (I generally don't like it). You'll notice I was using the same font type every time in the j-card side. If you are into cars you'll recognize this font as the same as PORSCHE. Yes, that's because my uncle had a Porsche 944 and everytime he took me into his car I was like in heaven. I was in love with Porsche letters that all them have embossed in their back. That's why I used that. I though it was cool. I used very small letter size to write all the songs (this was easy to me as my own writing was very small) and most of the time tried to write also the counter position for each song with a pencil as you can see. 2) Then I switched to TDK CDIng II: And as you can see I kept writing the J-cards the same way, but I started to number the cassettes using the stickers that came with them (you remember?). At this time some of the music was recorded from the radio but almost 30% was from CD. I tried to record this in my friends equipment as I didn't had a CD at home. 3) Then I switched to Fuji JPII as I explained. At this time I switched to my glorious AIWA CSD-SR6 whcih I already shown in my website and in other threads, and the recording quality was clearly improved. So much cleaner and 'thinner' recordings, but at that time, CDs with pushed levels and compressed dynamic range were rising and this made most of my recordings sound a bit distorted because of the high recording level: At this time most music, if not all, was recorded from CD. I recorded with Dolby B in my AIWA because I wanted to have less noise. I have even some recorded in Dolby C even though I could not reproduce it properly but I believed it made the recording simply better. 4) And finally switched to SONY CDIt II: I was more into hard rock, alternative rock, heavy and also pop but I was eclectic, with some r&b and even disney soundtracks And as always I kept using the same method to label all them. I know it's not as eye-catching as drawing/painting different styles each time but I preferred to have them clearly labelled to make me an easier task to find a particular one. Also my drawing skills are really bad, I confess. I can't wait to see how you made your own collection guys!
Hugo: I have been a long time fan of vintage AKG headphones. I have two pairs of 600 ohm AKG K240 Monitors - one pair which I regularly use while recording and another pair which are NOS in the box. I also have the AKG K240 Sextets and my favourite is the K340 Electrostatic/Dynamic headphones. They are 80's vintage and one of the top-tier headphones when they first were produced. Nando.
Musaic 2022 I recorded multiple copies of this project in 2022/early 2023. It has an assortment of musical styles and I have recorded two more projects since then which feature the same formula. Nando.
It's always nice to see such beauties working. I'm a bit of extremist when it comes to digital audio components in my chain: I don't want any. Nor a CD player, MD or whatever. I just have my computer to digitize something from time to time and to use spotify as source for some mixtapes for kids, etc... Actually I have a good collection of MDs that I've recorded back in the days directly from CD with optical cable but I don't find fun in them now... maybe I change my vision later...
Having made it all the way to the back of the loft I took a few photos of mine. This drawer is what I would classify as Mixtapes but were mixes of stuff I liked in the charts at the time. they were all recorded on my Sony CFS45L which due to a lack of funds had to double up as both cassette deck and tuner in my HiFi. I think most music fans did this. I recall Sara Cox interviewing Kylie and asking if she was like "Home Taping is Killing Music" back in the early 1980s. Here answer "No I was the one with my fingers on Record and Play on my mono radio cassette recorder. Towards the end of doing this I would actually check the Top 40 using Teletext before the chart started so I knew when a song might get played. Of course there was always a chance of the song not being played if it was a faller, or the DJ talking over the intro or fading it early. The Tim's 70s tapes have an interesting back story. Tim had aspired to be a DJ and for over a decade had bought every number one record whether he likes it or not and others he did like. When we were in the same lodgings I borrowed his collection and recorded the ones I liked. Finally here is a close up of the first of my mixtapes which I have brought down from the loft to play The only track I was surprised to see was the Jam. This was more of my taste in music back then
Very nice to watch, Longman, really! I guess all of us made our mixtape collection in mid to low range boomboxes, as our budget didn't allow for more. I see you kept a style along all your collection. Very interesting that almost all your tapes are hits. I also used to make mix of hits but I sometimes recorded my favorite songs of a particular album in one side and maybe another in the other side. What suprises me is that from '81 to '92 you made just a relatively small quantity of mixtapes, at least compared to my own experience (I'm not sure how many, but way more, even that I started later, around '86) Here in Spain that dilemma didn't exist. In those days dictator Franco was still alive and the laws allowed for the 'private copy', which was quite different to your laws. They permited a private copy as long as you don't earn money with it. And I think it was in fact a good law, because let's admit it: 'you cannot put doors in the field' as we say in spanish. You can always lend a book to a friend and you're not doing anything wrong, right? Well, duplicating mixtapes is more or less the same to me. Recently the law changed here in spain but for many years it was 100% legal. Ironically, actually you can use Spotify to record on to your cassettes and you're not doing anything ilegal... same as if you record a movie streamed in Tv with your VHS. Very nice. Curiously, my very first recorded cassette is the same as yours: a SONY CHF in red. I have a special felling with this tape as it was the very first. My father had a box with 10 sealed and I started to get these to my first mixtapes, as well as my sister. So our first ones are CHF.
