Hobbies: The Shape of Tape

When it took over some abandoned German positions during World War II, the U.S. Signal Corps stumbled on a discovery that was destined to revolutionize the life and times of that hardy American hobbyist, the hi-fi addict. The signalmen found magnetic tape and equipment superior to any then developed in the U.S. What they wrought back home by their find was evident last week at the Chicago World’s Fair of Music and Sound. Tape is the hottest thing in hi-fi today, and the tape industry is wooing the public this fall as it never has before.

For his home, today’s hi-fi addict can buy extra-thin tape capable of cramming eight hours of monaural sound onto one tape reel—all of Beethoven’s nine symphonies plus his five piano concertos. For his car he can buy “magic memory” machines designed to fit over the transmission hump and record his dictation en route or music received on the car radio. There are devices on which six people can listen simultaneously to the 1812 Overture on six different earphones at six different volumes; there are “perpetual motion” tape machines that, once started, spew forth repetitious music endlessly.

Musical Stunts. Tape’s impact on commercial recording followed soon on the Signal Corps discovery: the adoption of 33⅓ r.p.m. as a standard speed for records would have been less practical had not tape-splicing techniques done away with the necessity of a perfect studio performance. Tape also made possible such stunts as Jascha Heifetz’ singlehanded recording of the Bach D Minor Concerto for Two Violins and the famed recording of Patti Page singing the Tennessee Waltz over her own voice. But music lovers did not at first welcome prerecorded tape with open ears, despite its admitted advantages (virtually no surface noise or deterioration, plus fewer interruptions). It cost more than records, was harder to handle, and for a time was produced in a bewildering variety of widths and speeds.

Some prices have come down (most stereo tapes are $2 or $3 more than LP stereo records); the tape itself has been more or less standardized—and the market has begun to boom. RCA’s pre-recorded-tape sales are up 50% over last year, and the Harrison Catalogue of Stereophonic Tapes lists 2,782 releases. As for tape machines, their sales increased by some 27% in two years—from 435,000 to 550,000—and some manufacturers predict an annual sale of 1,000,000. Last year $50 million in new tapes was sold.

Clubs & Jargon. The real bounce in the tape market is provided by home tapesters who like to do their own recording—either from radio broadcasts or from borrowed LPs (a $12 album can be put on tape costing about $4). Although recording from broadcasts is a definite copyright violation, the tapesters went at it even more vigorously last year, after the advent of FM-stereo broadcasting.

Home tape fans have even organized themselves into clubs (such as World Tape Pals, with more than 5,000 members and local chapters known as “reels”) and correspond with each other by tape. Most of them are strenuous collectors of gadgets—head demagnetizers, bulk erasers, splicers—and tend to value a performance in direct ratio to how rare it is. A currently prized item: Pianist Glenn Gould playing Brahms’s D Minor Concerto with the New York Philharmonic this spring—and Conductor Leonard Bernstein’s speech disclaiming any responsibility for the performance.