Q8 Collection Update: July, 2020.

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Q-Eight

2K Club - QQ Super Nova
Since 2002/2003
Joined
Sep 30, 2003
Messages
3,699
Location
Castlegar, BC, Canada
It was a rainy day in B.F. nowhere, so I decided to spend some time with loved ones who are very, very close to me and near and dear to my heart....

.....yes, my Quad tape collection? haha!!

Ready for it? Six-hundred and fifty-seven cartridges! 657!
I knew I was around 500. Wasn't ready to accept 657. Ah well. This'll be my legacy I suppose. Email me if you want to be written into my will, because these are probably all going into the trash when I take the big dirt nap. Apologies for the semi-potato quality. My digital camera is probably nearing 15 years old. I keep promising I'll get a new one....

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I have Win-Gib envy! Very impressive!

Funny that it makes me recall walking into record stores that actually stocked these things. There was one that had the quad all laid out, just like that, under a glass case. Of course, they sold them at list, which was mostly $7.99-$8.99. Back then it seemed so expensive. Heck, reels were like $12! Oh the irony.....
 
I have Win-Gib envy! Very impressive!

Funny that it makes me recall walking into record stores that actually stocked these things. There was one that had the quad all laid out, just like that, under a glass case. Of course, they sold them at list, which was mostly $7.99-$8.99. Back then it seemed so expensive. Heck, reels were like $12! Oh the irony.....

I should give Dan & Kathy a shout-out. Without their Win-Gibs, I don't know what I would have done. I bet I've bought close to 1,000 pads from them over the years; for my Quads, my stereo tapes and the tapes I repair for friends.

I can remember as a young kid in the late 80's going into Kresge's Department store one town over and ogling their 8-track selection. Kresge's still had the old-timey, stainless-steel lunch counter. I vaguely recall Woolworth's still having 8-tracks in the late 1980's as well. I kind of live in the Alabama of Canada. I can distinctly recall a story making front-page news in 1995 when our ONLY local AM station was switching to FM. The public outcry was insane! "We'll all have to buy new cars!" they shouted as nobody had a car with an FM radio.

Hell, my mom was still driving her '75 Valiant with an AM radio and an 8-track player at that time. Come to think of it, it was around that time she bought a used Dynasty that had an FM radio with cassette!! Man, were we stylin'.

To date, Castlegar only has NINE traffic lights. That's up from the FIVE we had in the 90's. :ROFLMAO:
 
So Go For Your Guns and Musicmagic would finish off the Columbia’s?

:bowing:

Hahaha! Still need quite a few Columbias! Chicago 7 and 8, some Herbie Hancocks, The Miracles, and then all the Johnny Mathis, Percy Faith and Ray Coniff elevator music tapes!
Kinda like how my RCA purchases lately are all Hugo Montenegros, Danny Davis's, Perry Comos and some of the less popular titles. Suffice to say I have all the *GOOD* RCA's and Columbias. Some collections are complete like the Capitol tapes, the A&M tapes, and the Asylum/Elektra's. Only need 3 more titles to complete the Warner set, maybe a dozen or so to have all the Project 3's.....

Is there a History of Audio museum? lol. Wouldn't that be cool to see ALL the Quad releases in one place? Well, I guess I shouldn't say ALL as I don't collect the classical tapes.....
 
Hahaha! Still need quite a few Columbias! Chicago 7 and 8, some Herbie Hancocks, The Miracles, and then all the Johnny Mathis, Percy Faith and Ray Coniff elevator music tapes!
Kinda like how my RCA purchases lately are all Hugo Montenegros, Danny Davis's, Perry Comos and some of the less popular titles. Suffice to say I have all the *GOOD* RCA's and Columbias. Some collections are complete like the Capitol tapes, the A&M tapes, and the Asylum/Elektra's. Only need 3 more titles to complete the Warner set, maybe a dozen or so to have all the Project 3's.....

Is there a History of Audio museum? lol. Wouldn't that be cool to see ALL the Quad releases in one place? Well, I guess I shouldn't say ALL as I don't collect the classical tapes.....
That B.F. nowhere place looks like a ton of fun!
 
I have Win-Gib envy! Very impressive!

Funny that it makes me recall walking into record stores that actually stocked these things. There was one that had the quad all laid out, just like that, under a glass case. Of course, they sold them at list, which was mostly $7.99-$8.99. Back then it seemed so expensive. Heck, reels were like $12! Oh the irony.....
$7.99 in mid 1975 is over $38 nowadays. $12 for an open reel is over $57! No wonder I didn’t own any of either, not to mention the equipment. One paid a big premium for discrete quad back then especially if one wished to dodge the perils of CD4.

So shelling out $25 for an AF SACD with stereo and MC layers was actually reasonable yet they couldn‘t make the business model work...The horror...
 
$7.99 in mid 1975 is over $38 nowadays. $12 for an open reel is over $57! No wonder I didn’t own any of either, not to mention the equipment. One paid a big premium for discrete quad back then especially if one wished to dodge the perils of CD4.

So shelling out $25 for an AF SACD with stereo and MC layers was actually reasonable yet they couldn‘t make the business model work...The horror...

$38 per tape.... that would $24,966 in tapes!! 😳 And that's still not counting my stack of dupes or the weird ones that don't fit into any category.
And that's using real, American greenback dollars. If we converted that into Canadian Pesos, that would be $32,455.

Yes please! 🤪
 
Some notes:

1) JEALOUSY ALERT! I tried to get one of those purple "On the Borders" for years on eBay and got out-sniped on 2 or 3 occasions
2) I also store them by label and label variation. It must be some sort of "quadraphonic compulsive disorder"
3) No Gold UA's?
 
Some notes:

1) JEALOUSY ALERT! I tried to get one of those purple "On the Borders" for years on eBay and got out-sniped on 2 or 3 occasions
2) I also store them by label and label variation. It must be some sort of "quadraphonic compulsive disorder"
3) No Gold UA's?
You sure it wasn't Q-Eight that out-sniped you ;)
 
You sure it wasn't Q-Eight that out-sniped you ;)

It was a long time ago, when eBay was a fun place, and the quad buyers and sellers were all pretty much known to each other. Those days are long gone, but who knows? I think it might have been Philip, actually, which is fine with me, I just feel bad that I drove the price up on him. Ah, the scars of bidding wars.
 
It might have been me if it was within the last 5 years. Not only had I been making half-decent money up until recently, but prices for a while there had come WAY down.
I am borderline OCD. My LP's are sorted by catalog number and company, and my stereo 8-tracks are sorted similarly as well. You should see my shop. People LOVE working in my shop because my tools are always laid out in easy to reach access and drawers are sorted and labelled. It literally causes me to lose sleep if tools aren't put back in their proper place.

No Gold UA's because a) they are so very difficult to obtain and b) I started winding up with more and more black cartridges. I think I've only ever had two gold UA's.
Notice also no Canadian tapes. I don't like the look of them as there doesn't seem to be any uniformity (some red cartridge, some gold cartridge, various label colours...)
 
Since no one's asked yet...

Best mix?
Worst mix?
Best fidelity?
Worst fidelity?

Best Mix - John Dawson Winter III, both Eagles titles, the Donna Fargo's, the Jim Croce's, some of the Project 3 Quads are a lot of fun.
Worst Mix - Tommy James & The Shondells Best Of (only 4 songs are decent Quad); all the early "Command Quads" are phoney; Pretzel Logic and TDN Hard Labour.
Best Fidelity - a nod must go to Jerry Reeds' Hot a-Mighty. I would say that is the best sounding Q8 I've ever heard.
Worst Fidelity - The United Artists tapes. Muddy, low levels and phase errors.

It's really hard to judge fidelity because all the tapes are used. Mileage does effect playback. So who's to say all the tapes sound bad versus the one I have? But I will say that the phase errors are the ones that piss me off the most because there's NO way to cure that on a vintage playback setup. Swapping channels is one thing, but cutting wires to reverse things is where I draw the line.
 
You got an impressive collection!
Do you know if all 8 Elvis Presley quad titles were also released in Canada? Do versions with picture covers excists, or only the RCA standard covers?

By the way: I am looking for 2 or 3 canadian extra RCA Q8 covers...
 

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You got an impressive collection!
Do you know if all 8 Elvis Presley quad titles were also released in Canada? Do versions with picture covers excists, or only the RCA standard covers?

By the way: I am looking for 2 or 3 canadian extra RCA Q8 covers...

I would assume they were. I don't collect Canadian carts as they're too few and far between.
 
It was a rainy day in B.F. nowhere, so I decided to spend some time with loved ones who are very, very close to me and near and dear to my heart....

.....yes, my Quad tape collection? haha!!

Ready for it? Six-hundred and fifty-seven cartridges! 657!
I knew I was around 500. Wasn't ready to accept 657. Ah well. This'll be my legacy I suppose. Email me if you want to be written into my will, because these are probably all going into the trash when I take the big dirt nap. Apologies for the semi-potato quality. My digital camera is probably nearing 15 years old. I keep promising I'll get a new one....

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Really nice collection! I have around 300.
 

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You should start a internet radio station devoted entirely to Q8’s. Maybe broadcast two channels of stereo simultaneously on different streams so it comes out in Quad. It might not work right though if there were internet issues. Maybe there is a way to broadcast in quadraphonic like encoding the signal down to stereo and having a surround sound plug-in on the listening app. But what do I know, I still listen to cassettes and 8 tracks.
 
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