Yes there's more...it's another forgotten format
I've had a bit of a run of tape themed videos recently. This hasn't been by design, I normally try to vary topics a bit more, so I hope you don't mind indulging me with another one.
In an audio tape family tree this particular format would be out on a limb of it's own with no descendants - it's the Sanyo Micro Pack 35.
Forgotten Format: SANYO Micro-Pack 35 Tape Recorder (YouTube)
Comments (27)
Thanks for another splendid video. I'm especially impressed with your imaginative solution to the problem of the decaying rubber mats. Nicely played Mr Moan.
If the heat shrink tubing had proven to be too wide, my next idea was to apply a thin coating of a glue like uhu or Bostik to the 'capstan'...which after drying for a while should have provided a bit of tackiness.
I see a bunch of websites are suddenly interested in this format. Coincidence?
Yes it's ended up on Gizmodo and Popular Mechanics. I'm wondering if the absence of a talking head intro to camera on this video somehow made it better for them to embed on their websites.
Interesting and nicely made Matt👍.
Another fascinating production. This is one format I never before encountered, and I date back to the early days of reel-to-reel .... ! Thank you for posting this.
Gizmodo just picked up your video! <a href="https://gizmodo.com/theres-a-good-reason-this-weird-old-cassette-format-di-1798663868" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://gizmodo.com/theres-a-good-reason-this-weird-old-cassette-format-di-1798663868</a>
I rather foolishly made a jokey comment on YouTube under this video, and a day later there is a long smear of toxic sludge comments underneath. I should have known better. I have deleted my comment, which rather satisfyingly seems to have deleted all the replies, too. I think maybe I'll stick to commenting on Patreon in the future. (!)
I saw that...it's a shame, but whatever you write on YouTube or twitter is likely to generate the same results. I like to think that Patreon is a quiet haven from that sort of behaviour.
Matt, you're getting bloody good at this video making lark, if you don't mind me saying.
Thanks, this one was supposed to be a quickie, with no intro and outro to camera or silly puppet section...but for some reason that I still can't fathom, it ended up taking the best part of a week to make.
I think that tape should have been played at 33 1/3 ;) Also, if it's a trip in Japan, ¥50 bets its Kyoto!
(whoops didn't see 8-bit guy's comment) If you get a bad cartridge and try to recover the tape content on a standard reel-to-reel, I'd expect it to play at a high pitch near the beginning, and drop to a lower frequency towards the end. Also, without constant tension on the tape and only driving the hub, the tape can wind in loose layers on the takeup reel at the beginning, but can then be pulled out to a smaller diameter as friction and tape tension increases (which happens as the takeup reel fills and the supply reel empties), causing irregular speed of the tape across the tape head. So this was never going to be a high quality tape system compared to the constant speed capstan drive system.
Also - for backlog - and in theme of the stacked cartridge / cassette - there's the Phliips N1500 series VCRs to consider...
I've never seen a working one for sale...but apparently they weren't particularly reliable even when new. Perhaps one day.
Lovely video Matt. One question - why "35" - guess cassette might be 35mm thick ?
Your guess is as good as mine on this one, although it's 1/4" inch width tape so it won't be that. I don't think it's to do with the tape length as it can't be over 150ft given the size of the reels...perhaps it's because it holds approx 35 mins of audio....I'm just not sure.
Another one I'd never heard of, please don't stop making these -if you stop, these machines will be forgotten and that would be sad.
The way the two reels are stacked on top of each other reminds me of the Cartrivision; which was an early video tape format from the early 70s.
It's cool but as much as the first players were smaller than the Philips compact cassette players, I'd imagine a Walkman made out of one of these would have been too thick to easily slip into a pocket. It kinda reminds me also of a mini tefifon cartridge!
The more tape formats I see, the more I start to appreciate the brilliance of the compact cassette. You really have to hand it to Philips, in pretty much one attempt they hit the perfect balance of size, quality and price.
I agree. For a technology from the 1960s to still be the best selling audio format of the 1990 is very impressive. Of course tape formulations improved significantly over the years, so the internals were upgraded, but you can still play back a new cassette album bought in 2017 on a 1963 machine.
I always wonder if you’ll ever run out of these! p.s. I think you may have misspelt my first name in the credits!
Flipping eck. Sorry about that old chap, I'll fix it on the next video.
Our Japanese Friends always striving ahead with an alternative solution, love it. Nice Clarkson impression in the final shots, POWER! Another fantastic video Matt 🙂
It's the best micro-pack player... ...in the world.
That's neat how they put the reels on top of each other. But that drive mechanism is terrible. Beyond the issues you had, the first thing I thought about is that the speed of the tape across the tape head would change as the tape played, because the diameter of the reels would change. Without any sort of pinch roller setup, there would be no way to keep it constant. So that means the quality changes from the beginning to the end of the tape. They could have certainly added a pinch roller at the front, which would have also had to work in a diagonal slope.