Full Interview + Gear for Sale
How would you deconstruct it, open it up and add tape to it?
There was a machine back then called a Telex machine, which allowed you to make rapid copies of tapes. You could pop in a 90-minute cassette, and within three minutes, you’d have a copy. However, the downside was that the quality of these copies was terrible…
Our process was different and much more time-consuming. Over time, we bought more than 100 simple tape decks, each costing about $100. We would daisy-chain them together, rigging them so they were all connected to one main tape deck. When we were ready to make copies, we’d put the master tape into the main deck, and with the click of a button, all the tape decks would start recording in real-time. That was the key to maintaining our high quality—it took 90 minutes to copy a 90-minute tape, but the sound was perfect.
At one point, we had 120 tape decks running simultaneously, which allowed us to keep up with demand while maintaining the quality that set us apart. That was our process—slow, deliberate, but worth it. We sacrificed speed for quality, and it made all the difference.
