Tape Deck

The other day my grandson Tim asked to listen to a record. He must have heard of one at school and thought we were old enough we might actually have some. We did have both records and a record player although the arm skipped badly and the record sounded pretty scratchy. It reminded me of all the media formats that have gone out of use during my lifetime. Vinyl records 10 inch, 78 rpm (revolutions per minute), 7.5 inch 45 rpm, and 12 inch 33 1/3 rpm records each had their moment in the sun and the 12 inch disks lasted through the popularization of cassettes and CDs before they finally disappeared.

But real audiophiles used to have something even better, more "true to life" than vinyl records. This was before cassettes and 8-track. The reel-to-reel tape deck. When we got married, one of my most valuable possessions, in fact, was a tape deck and a collection of a couple dozen 7 and 5 inch tapes. With that collection I could play music for hours and, unlike records, the fidelity remained through scores of playings.

My tape deck still sits in the garage, missing a key pulley belt. But the other day I spotted this deck at a garage sale. Even more surprising, it works. With any luck it will work long enough for me to move all the tape collection to DVD or CD.