Information About8-track Cartridge |
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The 8-track cartridge is an Audio Storage Magnetic Tape cartridge technology, popular from the late 1960s to the early 1980s . The 8-track was created by Bill Lear in 1964 at Lear Inc. (the company of Lear Jet fame), after he heard Earl "Madman" Muntz 's 1962 Stereo-Pak 4-track stereo tape cartridge system, which had been inspired in turn by the 1959 Fidelipac 3-track tape cartridge system used by radio broadcasters for commercials and jingles. The original format for Magnetic Tape sound reproduction was Reel-to-reel Audio Tape Recording , first made available in the 1940s . However, the machines were bulky and the reels themselves were more difficult to handle than vinyl records. Born from the desire to have an easier-to-use tape format, the enclosed reel mechanism was introduced in the mid 1950s . DEVELOPMENT The endless loop tape cartridge was designed in 1952 by Bernard Cousino of Toledo, Ohio, around a single reel carrying a continuous loop of standard 1/4 inch plastic oxide-coated recording tape running at 3 3/4 inches/sec (9.5 cm/sec). Program starts and stops were signalled either by a conductive foil splice or sub-audible tones. The 8-track version simplified the mechanism by rolling the motorized metal Capstan in the player against a pinch wheel installed inside the cartridge to pull the tape across the player's read Head (in the earlier 4-track Stereo-Pak, the pinch wheel was part of the player and flipped into the cartridge through a hole). The tape was pulled from the center of the reel, passed across the opening at the end of the cartridge and wound back onto the outside of the same reel. The spool itself was freewheeling and the tape was driven only by tension from the capstan. The tape was coated with a slippery backing material patented by Cousino, usually Graphite , to ease the continuous slip between the tape layers. This coating sometimes also caused the pinch wheel to slip, leading to poor speed control and tape Flutter . Due to these and other problems, 8-track cartridges were unpopular with Audiophile s. While the design allowed simple, cheap, and mobile players; unlike a two-reel system it didn't permit winding of the tape in either direction. Some players offered a limited fast-forward by speeding up the motor while cutting off the audio, but rewinding was impossible. Muntz's 4-track Stereo-Pak cartridge had four monaural or two pairs of stereo tracks. A foil splice passed across a pair of contacts close to the read head, signalling the player to switch to the next program track, achieved by physically moving the head up and down mechanically in most cases. A professional version used in broadcasting, called a '' Cart '', achieved much wider bandwidth with single full-track mono or a half-track stereo pair, along with a separate cue track for recording cue tones for fast cues and a fixed, non-moving playback head. While this provided higher fidelity and was extremely convenient and reliable for busy disc jockeys and studio engineers, program length was usually limited to that of a single song and the cartridges required some maintenance, making the format too expensive and limited for consumer use. In all versions the cartridge played continuously with no rewinding, though there was usually a short gap in the audio at the splice in the tape loop. 8-track cartidges doubled playing time by recording four stereo tracks (for a total of eight) on the tape, although this made each track half as wide, reducing the sound quality. The term ''4-track cartridge'' was created by Back-formation . 8-tracks frequently had a pause and mechanical click (often in the middle of a recording) as tracks were switched. Unless by coincidence the original song lineup had breaks that fell naturally near the 1/4, 1/2 & 3/4 positions of the original (i.e., Grammophone format) album, there would either be long pauses at the end of the track (if the original song order were to be preserved and the songs not chopped), the songs were reordered (to achieve a more even distribution of song time to minimize the end or track pauses), or in the most egregious cases, having a song actually be chopped into pieces. If the azimuth of the head became mis-adjusted, there would be a faint audio bleed of adjacent tracks into the currently playing track, as well as a loss of Frequency Response , as with any misadjusted tape system. Also, the delicate cartridge mechanism was prone to breakage, so unmaintained 8-tracks had generally short lives. COMMERCIAL RELEASE The popularity of both 4-track and 8-track cartridges grew from the booming Automobile industry. In 1965 , Ford Motor Company introduced built-in 8-track players as a custom option. By 1966 , all of their vehicles offered this upgrade. Thanks to Ford's backing, the 8-track format eventually won out over the 4-track format. Despite the problems of fitting a standard vinyl LP album onto a four-program cartridge, the format gained steady popularity due to its convenience and portability. Home players were introduced in 1967 . With the availability of cartridge systems for the home, consumers started thinking of 8-tracks as a viable alternative to Vinyl Record s, not only as a convenience for the car. Within the year, prerecorded releases on 8-track began to come along at nearly the same time as vinyl releases. The devices were especially popular among professional truck drivers as this was the first successful prerecorded playback device for use in a moving vehicle. Earlier attempts to apply mechanical disk players were troubled by skipping induced by vehicle motion. Quadraphonic 8-track cartridges (known as Q8's) were also produced. The format enjoyed a moderate amount of success for a time but faded in the mid-1970s. These cartridges are prized by collectors since they provide 4 channels of Discrete sound, unlike Matrixed formats such as SQ. DECLINE AND DEMISE However, another format appeared by 1972 . The stereo Compact Audio Cassette was much less than half the size of an 8-track cartridge. The cassette had been around as a monophonic dictation device since 1963 , but was now a stereo, higher fidelity alternative. 8-track players remained a common feature in homes and automobiles through the early 1980s , slowly fading into obscurity. By the time the Compact Disc arrived in the mid 1980s the 8-track had all but vanished except among collectors. However the professional cart format, based on the earliest design, survived for another decade at most radio stations where it was an industry standard for playing Jingle s, Advertisement s, station identifications and music content for over forty years before being replaced with various computer based methods by the late 1990s. 8 tracks were phased out of retail stores in 1983. 8-track tapes were offered for sale through Record Club s until 1989. Many of these late-period releases are highly collectible due to the low numbers that were produced. Among the most interesting and rare is Stevie Ray Vaughan 's ''Texas Flood''. There is a debate among collectors about what was the last commercially released 8 track by a major label, but many agree it was Fleetwood Mac 's '' Greatest Hits '' in November 1988 . Apart from a select group of highly collectible artists, the record club issues, and the quadraphonic releases, most 8-track tapes have little value to collectors, especially if they have been used. Cartridges that have never been opened have some value. The 8-track cartridge that seems to sell for the highest amount is The Sex Pistols ' " Never Mind The Bollocks ," which has sold for up to $100 for a sealed copy. The center extraction tape concept continues to be used in modern Cinema Movie Projector s, although in that application the spool is actively rotated and not drawn by tension on the film. CARTRIDGE REPAIR Successful repair will extend the life of a cartridge. With a little care and patience an old 8-track can be restored to its original performance. Decades old tapes may break at the channel changing foil splice when the glues used during manufacture harden with age. Repair requires careful disassembly of the cartridge, with either a new metallic splice added or the old splice reglued. On some cartridges a plastic foam pad behind the tape path holds the tape against the tape head as the tape moves across it. This material can disintegrate with age, leaving a glob of sticky material that will not support the tape against the head, and may damage the tape. New foam material with a slippery flexible film material added to the surface will remedy this problem, although this also requires cartridge disassembly. SEE ALSO
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