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from the what's-old-is-still-old-but-they-are-making-more dept.
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
National Audio Co. is the only company in the U.S. that produces cassette tape. Now, as cassette tapes enjoy a resurgence in popularity, National Audio has less than a year's supply left of the stuff, The Wall Street Journal reports.
For the last 15 years, National Audio's co-owner and president Steve Stepp has been clinging to his company's dwindling supply of music-quality magnetic tape. In 2014, National Audio's South Korean supplier stopped making the material, so Stepp bought out their remaining stock before they shuttered — and has been left with a shrinking stockpile ever since.
Although the demand for tape has increased in recent years, the quality and supply has not; National Audio has long relied on outdated gear that Stepp jokes is "the finest equipment the 1960s has to offer." That's why the company — which makes cassettes for everyone from indie bands to Metallica — is planning to build the U.S.'s first high-grade tape manufacturing line in decades.
Crap! Where am I going to store my TRS-80 programs now?
Source: https://theweek.com/speedreads/735269/america-running-cassette-tape
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday November 13 2017, @08:52PM (1 child)
I bought a beat up old car just for running around town in. Didn't cost much, runs well, and has a old school cassette radio in it. I'm not buying any new tapes, but I dug up a box of old ones from out in my shed, and I've been playing all the old tapes I made twenty to thirty years ago. It's awesome.
What's amazing is that I made some of those tapes just over thirty years ago, and they almost all still play fine. TDK SA-90's rock! :) .
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @03:29AM
I've got an older car with cassette and CD player. Every now and then an old tape decides to wind itself around the innards and it's a pain to fish out the mess. Might be correlated with very hot or very cold weather? Other than that, the cassette player works fine -- Maxell for the win(grin).