Classic Ghetto Blasters of The '80s

The Queen Mother of ALL Ghetto Blasters, the Lasonic TRC-931 was a wall - literally. WITH all 10 "D" size batteries it required, it weighed a good 30 pounds. It had a dual cassette deck and not just any dual cassette deck. This thing was so badass, the Play deck was side-loading (like in a car stereo), just to make room for the massive 12" inch woofers. The radio had not one, but TWO telescopic antennas, AM/FM and two Shortwave bands. A full 5 band graphic equalizer, auxiliary inputs (earliest models included a PHONO input for your turntable!) stereo enhancement and pumped out a generous 50 watts per channel. And where where you most likely to buy one? Try WOOLWORTH! 

No photo does justice to this one - this one is, to this day the BIGGEST ghetto blaster ever made. It sported an AM/FM/Shortwave radio, which was a strange feature on many portable stereos in the '80s.

No American teenager actively listened to shortwave radio back then - in spite of stations like the English transmissions of Radio Moscow (which broadcasted Western rock music that would get any Soviet teenager sent straight to the gulags if they were ever caught listening to it. With a healthy dose of anti-American propaganda in spite of the fact many of the Western rock acts they did play were AMERICAN.)

Secondly, the low-fi, wildly fluctuating unevenness and irregularity of the shortwave radio signal made music listening on it an endurance test. My guess was the manufacturers were thinking of some phantom jet-set people who wanted to take a radio with them that could allow them to pick up The Voice Of America or the BBC World Service should they wind up in say, Nairobi. But the size of this ghetto blaster (the actual size of a suitcase), to say nothing of the weight (30 lbs. - with the 10 - yes, I said 10 - "D" cell batteries required to feed this thing off of the AC power grid) and weight (did I mention the $200 - about $400 in 2012 dollars) price tag?) guaranteed this radio was STAYING in America.

It had a dual cassette (one deck was a player that you inserted a cassette into it like a car stereo) while the other was a typical ghetto blaster player/recorder for dubbing your Iron Maiden tapes (for your friends in Nairobi) both with auto-reverse, a 5 band graphic equalizer, a Loudness button (for extra punchy bass) through the 12" speakers and countless other buttons as well as a light show in itself just to make this work.

Lasonic went ass over tea kettle (whatever that means) on this product. But even though Lasonic (who?) weren't a very well known electronics name like Sony, Panasonic or Aiwa, this radio became so influential on the TRUE ghetto blaster folks (early rap stars), that Lasonic reissued the TRC-931 in 2007, with iPod connections replacing the often faulty dual cassette system. I really think, why not just BUILD an MP3 player/recorder into it, using thumb/flash drives (the cassettes of today?)

Portable stereos in the early '80s were HUGE things only for the most headstrong music fan when a simple Walkman won't do.

I once knew a kid named Glenn who owned one of these General Electric babies. When he blasted his Judas Priest tapes out of this thing, every moose in Canada could hear it. The FM and AM reception was STUNNING. I ALWAYS wanted one.... 

But by the mid '80s, they started getting smaller...and smaller.

I'm not sure if it was the lawyers were getting on them for the hernia problems these huge radio/tape decks were potentially causing for kids at school (I mean with 30 lbs. of boombox and cassette tapes on one arm and another 30 lbs. of Trapper Keeper and books on the other.). But the rockin' out sure took a hit.

Then it really got colourful:

The Sharp QT-50

 Then these things started showing up. The Sharp QT-50 from 1985. A sort of retro-trip in pastel colours (pink, lavender, peach, seafoam green, banana yellow, powder puff blue and even beige) that even the girliest of girls and gayest of guys get nervous at today just looking at this thing. But 1985 was also the year of guys wearing pink polo shirts and Miami Vice.

There were 8-track capable sets

This was Montgomery Ward's 1983 offering. Montgomery Ward, Radio Shack and the RCA Music Service were the final outposts for the hardened 8-track tape lover in the '80s as Montgomery Ward still made players by the end of 1984, Radio Shack still sold blank 8-tracks, tape head cleaners and cases and the RCA Music Service still made and offered a slowly decreasing, selection of new 8-track tapes well into 1988.

...and those with TVs

Some even had turntables (for warping and scratching your records while playing volleyball on the beach.)

Sadly...by 1990, the portable stereo had become, seen-one, you seen 'em, all black things in weird shapes with CD players. They brought the colours back too more recently, but I still wish they made them like those BIG powerhouses from back in the day....

A Virtual Time Warp To 1975......

I found this awesome YouTube clip that will REALLY take you back to 1975.

It's an unscoped aircheck from a rock station, "The All New K-Keg 92" KKEG-FM Fayetteville, AR from 1975.

Complete with music, jock and original commercials. The guy who posted this said he found it on an 8-Track tape somebody recorded and he transferred it on YouTube.

".....this was most likely recorded in order for the owner to be able to listen to the radio while driving through the dead-air area between Fayetteville and Little Rock that existed in NW Arkansas during the mid-70s......."

And believe me, this can take you there and beyond. I don't know who Bo James was, but he definitely had the right sound for this format.

This was what Classic Radio REALLY sounded like back in the day. You'll hear the Doobie Brothers cover version of "Jesus Is Just Alright" ad nauseum today. But NEVER the Byrds ORIGINAL.

See how much of this music you haven't heard in EONS - if at all. (Segues like Blood Sweat & Tears cover of "Ride Captain Ride" into "Liar" Queen anyone?)

KKEG is still on the air and still rockin', but they've moved up the dial to 98.3 FM. KKEG's original 92.1 frequency is now home to an ESPN sports station. 

Pop open a can of Tab and enjoy......

The Spirit of '76

Console Stereos

My mom had one exactly like this. It was a Sears system with an AM/FM Stereo radio and an 8-Track tape player. It was a beauty and with a good Kiss record on, it could rock the block.....

The History of Cassettes

The advent of the cartridge style tape began with the usual seven words that begin the road to any invention. Fourteen if you count those other seven nasty words (that usually precede these):

"There's GOT to be a better way!"

Tape, like the wire recordings that came before them were on spools or reels and had to be hand threaded through the playback mechanism. A time consuming feat in itself for the average person.  And prone to accidents.

When the first reel tape became available to the masses, it had immediate advantages over the vinyl records of the time. First, they were in stereo years before the first stereo LPs were available. They didn't scratch or have surface noise (other than a very low level audible hiss. Noise reduction would be another 15 years away.) And best yet, you could record 3 hours of uninterrupted, high quality music or radio broadcasts per reel.

But to a consumer base who were used to instant playback as offered by records, they didn't want to waste time setting up and threading a reel of tape and take the risk of any clumsy and at the time, expensive accidents. No matter what the audio advantages were.

RCA noticed this and sympathized. And ever the innovators, they began work on a simple, self threading style of tape and unveiled it in 1958.                                          

Blank tapes, as well as pre-recorded titles like these, were made available.

They were played on machines like this;

Most of these machines and tapes still work gloriously after all these years. Note the RCA plug inputs on the side of the unit. They're STILL compatible with home stereo/computer inputs/outputs of TODAY with a simple cheap patch cord!

It did impress an number of people. But the problem was it was still big and bulky. And reel tape deck machines shrank in size over early '60s.

Super small, but not super sounding

Philips developed the Compact Audio Cassette in 1963. At the time, it was only one of several competing cartridge based formats (including RCA's cartridge) designed to simplify tape recording. 

The very first cassette tape recorder, from 1963

The very first cassette tape, 1963

The format initially offered fairly poor fidelity and was marketed for voice recording and dictation. It's super slow speed, 1 7/8 ips pretty much made sure of that.
 

But Philips approached Sony Corporation in Japan after realizing that Japanese acceptance of the new format would vastly improve the chances of success in America and Europe. After some hardball negotiation, Philips agreed to license the system to Sony without royalties. In fact, by 1965 Philips had opened the format up to other manufacturers free of charge.
 

Technology improved quickly, including an ability to play stereo tapes, and new tape formulations soon assured a higher quality sound from the cassette than the earliest tapes. 

One of the very first pre-recorded cassette tapes. From 1968.

Pre-recorded cassettes quietly appeared on the market in the late '60s and at first, didn't gain much traction. First, there were few car stereos..... 

....and very few high-end home units at the time to play them on. The 8-Track was still the dominate portable tape playing medium. Most cassette players were tinny sounding mono portables.  

And cassette tapes, for all their improvements still sounded pretty bad compared to the reel tape and even the 8-Track. But it was soldiers in the Vietnam war that quickly embraced the cassette for it's small size and ease of mailing to and from home. By the dawn of the '70s, things began looking up. Even more improvements, such as Dolby noise reduction and increasingly better tape formulations started putting cassettes on nearly the same par as the other tape formats.

Ampex and Sony were the companies that REALLY pushed for the cassette's survival in it's early days and paved the way for other companies such as Maxell, Memorex and TDK....

Remember when pre-recorded cassettes came in boxes and colours like THIS?

Ever try to REMOVE a cassette from one of THESE things? It's vice like grip made for an epic struggle that often took about 5 minutes average just to remove the thing from it's case! New, easier opening cases, similar to what blank cassette manufacturers were using for their products were introduced by the major record companies a few years later.....

The first Cr02 (chrome) blank cassette tapes came out in the early '70s. These tapes were not compatible for recording in a Normal bias cassette deck because the erase head needed to re-record over a chrome tape had to be much more powerful than a Normal bias erase head as well as the recording head itself had to be more powerful to make a loud enough recording on them. But a normal bias cassette deck can PLAY a chrome tapes (or later metal formulations, which required even more powerful erase/record heads) perfectly well. For those with unswitchable Normal bias decks, increasingly better Normal bias formulations appeared to put the lowly Normal bias tape nearly on par with the chrome tapes 

By 1975, cassette tape was starting to overtake the 8-Track as the popular tape format of choice and by the mid-late '70s, the first car stereo cassette players and stereo portables had become popular and the cassettes had improved to the point where it rendered the reel tape pretty much redundant beyond radio stations and professional recording studios.

New hope for those left behind with 8-Track machines

The Sony Walkman was introduced in 1979 and acceptance of the cassette as a serious home and portable medium started really taking off. 

In 1980. The British New Wave group Bow Wow Wow released the first cassette single "C·30 C·60 C·90 Go!" in the UK. 

 

By 1983, pre-recorded cassettes were actually starting to outsell vinyl LPs. Record companies began doing extra gimmicks such as adding extra songs to the cassette versions of their albums to help foster the trend. Blank cassettes were also unbelievably cheap.

And I do mean CHEAP.....

New looks to the cassettes themselves helped improve the staid appearance of the typical cassette.

Remember THESE things? (1985)

In 1985, Warner/Reprise broke the mold of the old bland pre-recorded cassette look by introducing clear cassette shells and cases for their pre-recorded cassettes, starting with Prince's Around The World In A Day album and Brothers In Arms from Dire Straits. 

It was in part a reaction to the look of the newly introduced CD, but also illustrated a higher quality mechanism and should the tape have problems, you could directly see what the problem was. Other record companies quickly followed - except for RCA and Columbia/Epic. They would use standard cassette shells and cases until 1989.

...and who could forget THESE?

The standard playing time of a blank cassette tape was 60 to 90 minutes which corresponded to the typical playing time of a complete album for each side. There were 30 minute and 40 minute tapes available in the '70s (they were phased out by the beginning of the '80s) and some 120 minute tape lengths and TDK even made an insane 180 minute tape.

The problem with the longest lengths (120 and especially 180 minute tapes) were they were on EXTREMELY thin tape, which were far more prone to stretching and breakage (the manufacturers themselves advised that you should not rewind or fast forward these tapes.) Due to the thinness of the tape, they also suffered from an effect called "print through", in which loud passages from adjacent layers of tape would increasingly echo through the tape several seconds earlier during playback.

But with the introduction of the CD, the running time of a typical album increased by nearly 10 minutes. And the polymer backing had to be strengthened to allow rewind/fast forward capability as well as eliminating the print through effect, as CDs had a much wider dynamic range and louder volume level than a typical vinyl album or cassette. 110 minute cassettes were introduced by 1987.

1987 also saw the rebirth of the cassette single, this time for the US market. Which the recording companies hoped would jump start the sagging market for pop singles as sales of the 45 RPM record began to seriously decline.

A&M records released Bryan Adams "Heat Of The Night" as a cassette single, the first one since the Bow Wow Wow cassette mentioned earlier. Note the unusual case. "O" slipcards would be introduced by Warner/Reprise a few weeks later with their first cassette singles and all recording companies - including A&M, immediately followed suit.

The mid '80s to the mid '90s were the glory days of the cassette tape. And CD prices were still ridiculously expensive ($15 - $20 average). A lawsuit targeting the major record labels for overcharging the public in the late '80s and '90s for CDs resulted in CD prices dropping to nearly the same price as cassettes.

And cassettes themselves got a high tech upgrade when the DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) was invented. They played and recorded special DCC tapes and even standard analog cassettes.

DCC Cassette tape

DCC Recorder/player

But the tide really started turning in the late '90s with CD-Rs. With the new MP3 format and computers and some stereos capable of playing MP3 discs, a single all 128kb bitrate MP3 CD could play continuously for over 12 HOURS. 

The last American major label pre-recorded cassettes were released in 2005. (In some areas such as India, Thailand and Indonesia, pre-recorded cassettes are STILL being manufactured.)

But like all audio formats once considered "obsolete", they never truly are. And like vinyl, the cassette is enjoying a new revival too. Not from long time tape heads, but a new generation who are tired of virtual mediums like MP3s and want something PHYSICAL and retro-cool. As well as independent DIY rock groups who are sick of the corporatization of digital mediums and want something real instead of mass copied MP3s and CDs

Bless 'em all......  

More cassette resources:

http://www.c-90.org/index.htm 

http://www.tapeheads.net/

http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/cassettes.html

http://www.sweetthunder.org/tapes/