8-track cartridge

Encyclopedia : 8 : 8T : 8TR : 8-track cartridge

This is an article about the 8-track cartridge. For eight-track multitracking, see Multitrack recording.

A blank 8-track cartridge

The 8-track cartridge is an audio storage magnetic tape cartridge technology, popular from the mid 1960s to the early 1980s. The 8-track was created by Bill Lear in 1964 at the Lear Jet Corporation, 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 [invented by George Eash in 1954] used by radio broadcasters for commercials, jingles and single song hits - since late 1959.

The original format for magnetic tape sound reproduction was reel-to-reel audio tape recording, first made available after World War II in the late 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.

Contents

1 Development
2 Commercial release
3 Decline and demise
4 Cartridge repair
5 See also
6 External links

Development

The endless loop tape cartridge was first 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/s). Program starts and stops were signalled either by a conductive foil splice or sub-audible tones.

This cartridge was later revised and marketed under the name Fidelipac in 1959 by George Eash (also of Toledo, Ohio), an inventor who had rented a work space in the Cousino building in the 1950s. [Eash had invented the Fidelipak in 1954 and was issued a U.S. patent in Jan. 1957.] These Fidelipac cartridges were first used as radio station promo and advertising "carts" starting in late 1959. They had been introduced at the 1959 National Association of Broadcasters convention by Collins Radio.

Entrepreneur Earl "Madman" Muntz of Los Angeles, California saw a potential in these "broadcast carts" for an automobile music tape system and in 1962 introduced his "Stereo-Pak" 4-track stereo tape cartridge system and tapes—mostly in California and Florida. He licensed popular music albums from the major record companies and duplicated them on these 4-track stereo tape cartridges, or "CARtridges", as they were first advertised.

The Lear Jet Stereo-8 track cartridge was designed by Bill Lear, of Lear Jet fame, in 1964. [Introduced in U.S. in Sept. 1965 for use in the 1966 line of Ford automobiles.] It 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 Muntz 4-track Stereo-Pak, the pinch wheel was part of the player and flipped into the cartridge through an access 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 Bernard 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 audiophiles. 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 (Eash's Fidelipac) had four monaural or two pairs of stereo tracks. Track switching was achieved by physically moving the head up and down mechanically by a lever. A professional version also used in broadcasting, 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 cartridges 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. 4-track tapes had to be manually switched from program 1 to 2 and back. (The term 4-track cartridge was created by back-formation.) 8-track tapes were advertised as "automatic", because the foil sensing splice at the end of each track switched the player to the next program automatically, without the need for a person to adjust the player as was necessary with the 4-track cartridge.

8-tracks had an audible pause and mechanical click (often in the middle of a program) when tracks were automatically 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.

Worse, due to the expense of 8-track 1/4" wide tape heads, most 8-track players used a two-track 1/4" head and moved it to align with each of the four "programs" (pairs of left and right track) on the tape. Mechanical alignment of the head to the tape is crucially important, and moving the head up and down with a comparatively clumsy and imprecise mechanism ensured the head would quickly come out of alignment. Among audio service technicians, there used to be a joke that "the 8-track is the only audio device which knocks itself out of alignment four times during each album", a premise which actually did not occur.

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 cartridge mechanism was prone to breakage from dropping, etc., so misused and uncared for 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 Sept. 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, which disappeared by late 1970.

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 1966. With the availability of cartridge systems for the home, consumers started thinking of 8-tracks as a viable alternative to vinyl records, not only as a convenience for the car. Within a year, prerecorded releases on 8-track began to arrive within a month of the vinyl release.

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 (Introduced by RCA Records in September 1970 and first known as Quad 8, then shortened to just Q8) 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. Most Quadraphonic albums were specially mixed for the Quad format.

Decline and demise

The 8-track was made obsolete by the Compact Cassette. Invented as a monophonic dictation device in 1963, the stereo Music audio cassette (or Musicassette) introduced in 1966 became a practical high-fidelity format with the addition of Dolby noise reduction to cassette tapes in 1971. Cassettes were more convenient to use, with faster song access compared to 8-tracks, which did not have rewind or only limited fast-forward functions. They were also more robust, and half the size of 8-tracks, and stored more music without breaks. During the transitional period in the 1980s, there was wide availability of adapters that fit into automotive 8-track players to allow insertion and playback of cassettes without the need to install a new stereo.

8-track players became less common in homes and automobiles as the 1970s went on. By the time the Compact Disc arrived in 1982-3, the 8-track had all but vanished except among collectors. 8-track Tape Cartridges were phased out of retail stores by 1983. However, the professional broadcast cart format, based on the Fidelipak design, survived for another decade at most radio stations where it was an industry standard for playing jingles, advertisements, station identifications and music content for over forty years before being replaced with various computer based methods by the late 1990s.

Selected titles were still available as 8-track tapes through record clubs until 1989. Many of these late-period releases are highly collectible due to the low numbers that were produced. Among the most rare is Stevie Ray Vaughan's Texas Flood. There was also a rare record club only 8-track box set of Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band's "Live/1975-85," which is probably the only boxed set ever released on vinyl, cassette, compact disc and 8-track tape.

The last 8-track tapes by major recording companies were from Record & Tape clubs in 1988 like RCA (BMG Music) & Columbia House. The last 8-track from the Columbia House Record & Tape Club was Chicago 19, shipped in 1988. There are reports of bootleg 8-track tapes being made in Mexico as late as 1995 [link]. Some independent artists have released 8-track tapes as late as 2004 [link]. Apart from a select group of highly collectible artists, the record club issues, and the quadraphonic releases, many 8-track tapes seem to have limited value to most Collectors, especially if they have been misused and are worn looking. 8-Track cartridge tapes that are in original near new condition or have never been opened have the most Collector Value [link] . The Record Club Only 8-track cartridge that seems to sell for the highest amount is The Police' [The Singles], which has sold for over $200 for a single copy. Another highly sought-after title among collectors has been The Sex Pistols' "Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols," which has sold for over $100 for a sealed copy.

The endless loop tape concept continues to be used in modern cinema movie projectors, 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 switching foil splice when the glues used during manufacture harden with age. Repair sometimes requires careful disassembly of the cartridge and a new metallic foil sensing splice added.

On some cartridges a plastic & foam pressure 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. A new foam pressure pad will remedy this problem, although this also sometimes requires cartridge disassembly.

Also, in [early] cartridges, the rubber in the pinch roller that pulls the tape across the heads was not fully cured and this caused them to deteriorate with time, melting into a sticky goo of tar-like material. (These can be replaced with a new rubber pinch roller of the same exact size & proportions). Later rubber pinch rollers from approx. 1969 on are made of "fully cured" rubber which does not deteriorate over time. In late 1970, RCA Records switched over their cartridge pinch rollers to a new plastic material, which some others companies have also used. However, rubber is the preferred material for pinch rollers as it grips the tape better for more even & percise movement.

Cheapening the parts used in the 8-Track cartridge was one of the direct downfalls of the format, as more and more problems developed with the reliability, sound and smooth playing of the tape.

External links

[History] of magnetic recording tape cartridges.
[So Wrong They're Right] - A 1995 documentary about 8-track enthusiasts

Audio format - Audio storage
Analog	Phonograph cylinder (1870s) - Gramophone record (1895) - Reel-to-reel audio tape recording (1940s) - Vinyl record (1948) - Compact Cassette (1963) - 8-track cartridge (1964) - Microcassette (1969) - Elcaset (1976)
Digital	Compact Disc (1982) - Digital Audio Tape (1987) - MiniDisc (1991) - Digital Compact Cassette (1992) - Super Audio CD (1999) - DVD-Audio (2000)