Sony, king of White Elephants, makers of products that don't play well with others, came out with the Elcaset in the 70's, to bridge the gap between open reel quality and cassette convenience. They were expensive and never caught on...

Anyone own one of these oddball orphans?

My dad used to buy tape reels and feed them into the "el-Cassette" manually to save money. The tape deck itself was huge also. Don't remember what happended to the unit, but I think the brand name was "Bell"!
Ron

A quick primer, to aid you in identifying the Elcaset:

El Kabong:

http://members.aol.com/PaulEC2/kabong.jpg

Elcaset:

http://home.iae.nl/users/pb0aia/cm/elcaset/klein.jpg

That Sony is quite small compared to the "top-load" one my Dad had years ago. It resembled a small suitcase with a hinged top that flipped back.
Ron

I have an old Elcaset ad from either TEAC or Sony. I regret not buying one tape just to keep as a reminder of a good idea that never caught on. Same for DAT and DCC. Just for the "history"of it. If I ever get a digital camera, I will post the ad for the Elcaset.

Ron

you have to admit that Sony's attempts to divide the marketplace with specialty technology is surpassed only by Microsoft, IMHO.

Let's look at a few:

* Elcaset
* SQ
* BetaMax
* MemoryStick
* DAT
* DCC

The funny thing about every one of these is that Sony will invest marketing $$ for years hoping that the technology will take off and will continue to produce many products when its clear that the market for them has passed it by. Of all of these, I think that Elcaset was the shortest-lived one.

Even though I do not think highly of Sony's attempts to corner the market with specialty technology, the product they produce when they finally start producing market-standard products are excellent and I have purchased quite a few over the years.

Cheers,

David

What about mini-disc? Isn't/wasn't that Sony's brainchild too?

I work at Circuit City part time (I know, I know, it's just to make some extra bread for Christmas) and they can't GIVE these Mini Disc players away! They just sit on the shelves and rot... and now with MP3 players, forget about it!

And if SACD goes by the wayside won't that be another format gone, KAPUT!

Well, I for one won't be shedding a tear for Sony. They get what they deserve.

Spkrman, the one you are thinking of is one that RCA developed back in the 50's. I have cartridge for one of those beasts laying around here somewhere.

you have to admit that Sony's attempts to divide the marketplace with specialty technology is surpassed only by Microsoft, IMHO.

Let's look at a few:

* Elcaset
* SQ
* BetaMax
* MemoryStick
* DAT
* DCC

The funny thing about every one of these is that Sony will invest marketing $$ for years hoping that the technology will take off and will continue to produce many products when its clear that the market for them has passed it by. Of all of these, I think that Elcaset was the shortest-lived one.

Even though I do not think highly of Sony's attempts to corner the market with specialty technology, the product they produce when they finally start producing market-standard products are excellent and I have purchased quite a few over the years.

Cheers,

David


Not wanting to nit pick but DCC is Philips format. They had the format war with Sony Minidisc and the Minidisc won out that time.

I have aPhilips DCC730 in my system. I got it for pocket money earlier this year and i've gotta say that i'm impressed with it. It sounds incredible but it's just a real pain in finding tracks as it's essentially a cassette format albeit a digital one.

Nice try though on the part of Philips. They have a great DAC / ADC in them so can be a nice cheap upgrade for a budget CD player.

What about mini-disc? Isn't/wasn't that Sony's brainchild too?

I work at Circuit City part time (I know, I know, it's just to make some extra bread for Christmas) and they can't GIVE these Mini Disc players away! They just sit on the shelves and rot... and now with MP3 players, forget about it!

And if SACD goes by the wayside won't that be another format gone, KAPUT!
I get the feeling ATRAC will follow SACD right out the door, since exacty zero other companies support it. Cruel irony: ATRAC is pronounced almost exactly like "8-track."

Seems like in the early days of home video, there were a few other formats: Cartrivision, U-matic (more of an industrial/broadcast format), V-cord, & there's a couple others I can't think of. Beta mighta made it, if Sony hadn't been so snitty about licensing it, unlike Matsushita, who didn't care WHO made 'em. -Sandy G.

Actually, DAT stuck around a long time in pro audio, just as MiniDisc has a niche in theater and broadcast. I still have a CD/MD deck and a portable MD walkman, I loved making compilations-to-walk-the-dog-by discs with it, and made a few gig recordings with it too.

Sony isn't the only one making SACD-format players. Onkyo, Denon, Pioneer, and Marantz make universal players that support SACD and DVD-Audio. Philips has a nice DVD/SACD player that was discontinued once word got out that it was an excellent machine for the money. :\ As to whether or not either SACD or DVD-Audio will win out, I'm not holding my breath since we have a generation of McConsumers that thinks McDonalds is haute cuisine and that mp3's sound good and that Circuit City sells great audio gear. :(

TP

Not wanting to nit pick but DCC is Philips format.

That's what I was going to say, Phillips has their share of lemons but if it wasn't for companies like these that try and do something instead of just sitting there waiting for someone else to come up with a product you will still be using an Edison Gramophone and have no vcr at all (not to mention DVD's).

:D

Minidisc is still huge in Japan and Europe. Just because it didn't catch on in the U.S. doesn't mean it didn't catch on...

you have to admit that Sony's attempts to divide the marketplace with specialty technology is surpassed only by Microsoft, IMHO.

Let's look at a few:

* Elcaset
* SQ
* BetaMax
* MemoryStick
* DAT
* DCC

The funny thing about every one of these is that Sony will invest marketing $$ for years hoping that the technology will take off and will continue to produce many products when its clear that the market for them has passed it by. Of all of these, I think that Elcaset was the shortest-lived one.

Even though I do not think highly of Sony's attempts to corner the market with specialty technology, the product they produce when they finally start producing market-standard products are excellent and I have purchased quite a few over the years.

Cheers,

David

perhaps YOU have to admit it i dont think others do who appreciate what a geat machine the elcaset was. it was a machine well advanced for its time and its perhaps why it went "elkabong" like it did; people did not have vision. but let me be more specific.
the cry babies who didnt like it didnt like the "disadvantage" of having a large tape format in a cassette. they wanted their miniature cassettes for storage convenience and the idea of having such a large tape on hand that was five times the size of a normal sized tape disurbed their complacent thought patterns...inspite of the fact that the cassette manufacturers were always writing about the limits of recording capibilities from cassette as a serious audiophile format.
the elcaset was to change all of that and change it it would, if not for the simpletons who could not let go of their inconvenience fears. these were the people who killed the elcaset; no other cause prompted the demise of this great unit. these same cry babies im sure had and or still have shelves full of vcr tapes on their shelves today which are similar in size.

the elcasets real problems in my view was the fact that it didnt have metal tape capibilities but im sure would have in due time if sales were there.
in this format you got the best of both open reel and cassette worlds.
tape saturation was low: in other words you could jam louder recordings onto an elcaset tape moreso than you could a cassette and get quiter tape backgrounds, louder dynamic range and still store all of your precious vinyl recordings for future reference. you didnt have the problem of cassette unraveling in the machine either with the elcaset.
i owned two of them and unfortunately broke them playing the controls too hard. i hope to score one again in the future to play with. fortunately i purchased several tapes even ten years after it went out of produciton right from the sony factory till eventually they all sold.
who knows if those who lacked vision ony opened their eyes they could have perhaps had a nice combination of vcr as well as audio tape capibilities. you blew it.
vic

I suspect that Sony is having the last laugh on its Mini-Disc. My son's Playstation portable PSP takes discs that look suspiciously like the minidisc, but in a different plastic housing. They must be selling a boatload of those discs for that.

perhaps YOU have to admit it i dont think others do who appreciate what a geat machine the elcaset was. it was a machine well advanced for its time and its perhaps why it went "elkabong" like it did; people did not have vision. but let me be more specific.
the cry babies who didnt like it didnt like the "disadvantage" of having a large tape format in a cassette. they wanted their miniature cassettes for storage convenience and the idea of having such a large tape on hand that was five times the size of a normal sized tape disurbed their complacent thought patterns...inspite of the fact that the cassette manufacturers were always writing about the limits of recording capibilities from cassette as a serious audiophile format.
the elcaset was to change all of that and change it it would, if not for the simpletons who could not let go of their inconvenience fears. these were the people who killed the elcaset; no other cause prompted the demise of this great unit. these same cry babies im sure had and or still have shelves full of vcr tapes on their shelves today which are similar in size.

the elcasets real problems in my view was the fact that it didnt have metal tape capibilities but im sure would have in due time if sales were there.
in this format you got the best of both open reel and cassette worlds.
tape saturation was low: in other words you could jam louder recordings onto an elcaset tape moreso than you could a cassette and get quiter tape backgrounds, louder dynamic range and still store all of your precious vinyl recordings for future reference. you didnt have the problem of cassette unraveling in the machine either with the elcaset.
i owned two of them and unfortunately broke them playing the controls too hard. i hope to score one again in the future to play with. fortunately i purchased several tapes even ten years after it went out of produciton right from the sony factory till eventually they all sold.
who knows if those who lacked vision ony opened their eyes they could have perhaps had a nice combination of vcr as well as audio tape capibilities. you blew it.
vic
Welcome to AK!

Wow, a moldy old thread you dug-up, but it is still an interesting one. :D

I partially agree with you, and partially disagree. I think that the lack of metal tape had nothing to do with the failure of the format. Elcaset was dead (in the US at least) before Metal tape was even introduced for cassettes.

The format was excellent in terms of performance, but the compact cassette was making tremendous strides at that time (look at nakamichi), and a third higher-quality tape format just had no market. People who really cared about quality were already using R2R or purchased a Nak. The rest of the public just wanted to be able to play their music in thier cars, and didn't really care about the loss in fidelity of using cassettes. But Open-reel was already dying at that time, because cassette's performance was starting to improve tremendously.

I like the Elcalset. It was a good sounding format. But it just never caught-on becuase there was no market nitch for it to live in. And Sony's inept marketing effort didn't help matters either. Frankly, I only learned about the existence of the format a few years after it had already died. I now own a couple of these machines, but more as neat historical curiosities, than anything else.

I'd seen them in pics, had no idea how big they were until I saw the comparison on wikipedia.

perhaps YOU have to admit it i dont think others do who appreciate what a geat machine the elcaset was. it was a machine well advanced for its time and its perhaps why it went "elkabong" like it did; people did not have vision. but let me be more specific.
the cry babies who didnt like it didnt like the "disadvantage" of having a large tape format in a cassette. they wanted their miniature cassettes for storage convenience and the idea of having such a large tape on hand that was five times the size of a normal sized tape disurbed their complacent thought patterns...inspite of the fact that the cassette manufacturers were always writing about the limits of recording capibilities from cassette as a serious audiophile format.
the elcaset was to change all of that and change it it would, if not for the simpletons who could not let go of their inconvenience fears. these were the people who killed the elcaset; no other cause prompted the demise of this great unit. these same cry babies im sure had and or still have shelves full of vcr tapes on their shelves today which are similar in size.

the elcasets real problems in my view was the fact that it didnt have metal tape capibilities but im sure would have in due time if sales were there.
in this format you got the best of both open reel and cassette worlds.
tape saturation was low: in other words you could jam louder recordings onto an elcaset tape moreso than you could a cassette and get quiter tape backgrounds, louder dynamic range and still store all of your precious vinyl recordings for future reference. you didnt have the problem of cassette unraveling in the machine either with the elcaset.
i owned two of them and unfortunately broke them playing the controls too hard. i hope to score one again in the future to play with. fortunately i purchased several tapes even ten years after it went out of produciton right from the sony factory till eventually they all sold.
who knows if those who lacked vision ony opened their eyes they could have perhaps had a nice combination of vcr as well as audio tape capibilities. you blew it.
vic


Vic knows his onions- This is an old thread, but worthy of digging up.

I recently bought a Sony Elcaset deck EL-7 and cache of FeCr tapes.

All I can say is, WOW- where has this been all my life ?

I've dubbed about 8 LP's so far, and simply can't believe what I'm hearing. Somehow, Sony got this cartridge 3.75 IPS format, to sound better/as good as, an open reel at 7.5 IPS.

I've even dubbed a few of my old 8-track carts to the Elcaset- guess what- it makes them sound BETTER. Details come out that are not as vivid on the parent tape.

No BS.

There is some serious voodoo electronics inside the Sony Elcaset decks. I've been around this stuff for 30 years now, and nothing I've heard sounds like this Elcaset, except maybe a VERY clean open reel at 7.5 IPS.

Standard cassette and CD can't even compare to an Elcaset. Not even in the same league. One would need a very HIGH END 7.5 IPS or faster open reel to get better sound than an Elcaset.

Here's the specs, directly from the owner's manual-

http://i17.tinypic.com/2hsb0ao.jpg

place cursor on the spec sheet, when box appears at lower right, click on that box to maximize and read specs

how does this grab you, for frequency range ?

15hz-27,000hz NAB

25hz-22,000hz +/- 3dB

we are talking a cartridge tape format that BLOWS AWAY standard 44/16 CD resolution with ease. These HOME-MADE tapes sound better than any CD I've ever heard. You would need a SACD to compete with an Elcaset machine. Even then, I'd prefer the Elcaset- I have a Sony SACD. It still has that characteristic digital harshness.

unreal- but true. I highly recommend the Elcaset format- and a deck for $500 that works, is actually a DEAL.

FWIW, one can load open reel 4-track stereo 1/4" tape into the Elcaset carts and play them, and vice-versa. The capabilities of this format is vast.

The only reason it didn't succeed commercially, was because it was expensive- and the record companies would not invest the $$ to mfg. their catalogs in the Elcaset format.

sad, actually...but that's because the record cos. and electronics mfg. were making tons of money, selling the inferior, cheaper to produce, POS Philips cassette format. And the typical consumer has very low-fi expectations, just look at the recent MP3 phenomenon, now we're going BACKWARDS in resolution. IMO the standard Philips cassette, is the lowliest form of home audio one can use- it belongs in the gutter.

A Philips cassette at 3.75 IPS with metal tape, now that would be a good format. 1-7/8 IPS is for telephone answering machines.

Just picked one up last night from another AK member. Sony EL-7 with a shoebox full of tapes. Didn't know what it was till now -- thanks guys!

Elcaset players have shown up at least twice in the past year on the audio flea market here in Hong Kong... and both times I've looked at them, hemmed and hawed, and walked away from them. Figured that they were a failed format for a reason, and don't even know where I'd look for the cassettes!

Reading this thread again (with the more recent descriptions), I'm wondering if I made a mistake: if they use reel-to-reel size tape and heads in a cassette-like format, well... that sounds great to me! Maybe next time a nice one shows up, I'll take the plunge, although the last one I saw was BIG. It was about the size of a studio Umatic deck!

Mini-disc was pretty popular here for a while; there may still be a few mini-component systems sold here that have that capability, but I'm not sure. There still were a few on the shelves just a year or two ago.

Umatic was THE STANDARD for all the major broadcast studios here for years, but in the past couple of years I've seen plenty of professional studio Umatic decks being "dumped" through the wholesale market, so I think the studios have all been converting to digital storage. I've thought of getting one of them, but not sure where I can get enough tapes (unless maybe from one of the studios dumping theirs?).

I see DAT and DCC decks here regularly. Bought a DAT but didn't keep it for long, as it broke and wasn't an easy fix; have been repeatedly tempted to add a DCC deck, but haven't. Maybe I will to try one out once, especially after reading the comment here about the DAC in it. I think they still sell for around $70, though, and don't sit for long on the shelves when they do appear. Someone is still seeking out and buying these 'obsolete' formats! I know where to buy mini-discs new, but have no idea where to get tapes for these other formats, which is a major reason I haven't added these capabilities to my system. I don't think anyone makes these tape formats new, and am not sure if I could find any NOS still on shelves.

While part of me likes the idea of being able to play back any old format I might find, another part of me doesn't want a lot of never-used (or almost never-used) gear sitting there taking up precious space. Have collected enough perfectly usable units that sit there too much of the time, as it is! LOL

Well, I finally hooked the EL-7 up and gave it a whirl. :smoke: Arkay, I would highly suggest this format, if it weren't for the rarety of finding media. The dynamic range on these things is quite unbelievable. I'll find a spot for it in the main system, for sure. I'm lucky that I got a shoebox full of tapes with it. The cassettes can be problematic, as I found out. The manual loading of R2R tapes intrigues me. Anyone give me a lesson on how to do that?, anyway, what a treat tonight -- Kudos to you jcmjrt for keeping it in the "family", as it were, I appreciate it.

--Rob

I just stumbled onto this thread about Sony's Elcaset system. Was nosing around the Internet, looking at threads having to do with cassettes, when I saw a reference to the Elcaset. Hadn't heard anything about this system for quite a while and had almost forgotten about it, until I saw a pic of an Elcaset deck on a vintage audio site. As I said, I haven't seen one of these beasts in years (three decades or more), and even then the only place I saw them was in ads in Popular Electronics, et al. so when I ran across the Elcaset info on Google, then found a thread here about the system, I had to look into it, just out of curiosity. One thing that impressed me about the Elcaset was the sheer size of the tape cassette itself. Largest audio cassette I've ever seen. Never actually heard one in use or actually saw one up close, though. Did the Elcaset come anywhere near the fidelity of reel-to-reel tape or even today's audio cassettes? Seems to me the Elcaset must not have been that popular with audiophiles, as the decks (and their huge cassettes) went out of style (and thus out of production, never to be seen again except on the used market) in a very short time, not unlike four-channel sound.

BTW, I laughed out loud when I saw twintwelve's primer on identifying Sony's Elcaset. Always did get the biggest kick out of the cartoon character El Kabong (Quick Draw McGraw with a guitar he called a "Kabonger" in his hand). I would laugh my head off when, as a kid, I'd see El Kabong hit someone over the head with the Kabonger, but not before yelling "KABONG!" One of the darndest things I ever saw while growing up.

There was an even earlier attempt at combining RtR quality with cassette convenience, ie. BASF's 'Unisette'. This cassette format predated Elcaset by a year or so.

As for Philips, they brought us the Compact Cassette and (with Sony) the Compact Disc. They also brought us the first home VCR, the N1500, in 1970.

The U-matic was already available, but it was industry rather than consumer oriented. The N1500 was not bad at all if I remember correctly. The picture was a bit jittery, but quite acceptable and at the time it seemed almost miraculous.

Not wanting to nit pick but DCC is Philips format.

Not wanting to nit pick, but DCC was a joint venture between Philips and Matsushita (Panasonic/Technics).:D

Jeff

I thought I'd heard of every possible recording format, but never elcaset! I learned something today.

Interesting thread.

Where is Axel to protect Sony's honor? - check out his Sony info on Vintage Knob link below. Mostly from Europe and Japan. We only got about half of the really good bits from Sony here in NA. http://www.thevintageknob.org/SONY/sony-main.html for all Sony. Simply scroll down for Elcaset and other cassettes. Sony made some truly classic high-end gear, many which lead in technology whether it caught on, or not.

Did the Elcaset come anywhere near the fidelity of reel-to-reel tape or even today's audio cassettes? Seems to me the Elcaset must not have been that popular with audiophiles, as the decks (and their huge cassettes) went out of style (and thus out of production, never to be seen again except on the used market) in a very short time, not unlike four-channel sound.

Beats 90% of them and has the convenience of a cassette.