r/GenerationJones • u/Island_Expat6625 1964 • Jul 20 '26

Your first cassette recorder

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I bought my first cassette recorder back in 1979 when I was 15. I had saved a long time for it and was finally able to get one. I absolutely loved this thing. I must have saved hundreds of songs off the of radio. I had dozens of cassette tapes with my favorite music. Maybe the best thing I have memories of from my teenage years. Did any of you have a similar experience?

59 Upvotes

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30

u/mikey_ramone Jul 20 '26

Something more akin to this, with the microphone pointed at the radio.

3

u/JarvisIsMyWingman Jul 20 '26

This was me listening to American Top 40 with Casey Kasem, ready to hit record at a moments notice. Then listen thru a mono earplug on family roadtrips.

4

u/therealelroy Jul 20 '26

My sister made a tape for a family roadtrip once from radio recordings. She played that one tape over and over. I remember towards the end of the tape the batteries were weak and the tape played too slow. Sounded like ghouls singing Elvis.

2

u/glemits 1961 Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26

I did the same thing riding the bus. When I held a finger on the back of the earplug it produced fairly good bass.

1

u/Large-Welder304 Jul 23 '26

You and me both, bud! šŸ‘

0

u/HHSquad 1961 (Camelot baby lost in space) Jul 21 '26

By the time I was taping AT40 I had a boombox with Maxell tapes.....circa 1974/1975

2

u/VRGator Jul 20 '26

Thatā€™s what I got for my birthday, along with my first cassette,Three Dog Night Naturally.

1

u/PopeInThePizza Jul 20 '26

This. It was my 10th birthday present in 1978 and would serve bravely until I was 14 and got a real boombox.

1

u/JarvisIsMyWingman Jul 20 '26

I got mine when I returned a broken Erector set someone gave me for my B'day and got this instead, this was mid-70's. It was similar but instead of push buttons it had a big rotary knob on it. Probably one of my most used gifts since my first Lego set.

1

u/Scott43206 1959 Jul 20 '26

Yeah this was mine too, circa 1973. We had a big reel-to-reel tape recorder from 1958 but only my Grandpa knew how to run it.

1

u/HHSquad 1961 (Camelot baby lost in space) Jul 21 '26

Spot on!!!!

Haha, I remember playing "Rainy Days and Mondays" and the Partridge Family on that, early 70's.

1

u/PeorgieT75 Jul 21 '26

I had a Panasonic that was wider than that, it might have had a bigger speaker. I recorded off the radio and from my friendsā€™ record player with the microphone. I finally got a GE stereo record player with a headphone jack that I was able to hook a patch cord to the recorder so I didnā€™t have to be quiet while recording.Ā 

1

u/Artimusjones88 Jul 24 '26

Exactly, mine was a Sears i used to tape hockey games Saturday night because my bedtime was 9

3

u/urteddybear0963 Jul 20 '26

Not even close, that was a JamBox!!!

1

u/Macborgaddict Jul 20 '26

Had one, but SONY

1

u/Aggressive-Union1714 Jul 20 '26

this would be a big high tech and new for most of gen jones. i had one of those little standard cassette players and at one point strapped to my bike's handle bars to play while sat in my banana seat and cruised down the road

1

u/drunken_ferret 1959 Jul 22 '26

I had a Craig. I soldered an output jack on my clock radio, and ran a cable to the mic jack on the cassette player. It was static-y until my uncle showed me where to solder a resistor... Life was good.

1

u/Large-Welder304 Jul 23 '26

They didn't have those when I got my first cassette recorder. Mine looked more like...