WOW a 7 ½ inch reel to reel tape recorder. Hello, In 1955, our dad had a huge rectangular box arrive at our house. The workers opened it and it was a combination hi-fi/stereo unit. It had a record player, an am/fm radio and the odd reel to reel tape recorder built in. We found out later that we could actually record music or anything on the radio channels. So, when we listened to a rock and roll record, if I timed it right, it would record onto the tape as if we were playing it on the record player. That in essence saved us money as we could still have a collection of 50s-60s sounds but on a continuous play of the long 7 ½ inch reel to reel tape. The only problem was that if we wanted to hear a song again, we had to stop and rewind the tape. Sometimes the tape would spin so fast that it was difficult to stop and when it did with the stop button, it snapped the thin tape. Now, it was a fine tooth comb to repair a broken 7 ½ inch tape. But, it was done carefully. The only thing was that it usually was at the end of a song or the beginning. So, the slight blurb was not that significant. Jnaki We learned to make an hour long mix tape with all of the popular songs we got off of the radio channels. So, the next thing was to store the recorded tapes to take with us when we visited our friends, who also had 7 ½ inch reel to reel tape players. But, that long play tape with minimum stoppages was an excellent background music for studying or doing homework. The fast action songs on another tape mix was good for the times of making models or later on, warm accessory clean up on our covered card table when we were building/driving. Note: The same process was to allow us to play an LP record or a 45 record and set the recording on the tape player. Now, our purchased albums or individual 45 records were recorded on one long tape for easy listening. You just had to like the play list and make the stop/rewind/go situations at a minimum to keep the tape from breaking. By the time we were driving, our thought was the lp record units we saw in cars at shows were out of reach and did not work when moving, due to skipping on the records playing. Despite the advertisements, our friends who bought them sold them right away. So, the tape would have no skipping during road trips. We tried to make the portable units as pictured above fit in our cars. Behind the seat on the floor was the best access and location. But, it never worked. We lost a space for seating and had to stop to change the tapes anyway. So, they were going to be in the trunk. We never got the wiring complete for the portable units and that idea went down the drain. As no one had a converter to allow the plug in cord to work with a 12 volt set up in cars at the time. Note 2: During the same time of the introduction of the portable reel to reel tape recorders, every school in the USA had a unit for almost every classroom uses. After those "education" uses we were allowed to play some music and I brought out my long reels full of old time rock and roll songs... YRMV
The Jalopy Journal
