Welcome to Hell, here's your 8-Track

The title of this thread made me think of my "Alice Cooper Goes To Hell" 8-Track.

Anyway, I remember back in th early to mid 70's getting a portable cassette player for X-mas one year.  In the little town we lived in, I could find very few prerecorded cassettes.  (I did wind up with a couple by Jim Croce & Tony Orland & Dawn and some pirated looking stuff by CCR & Johnny Cash and Three Dog Night and I ordered some stuff that was advertised on TV, but there sure wasn't a lot in that town available.  So I joined Longines Symphonette Record Club and ordered 12 cassettes, but the ba$tards sent me 12 8-tracks.  I sent them back and told them that they screwed up, and they sent me 12 more 8-tracks!  Anyway, in '77 I put an 8-track player ( the first of a few) and started buying 8-trracks.  . 

Dekay sure LOL, cough cough, shoved in just right on the underside of the case.  Denatured wood alcohol & q-tips to clean the heads.  And the hokey vinyl covered cases for them that looked like cheap luggage.  Anything detroit built had 6x9's in the rear window deck.  You knew when you bought a double length tape like Allman Bros Fillmore East it was surely going to be short lived.  Nostalgic and fun times.  

Horrible dynamic range, horrible frequency response, horrible s/n ratio, double tracking .... so to answer your question, NO. 🤣✌🏻

I loved the 8-track tapes! I still have all 27 cartridges I bought 1974-1980.

I had a Lear 8-track player from 1976. Still have it too. Recently I played Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Honestly, it sounded every bit as good as I remember it! The Lear player has adjustable head azimuth. Tape pinch and speed is very accurate, unlike cheap 8-track players and cassette players. Then played DSOTM, followed by Elvis Costello. Sound is certainly better than my 1981 Concord cassette deck.

Problem is, WAY too many folks had CHEAP 8-track players and expect that that cheap-ass player represented the top tier technology, now complain about it.

I still love the soft “click-click” of the track change!! 
 

I remember long drives listening to 8-tracks in the ‘74 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight and ‘76 Cadillac and ‘77 Lincoln Continental my folks had. Nirvana!!

I thought 8-Track was OK for what it was at the time.  I had a player in my 69’ Malibu and remember enjoying Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ”Proud Mary”.  I also purchased a boom box which was dubbed “a triple threat” - 8-Track, cassette (before Dolby) and AM/FM radio. Of course, the tape broke often or got wound around the spindle but I wasn’t into Hi-Fi then and didn’t know better. After my first “mid-fi” system in 1972, I went into cassette with a purchase of a Nakamichi 1000 cassette deck with Dolby B, C and chrome. Now it’s CD’s with “perfect sound forever”.