I have had a four track for about three years now and have amassed a couple of shoe boxes full of cassettes. Whilst these tapes may mean nothing to anyone else, i would like to think i will be able to listen to them when i am old and sentimental. I figured a lot of people on this forum will have got four tracks quite some time ago and therefore might be able to tell me if their cassettes have lasted well, or if they have deteriorated etc.

If you keep them in their plastic cases, don't expose them to extreme temperature or magnets, don't spill stuff on them, and generally don't do anything stupid, I don't see any reason why they won't hold up.

Good call. I've also been backing up to CD (not that that's that much better, but still) over the last couple of years, getting an archive of mixes etc.

In the end though, nothing's going to last forever.

A good place to store them is your cars glove box or even just laying on the dashboard in the hot, hot sun. Also try stacking them on or very near a clock radio.




Oh, wait... 'bad place' I mean. Those are bad places.


PS
My band opened for Cassette Longevity way back in '86 when they still had the old drummer right before the first record came out. They were hot shit!

Mayfair wrote:My band opened for Cassette Longevity way back in '86 when they still had the old drummer right before the first record came out. They were hot shit!

Yeah, for some reason they couldn't get that live sound on their releases. The closest they came is the split 7" with Very Near A Clock Radio.

A former uncle of mine is a videographer, and said once that video tapes only had a shelf life of 10-12 years or so before they started to develop what he called "snow."

I don't know if that applies to audio tapes, but I'd assume there's a similar slow-demagnetizing that occurs.

Dylan wrote:

Mayfair wrote:My band opened for Cassette Longevity way back in '86 when they still had the old drummer right before the first record came out. They were hot shit!

Yeah, for some reason they couldn't get that live sound on their releases. The closest they came is the split 7" with Very Near A Clock Radio.

Yeah, i went to see those guys.. the original drummer hit so hard i was like wow, but that snare drum made my eyes flutter.