8 Track Car Stereo

8 track car stereo


Stereo 8, commonly known as the eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, or simply eight-track, is amagnetic tape sound recording technology. It was popular in the United States from the mid-1960s through the early 1980s, but was relatively unknown in many European countries. Stereo 8 was created in 1964 by a consortium led by Bill Lear of Lear Jet Corporation, along with Ampex, Ford Motor Company, General Motors,Motorola, and RCA Victor Records (RCA). It was a further development of the similar Stereo-Pak four-track cartridge created by Earl "Madman" Muntz. A later quadraphonic version of the format was announced by RCA in April 1970 and first known as Quad-8, then later changed to just Q8.

8 track car stereo

8 track car stereo

8 track car stereo

8 track car stereo

8 track car stereo

8 track car stereo

8 track car stereo

8 track car stereo

8 track car stereo

8 Track Car Player

8 track car player

The original format for magnetic tape sound reproduction was the ree-to-reel tape recorder, first available in the U.S. in the late 1940s but too expensive and bulky to be practical for amateur home use until well into the 1950s. Loading a reel of tape onto the machine and threading it through the various guides and rollers proved daunting to some casual users—certainly, it was more difficult than putting a vinyl record on a record player and flicking a switch—and because in early years each tape had to be dubbed from the master tape in real-time to maintain good sound quality, prerecorded tapes were more expensive to manufacture, and costlier to buy, than vinyl records.

8 track car player

8 track car player

8 track car player

8 track car player

8 track car player

8 track car player

8 track car player

8 track car player

8 track car player