Not your ordinary Philco 48-1201 "Bing Crosby" R/P combo

[AUdubon5425]

Originally Posted by radiotvnut

...The 8 1/3 rpm record stayed around until the end of 2000 when the last magazines were recorded on 9" flexible soundsheets...The reason the gov't went with the 8 rpm disc was to achieve more playing time on a record and to prevent the records from being played on standard consumer phonographs should one of these records fall into the hands of someone not enrolled in the gov't talking book program.

Interesting. I remember in the 80's-90's one of my grandmother's neighbors received talking books from the gov't on cassette, along with a machine that was cased in beige plastic - my hazy memory recalls it looking like an oversized Fisher-Price kid's deck. I wonder if the cassettes were recorded at a non-standard speed?

[radiotvnut]

Originally Posted by AUdubon5425

Interesting. I remember in the 80's-90's one of my grandmother's neighbors received talking books from the gov't on cassette, along with a machine that was cased in beige plastic - my hazy memory recalls it looking like an oversized Fisher-Price kid's deck. I wonder if the cassettes were recorded at a non-standard speed?

Did the tape player look like this? Those Gov't talking book cassettes were recorded at 15/16 IPS on 4 tracks. A normal talking book cassette is recorded at 1 7/8 IPS on 2 tracks. Up to six hours of reading can be recorded on a C90 cassette using the half speed, four track method. The cassettes will soon be a memory as the Gov't is switching to digital cartridges to record books. BTW, this tape player was built by Telex Communications.

The next picture is of one of the last talking book record players from the '90's. It plays 8, 16, and 33 rpm records and has a variable pitch control. The tonearm is unusual, as it does not lift. Instead, the head of the arm is pressed down, retracting the needle into the arm. Then, the arm is swung towards the edge of the record and released when it touches the edge of the record. There is a automatic cutoff at the end of the record. I like the features of this machine; but, it's one of the worst sounding models that they had. This was also built by Telex. There was a version of this machine that had a built in auto reverse tape player; but, I've never had one.

Next, we have a '60's vacuum tube talking book player that also plays 8, 16, and 33 rpm. It's built like a tank and sounds very good. It was made by Waters-Conley.