I'm back on a nostalgia trip

 This week, I’ve had good cause to go a nostalgia trip.

In the week, I was given a 1960s Fergusson, reel to reel tape recorder. My old one died last year and after taking it to have it repaired, it came back worse than it started. It seems to me that these days, not too many know how to repair old technology. But that’s a different story.

A friend of mine in Scotland was after an old tape recorder recently and went on one of the numerous free-ads sites and asked if anyone had an old tape recorder in their attic that they no longer wanted, and he was offered two which he then collected. He advised me to do the same.

I put a post on our local village reuse and recycle group and asked the same thing, and a day later, a lady got in touch and said that she had her father’s old one in the attic and that if I wanted it, I could come and collect it. However, she wasn’t sure it still worked, but I was welcome to take a chance on it.

I went and collected it the next day, brought it home, plugged it in and hoped for the best. I’m pleased to say, it came on and when I tried it, it played, although somewhat slow. It could fast forward the tapes and rewind. So there was hope.

The reason I wanted another tape recorder was not to record music on to, but to play the tapes I already have to see what’s on them, to compile tracklists of what’s on them, and then make new compilations on mp3 using the many tracks I already have to put on a hard drive or my mp3 player to enable me to hear them again whenever I want to.

The little matter that it played slowly didn’t bother me because all I need to hear is enough of a song to recognize it and enable me to write the song on a piece of paper, then run forward to the next and repeat.

But what actually happened, was that in doing so, as it’s an old valve tape recorder, the longer it was running, the warmer the tape recorder became, which resulted in the old oil on the motor components warming up and going from being congealed to liquid again, which freed the components up and allowed them to run more freely.

Now the tape recorder is running at the correct speed again.

Playing the old tapes again and reminded me of when I recorded them all those years ago. 

There are tapes I recorded when I was aged between 10 and 16 and then from when I was in my 20s (all of which were disco and club classics that I played on my ride when I was travelling) and finally tapes comprising of all the singles that were in the local hospital radio station at Weymouth, that for two years I was Chairman of.

And so hearing those songs have given me some great memories of the past.

It’s going to take a while, but I’m really looking forward to having those songs available at the click of a button on my computer or in my car on the mp3 player in the future.

As for the tape recorder and tapes. I’ll either keep them or gift the tape recorder to someone else and hopefully sell the tapes with the exception of the four tapes that were my Dad’s and were my initial introduction to music as a baby all those years ago.

Those four tapes are my dearest possessions and I don’t think I’d ever be able to part with them.

One other joy of this old tape recorder is that as it has a valve amplifier in it and the whole unit gets warm, it emits an old, much loved smell from the tapes as they play, one which I haven’t smelt in years. They used to be the same when they played on my Dad’s old Grundig player, all those years ago.

Happy memories keep on coming back to me.

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