[playingdead]

What do you do with several boxes crammed with GD and other band material on cassettes and DATs? I've been lugging this stuff around for years, have not plugged in my dual cassette deck since 1999, and both my DAT decks are in need of service, and probably not worth servicing.

Probably 90 percent of this stuff is out there in the digital realm. But I am having a really hard time just tossing these boxes out. But neither am I about to haul them over to UPS and ship them somewhere, either.

I have things that are a bit remarkable buried in there ... a pair of TDK SA-90s I've had since 1978 with a 3rd-gen 5-26-72 off reels that sounds better to me than the boards in circulation (it's much more warm sounding), a pair of master soundboard TDK SA-X 90s from the last Dead show I saw, 4-7-95 ... etc. etc.

What do you folks do with your outdated music?

[strumminsix]

I have an old cassette player in my workshop (read other side of small basement) that I use for my old cassette. Figure they will all snap one day or the player will break and that will be the retirement time for both.

[CountryMile Cadillac]

I would hold on to them, if nothing more than nostalgia. I can rember what versions I liked best just from the tape, not the date or venue on many a show. My ex cleaned up our house an day while I was out on the weekend, and have never seen mine again.(Along with a bunch of old non-wearable t-shirts) She did not even drop them at the Goodwill, what a B%t@h.

It also seems that I have read or heard that tape is the best medium to archive music on (for example the house-boat tapes).

You could also transfer those favorites, and transfer them to you digital media as well.

**NEVER DISGARD VINYL** it is the best!! American Beauty, Workman's Dead, Everybody Knows This Nowhere, Music From The Big Pink,ect. never will sound as good on anything as they do on vinyl.

[Tennessee Jedi]

I was rapping with Emoto about his music and he said he took his old band tapes and used his Zoom H2 to transfer them to the digital realm for posterity.
I have a ton of band tapes from over the years and a H4 so this could be a cool way to "Save the tapes".

[tigerstrat]

Give the tapes to someoen you know that drives an old car with a tape deck stereo.

Or put it all in a big box, write "Free Music", and plant it in front of your lawn chair at the next festival or concert event you attend. Conversation-starter, good-vibe geneterator...

[Emoto]

I was rapping with Emoto about his music and he said he took his old band tapes and used his Zoom H2 to transfer them to the digital realm for posterity.
I have a ton of band tapes from over the years and a H4 so this could be a cool way to "Save the tapes".

Yep. I also have several big boxes of Dead tapes that I want to convert. Time is the biggest problem. Running the output from a cassette deck to the input on my Zoom H2 works pretty well. I don't have all of the fancy tools that people list on the BT files that I download. I just use Audacity to chop the single large file into songs and save them as WAV files onto CD. I have tried some of Audacity's noise reduction and am not overly imnpressed. You can hear how this sounds on the cuts on www.fragilethunder.com/music.html except for Crosscut Saw, which was digitally recorded.

The thing about the old tapes is that over the course of time, the magnetic pattern on one piece of tape can transfer to the tape that it is lying on top of on the reel, leading to bleed through that sounds really bad. This happens if the tapes are not run through once a year, according to what I have read. I have run into this myself.

In other words, our old tapes are perishable, so dub any that you want to keep into the digital realm, sooner rather than later.

[jck_strw]

I gave all my tapes away to someone on this board. I posted an offer here and shipped them out.

I wouldn't transfer them to digital though. That's a major loss in sound quality to convert like that (well, if it's cassette; I don't think you have that problem transferring from a DAT). Plus, you can pretty much download/trade/torrent any show out there so you can replace anything you have on cassette.

[tigerstrat]

I wouldn't transfer them to digital though. That's a major loss in sound quality to convert like that (well, if it's cassette; I don't think you have that problem transferring from a DAT). Plus, you can pretty much download/trade/torrent any show out there so you can replace anything you have on cassette.

Agreed, don't transfer old cassettes unless it's the Master Cassette source for something. Otherwise, it exists in better quality somewhere, and transferring a poorer quality, generation-added, aged copy will just muddy the waters.

[Dozin]

looking back I cant believe how much money I spent on Maxell's. I too have a huge box of tapes that are just about useless now. Since I downloaded TOL I never looked back. There's some good stuff in there too. I know a couple years ago I grabbed a tape and slapped it in a deck and it was all tight and slow moving so I'm assuming most of the tapes are junk now.

[Emoto]

looking back I cant believe how much money I spent on Maxell's. I too have a huge box of tapes that are just about useless now. Since I downloaded TOL I never looked back. There's some good stuff in there too. I know a couple years ago I grabbed a tape and slapped it in a deck and it was all tight and slow moving so I'm assuming most of the tapes are junk now.

Yup. I used to buy XLII's by the case.

Many of your tapes may still be fine. Many of my tapes are well over 30 years old and they're still mostly ok. Try FF or Rew on reluctant ones. I'd try to salvage anything you have that is unique.

There were shows that I taped myself that I have never seen listed as available anywhere. I hope before new years to get all of mine done. It'll only be a small percentage of what I have, but still...

[krzykat]

I'll take em if you don't want em!

[DooDahDan]

I can't seem to part with my analog tapes. In addition the $$$ spent on ordering tapes from Terrapin Tapes, I spent a ton of time creating unique j-cards for them so they are all uniformlly organized. I had a grand scheme of building a wall unit for them (they currently reside in old wood fruit boxes), which was scrapped when the digital age took over and my wife made me sell my jeep wrangler, which was the last vehicle we owned with a cassette player. :( I still miss the days of tape trading and coming home to find the bubble envelope in the mailbox with the latest additions to the collection.

I would hold onto to them.

[LittleJerry]

I still spin cassettes. I like analog better. Alot of times the tru generation of a dwnload to me is somewhat questionable. Ex. few shows on archive org would say SBD> master reel> cassette>shn.. Then i compared my cassette that said 2nd gen sbd. The tape sounds much better IMO. Ive tried a few other shows i have on tape and the same results ( tape sounding better. I jus think alot times ppl lied about the actual specs of the source on archive org. ANyone else notice that?

[amyjared]

I addressed the same issue about a year or so ago. I was turned on to archives.org, which at the time had all the SB's available, and so I freecycled my boxes and boxes of Maxell XLII's and started downloading SB's from Archives. Got pretty far before they shut that down but my stereo at home doesn't have a tape deck hooked up anymore. I did, however, keep about 10-15 of the ones that always meant a lot to me, even if I can only play them on some shitty boom box that I have. Ah, the memories...going over to someone's house with tapes, and, um, other things, and sitting and making copies while you talked about upcoming shows, past experiences, people you knew, etc. What a great way to spend the '80's...

[bodiddley]

Please ban this loser.