A month or so ago I replaced my car stereo. It was the OEM stereo that came with the car when I bought it in 2005, and it had finally met its maker. It was a good stereo, that gave me hours and hours of entertainment, whether it was radio, cassette tape, or cassette-adapter-that-plugged-into-my-phone. I lived with it for a year, since I was not sure if I’d be keeping the car. But as time passed, we realized that my car was in pretty good shape – certainly worthy of a teen driver when that day comes – and once that decision was made, I quickly set about deciding on a new stereo.
I went in search of one that had a tape deck, since I did still listen to tapes in my car (pffft on those new-fangled CDs the kids are talking about). In talking with the fine folks at Crutchfield, I was informed that I was basically looking for a unicorn, unless I was willing to contact a junkyard to see if they had my make/model car in their lot with a working OEM stereo I could buy. I did search, and found a couple, but no junkyards would return my calls, so I opted to just go with something else.
That “something else” would be a much fancier stereo – double DIN, touchscreen, bluetooth-enabled, CD player, aux and usb connections, and the ability to mirror my phone. MIRROR MY PHONE?! I was in! I got it for a good price and arranged for a local shop to install it for me (while I knew installation was easy, I didn’t want to take a chance on getting something wrong or cracking my dashboard while removing it). Unfortunately, I did not read the fine print that stated that in order to mirror my phone, I needed a special cable (I wrongly assumed bluetooth would allow mirroring), so the stereo was successfully installed, but not with the functionality I wanted. Ugh.
But not for nothing, I did find out that if I bought the cable I needed to mirror my phone, it would only work for my CURRENT phone (an ancient Samsung S5) because any phone newer than that required a completely DIFFERENT cable. In the end, I decided to wait on removing and reinstalling the stereo with the cable until I got a new phone – which isn’t happening any time soon. But when I do, I’ll pick up the cable I need and have the stereo taken out and put back in with the proper cable for mirroring my phone.
But that left me still with one problem: What to do about all my cassette tapes? Call me a luddite, but I do still enjoy listening to my old mixtapes. They make my smile when an unexpectedly retro song comes on. I knew it was possible to digitize cassette tapes, but wanted to be able to do it from home.
Enter, the Reshow ezcap231 cassette converter (pictured here in all it’s 1980s retro glory). I just got it last night, and it’s perfect. I was hesitant at first because I couldn’t get it to read the USB thumb drive, but then I found elsewhere online that the recommended thumb drive size is 16GB, whereas I had been using a 64GB. I quickly found a 16GB drive in my desk drawer at home, and voila – I was converting cassette tapes to digital media! I am focusing first on digitizing a bunch of my old techno dj mixes that I obtained back in the 1990s. CootieGirl has recently become interested in my old dance music, and so I’m digitizing as many of my old school mixes as I can find. Just since last night I’ve successfully converted 9 mixtapes. When I got home from work tonight I pulled out another 30 or so tapes – mostly techno mixes, but also a few other things. If I’m able to convert all these cassette tapes before the Reshow breaks (because let’s face it, it’s a $30 converter that feels as cheap as it looks), then the Reshow purchase will have been completely worth it.
