blank tapes

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1. when was the last time you bought a blank tape
2. how many minutes was it on each side
3. what did you tape?

question prompted by seeing several big stacks of fairly high-quality blank tapes inside a local 99% store

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 10 April 2006 18:23 (nineteen years ago)

couple months ago
45/side
mix tapes

― Special Agent Gene Krupa (orion), Monday, 10 April 2006 18:24 (nineteen years ago)

99%? Is that like the inverse Nation of Islam store?

― Eppy (Eppy), Monday, 10 April 2006 18:25 (nineteen years ago)

In 2000 I made my last C90 tape: a compilation of the new Go-Betweens, Madonna's Music, selections from The Real Slim Shady, the second Elastica album, and Bjork's Dancer in the Dark soundtrack. Eclectic!

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Monday, 10 April 2006 18:25 (nineteen years ago)

two years ago
45/side
band practice

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Monday, 10 April 2006 18:25 (nineteen years ago)

i've always heard that 60 minute tapes were better quality than 90 minute ones, and would last longer. something about the tape itself being thinner in the latter, in order to fit more in.

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 10 April 2006 18:27 (nineteen years ago)

1. 4 months ago
2. 45/side
3. 4-track home recordings

― mcd (mcd), Monday, 10 April 2006 18:28 (nineteen years ago)

mixtapes and musicians neck and neck so far

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 10 April 2006 18:32 (nineteen years ago)

1. A couple months ago
2. 90 minutes
3. Comets on Fire vinyl to tape, because I never bothered learning how to digitize my vinyl.

I still have some unused blank tapes at home. It was kind of strange making the tape since it'd been so long. I have a friend who still makes me tapes, and every few months at that.

― TRG (TRG), Monday, 10 April 2006 18:37 (nineteen years ago)

1. Late 2001/Early 2002
2. 55
3. Homemade comps for a friend. I switched to CDRs shortly thereafter.

― Chairman Doinel (Charles McCain), Monday, 10 April 2006 18:45 (nineteen years ago)

I'm going to buy some C90's today. My 1991 Suzuki Swift still rocks cassettes only!

― everything, Monday, 10 April 2006 18:46 (nineteen years ago)

I just got a new car and it doesn't have a tape deck (I guess they don't make 'em for new cars anymore, but I didn't know this) and I miss it a lot! It's actually kind of frustrating.

― mcd (mcd), Monday, 10 April 2006 18:47 (nineteen years ago)

90 minute blank tapes seem to be disappearing.. they seem to show up in second hand stores more often than anywhere else nowadays.. and when you do find them there like 2 bucks apiece!! i went out to get some video tapes today and had to walk across town to find any decent ones i guess we should all just move on and say forget tapes.. but i have so many and like them so..

― gwolfcow, Monday, 10 April 2006 18:52 (nineteen years ago)

I used to buy six packs of 2hr cassettes (hr a side) to tape my weekly two hour radio program with, but I rarely listen to the tapes anymore.
There are still moments that I wished I'd captured here and there, but I've already got YEARS of tapes from radio shows. Don't need anymore.
Think I got the two hour tapes for about a dollar a piece.

― Tripmaker (SDWitzm), Monday, 10 April 2006 18:56 (nineteen years ago)

1. 4 months ago
2. 50
3. A compilation of songs that simultaneously embraced the sublime and the ridiculous (Richard Harris, Lee Hazlewood, Jean-Claude Vannier, etc.) for a Dissensus mixtape project (a bunch of us exchanged mixes)...(er, are we allowed to mention Dissensus here?)

― hank (hank s), Monday, 10 April 2006 18:57 (nineteen years ago)

I bought some 90 minute TDKs for recording interviews, maybe a year ago. I use them over again so it could be a while.

― Mark (MarkR), Monday, 10 April 2006 18:57 (nineteen years ago)

I ALWAYS have a fresh supply of Maxell XLII C90 on hand for mix tape projects. The last mix i made was a digestion of extraneous Elvis Costello from the 2-disc Expanded versions of late; 10 discs for free from the public library, 30 days and ½ of a C90 later, and i've got a pretty good run of otherwise unknown tuneage!

Until they make a dual-sided Light Scribable CD-R i'll continue making cassette mixes, and problem even after.

Buy them.

― christoff (christoff), Monday, 10 April 2006 19:04 (nineteen years ago)

1. probably 3 or 4 years ago
2. 90
3. finally defeated my laziness and got up out of bed to hum a melody into the recorder. Did this last night, for the first time in at least a year. then this thread. hmm.

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Monday, 10 April 2006 19:05 (nineteen years ago)

I wish I could figure out how to get iTunes playlists on to a tape. How liberating it would be, knowing that I could time each side to 45:00 and not get any songs cut off.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Monday, 10 April 2006 19:07 (nineteen years ago)

computer's headphone jack --> tape player, press play and hit record, shurely?

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 10 April 2006 19:10 (nineteen years ago)

1. about a month ago
2. 45
3. french kissing, er french lessons.

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Monday, 10 April 2006 19:12 (nineteen years ago)

3 days ago
22.5 minutes on one side only (90 minute tape at double speed, 4-track)
nothing yet but hopefully something 1/2-way decent.

― superultramega (superultramarinated), Monday, 10 April 2006 19:18 (nineteen years ago)

1. A few weeks ago
2. A package of four blank tapes, each is 50 mins. to a side
3. Tape one: "Anthem of the Sun" / "Aoxomoxoa" [Grateful Dead]
Tape two: A long Dark Star, etc. set from a "Dick's Picks" 3CD / selections from "Skull and Roses" [the Dead again]
Tape three: "Cats & Dogs" / "Thank You" [Royal Trux]
Tape four: whatever else I feel like listening to in my car soon....

― morris pavilion (samjeff), Monday, 10 April 2006 19:19 (nineteen years ago)

computer's headphone jack --> tape player, press play and hit record, shurely?

Hmmmmm, headphone jack on one end, microphone jack on the other. That might just work.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Monday, 10 April 2006 19:28 (nineteen years ago)

I bought 90-minute Maxells regularly, usually for mixtapes for friends or to listen to in my car, until about a year ago when the tape deck on my home stereo broke. And then a few months ago I finally got a computer with a CD burner, so I may have converted for good now, which makes my inner cassettephile a little sad.

― Alex in Baltimore (Alex in Baltimore), Monday, 10 April 2006 19:40 (nineteen years ago)

1) Real cassettes? Years ago. Microcassettes? About a month and a half ago.
2) 90, I think. Maybe 120, maybe 60. Micros- 60.
3) I use real ones for mixes, and had to scramble to find some blank ones for my girlfriend's xmas present (she still rocks a walkman on her bus ride to work). The microcassettes I use all the damn time for interviews, though transcribing makes me cry.

The new guy was cleaning out one of our old designer's (and ILXor) cubby areas, and so I now have a huge huge huge surplus of tapes. Like, suddenly I'm an XTC completist without having to work at it at all. Nurse With Wound, The Goon Show... Really, I'm just bragging here...

― js (honestengine), Monday, 10 April 2006 19:42 (nineteen years ago)

Me: musta been 2001. I remember taping the just-released Strokes debut for a long roadtrip.

But minutes ago, a freind just asked me if I had any way to record a cassette, so he could transfer a mix cd to tape for a buddy in Atlanta. The buddy is a 35 year old bike messenger and eccentric who has no CD player or computer. So I'm going to do the transfer on the boombox in my kitchen.

― bendy (bendy), Monday, 10 April 2006 20:02 (nineteen years ago)

Pleasant Plains, your tape player's input isn't line-level? I'd think that would work.

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 10 April 2006 20:14 (nineteen years ago)

I record interviews on 60 minute cassettes, so I buy an eight-pack every few months.

― pdf (Phil Freeman), Monday, 10 April 2006 20:18 (nineteen years ago)

I wish this was about the Reynols album.

― Alan Conceicao (Alan Conceicao), Monday, 10 April 2006 20:43 (nineteen years ago)

1. A billion years ago.
2. 30 minutes a side
3. The screech of a Pterodactyl.

― M. Biondi (M. Biondi), Monday, 10 April 2006 21:01 (nineteen years ago)

I record interviews on 60 minute cassettes, so I buy an eight-pack every few months.
-- pdf (newyorkisno...), April 10th, 2006 5:18 PM. (later)

wow, when I answered the question a few posts ago, I totally blanked out on the fact that I've been using C90's to record interviews lately and bought a pack of tapes less than a few months ago.

― Alex in Baltimore (Alex in Baltimore), Monday, 10 April 2006 21:11 (nineteen years ago)

1. Three days ago
2. 45 min/side
3. Band practice, including the Smiths cover here http://www.myspace.com/thevoltigeurs and Sweet Jane.

xthread to the thread where song stops when singer says "stop": The Smiths one ends when I yell "stop"

― O-Keigh (O-Keigh), Monday, 10 April 2006 21:53 (nineteen years ago)

Uh, I guess that I did a bunch during the summer. Copies of an acid-drenched radio show, two 55 minute sides per tape.
Did a live bathroom improvisation on a dictating-machine cassette a month or two ago, 20 minutes of a 45 minute side.

― trees (treesessplode), Monday, 10 April 2006 23:26 (nineteen years ago)

1. a couple weeks ago
2. tdk d-60 (30 min/side)
3. band practice

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Tuesday, 11 April 2006 00:47 (nineteen years ago)

1. I would say maybe five or six years ago.
2. Something like 50 minutes per side.
3. An early version of my synths-in-the-60's thing, probably.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Tuesday, 11 April 2006 01:15 (nineteen years ago)

four years pass...

Revive!

I still play cassettes from time to time - but i haven't recorded to one in ages; unless you count the tape recorder i got for my son, which, is tons of fun.

― suspecterrain, Saturday, 19 March 2011 23:14 (fifteen years ago)

Probably about a year after the question was asked. Or at least the early part of that year.Around June 2007 I bought my first ATRAC walkman, up til when I used tape walkmen and therefore was buying sets of C90s. Taped each new cd I bought & stuck it on the side of a tape plus whatever picks from my existing collection.
Meant I had a stack of C90s in my bag everywhere I went & they'd wind up catching on each other.

ATRAC walkmen much easier thing to use & much longer playing time. Plus really good intelligent shuffle function. So could keep being surprised by track juxtaposition.

― Stevolende, Sunday, 20 March 2011 00:23 (fifteen years ago)

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