Do you like 8 track tapes?

[Tirvine]

Whether it's because I am, by nature, a minimalist, or it's because I have pretty much solidified my desert island set-up, my shaves are lovely, generally BBS, generally 10. Everyday I use the same soap, going back and forth between two scents, rotate two brushes, take three passes with the same razor, minimally varying among very similar blades (I have narrowed my preference to GSBs or Crystals, which I am sorting out, but need to use my remaining PIRs, Astras, and Nacets), and splash on the same cologne as aftershave. In short, my posts feel very repetitious. Repetitious posts can feel like strident advocacy, but ths is clearly a YMMV hobby or interest. Do others feel such self consciousness? I feel like an 8 track tape endlessly looping on an album we might have liked the first few times from which we now recoil due to the incessant repetition.

 

[SharpieB]

I do. I have an old crappy portable 8track player and a bunch of terrible 8tracks that I pull out every once in a while.

I love the scratchy old school sound. Reminds me of the 70’s!

I use different soaps, razors and blades every shave though.

 

[ouchyfoot]

I always hated 8-track tapes. Having a song interrupted in the middle while it clicked to the next track seemed like a defacement of art. Luckily they had been popularized in the US for a while before the market caught up in Canada, so they weren’t around as long here. Kind of DOA. Cassettes we’re already on the move.

 

[DCRIII]

Never listened to an 8-track before, they're before my time. I was born in the age of cassette tapes and CD, though rare and expensive at the time, were just around the corner.
Unrelated for sure, I did have the embarrassing misfortune of asking my father how to fast forward tracks on a record player.

As for incessant repetition, I have enough variety to avoid stagnation in my joy of traditional wet shaving.

 

[TexOkie Shaver]

Nope. CD’s when I can’t have vinyl. But vinyl is the preference.

 

[Tirvine]

Interestingly the responses so far are about either having a varied shaving routine or views on recorded media. I prefer records myself. I do not feel dissuaded and think I'll stop posting on What Did You Use Today.

 

[RayClem]

As someone who appreciates a wide variety music styles and genre, I never did like 8-track tapes. I did have a player in my car and another at home. However, I never really enjoyed listening to them. It was like listening to music on AM radio, which is to say, it sounded less than ideal. I much preferred listening to vinyl records or reel to reel tape recorders.

As new and better method of recording distributing sound have come available, I adopted the new media: cassette tapes, FM radio, Compact Discs, DVDs, HD radio, XM radio, BluRay, and now High Resolution audio encoded as FLAC files.

I take the same approach with shaving soaps. To me, the soaps and creams that were available when I started shaving are the equivalent of 8-track tapes. They are minimally acceptable, but do not provide a particularly enjoyable experience.

Although my soap collection includes soaps at a variety of quality levels, the ones I enjoy using most are those that I would consider the equivalent of High-resolution audio. They provide a superb experience. Just like I would not like alternating between a few vinyl records, CD or digital play lists, I like have a wide variety of soap styles and genres from which to choose.

 

[Atlantic59]

I think I understand. A lot of us go through an experimentation phase, but eventually begin to converge on a few things that work really well for us. Variety can be the spice of life, it can also be the obligation to use all the extraneous stuff that's been acquired along the way.

 

[Old Hippie]

The radio stations where I worked ran on "carts." Not 8-track, but the same case with an endless loop of tape and a 2-track head. They came in standard sizes: 29 second, 59 second, 90 second, etc. I think the longest we used were four minutes.

In the news department we used them for dubbing soundbites or to hold produced pieces. Every newscast had a stack of carts with file folder labels on them and notations like "FIRE/Jones ...tomorrow sometime. :18" so the announcer knew what story it was part of, who was on it, what their last words were, and how long the bite was.

They were good enough for AM radio, and by extension good enough for FM as long as it was spoken word. The only attraction of carts for music programmers was that some of the old guys who couldn't wrap their heads around what speed to set the record player on didn't have that extra element of confusion in their airshift. Plus, we didn't get an LP playing at 45...

But to the real point: I agree. I'm coming down to a couple of soaps, a preferred type of brush, got a stash of the various blades and styles I like, and just not too inclined to drop a lot of dough on a new razor, either.

Still having just as much fun, just doing it with less stuff.

O.H.

 

[Ravenonrock]

Self awareness.

 

[Fred D]

I sure loved the 8 track player I had over 40 years ago, in my 1969 Chevelle SS 396.
Good times...

 

[sm29]

It was always a balancing act. First vinyl but then recorded vinyl on high quality cassettes for travel. CDs to my less than perfectly trained ear did away with the pops and issues with the cartridge tracking well enough plus potentially etching the vinyl. Which was worse the hum of a direct drive turntable or the belt issues on the belt drive? CDs were the answer and sometimes still are, but then being able to transfer a CD to an MP3 gave me the ability to carry several hundred albums in an iPod smaller than the old cassette. But that too changed, an Amazon or other streaming services give me even more variety and ease of use. I can ask Alexa to play Machinehead, then move to Gato Barbieri, then Beethoven’s ninth with a period orchestra like Roger Norrington and the London Classical Players or instead Von Karajan and the Berliner Philharmonic. So many choices and no additional costs. For music the variety keeps it interesting.

Shaving has also evolved for me. At home I use my Blackland Tradere SB almost every day. Occasionally another razor may make an appearance. Brushes get rotated of my limited number of brushes 6 are in my home rotation and several sit on the side. A new arrival is due in the next few weeks and since I don’t want to have a brush for each day of the week I will either take a brush out of the rotation to stay at sixor add one to go to 8. Blades vary but I’m pretty much set on Feathers for my Timeless Titanium (travel) razor and for my home use PPI blades (Nacet, GSB primarily), US Personnas and Israeli Personnas. Soap is also limited to my favorites. Currently MdC is the top choice but there is room for DR Harris, MWF, Tabac and Cella to make an appearance. I use one soap through the brush rotation. Aftershaves vary and will probably continue to vary based on a lot of good choices. I think I would describe myself as an “evolving” minimalist.

For me both music and shaving are sources of enjoyment and I want the opportunity to explore when it suits me and the knowledge that what I have is way more than adequate and new items are only for the pleasure of them and no longer a necessity.

 

[Slock]

I put a Nakamichi cassette deck in my 88 T-bird. I had a crazy dream where someone stole my Nakamichi and put an 8 track in. I was trying to put a cassette in and in just wasn't working. Luckily it was just a dream plus 8 track where out by than.

 

[flynshave]

Are the any 8 tracks left where the rubber rollers haven’t turned to gummy goo?

 

[Benzadmiral]

I remember 8-tracks in friends' cars. My first car did not have an 8-track player, and after that the technology had moved on to cassettes. It was annoying on the 8-tracks not to be able to rewind andlisten again to a song you particularly liked. Now we can go right to anything on a CD or a flash drive!

Old Hippie, I too worked in AM radio with the carts. I recorded plenty of spots (commercials, to the uninitiated) and typed lots of labels for them. I tried, if the station typewriter had a red/black ribbon, to do the title of the spot in black, and the outro, those last two words or the sound effect, in red, so that it would stand out to me and my fellow announcers.

Naught to do with shaving, this. I have my routine of 8 razors and rotate among them over two weeks' time, every 48 hours. The soaps and creams I choose at random. That keeps this hobby from getting dull.

 

[Lefonque]

Only Creedence tapes.

 

[ouchyfoot]

I put a Nakamichi cassette deck in my 88 T-bird. I had a crazy dream where someone stole my Nakamichi and put an 8 track in. I was trying to put a cassette in and in just wasn't working. Luckily it was just a dream plus 8 track where out by than.

My god man! Are you okay? How frightening!

 

[phelix]

I played the best of cream 8 track my brother handed down to me so many times it eventually broke. Damn I'm old.

 

[Fawkes007]

My friend’s family car had an 8 track. We’d borrow the car and go guitar shopping. I hated the way the 8 track would fade out and back in on a song between tracks, with that click (more like a thump). Used to do this in the middle of the solo from “I’m The One” on the Van Halen debut.

 

[ivan_101]

That format has never been sold or used here. We only had LPs and cassettes. But the whole idea of not having to flip the cassette sounded pretty cool to me at the time.