I’m not really sure how old I was when I got the gift for Christmas, but I remember thinking it was a pretty impressive piece of electronic hardware. It was really cool looking (technologically speaking), and I was awfully proud to own it. It certainly made for lots of fun times.
What was this high-tech gift, you ask? Why, it was a tape recorder! It was a monographic, reel to reel tape deck that came with its own plug-in microphone. I could hold that mic up to my transistor radios speaker and record songs onto tape. I could also play the guitar and sing and record every second of it. I could even hide and record conversations from unsuspecting family members. I was in recording heaven!
Years later I owned an 8 track stereo recording deck (ok, that was a mistake). At another point in time I had a stereo cassette recording deck that would physically flip the tape over when one side was finished recording or playing. Now I own a more conventional stereo dual cassette deck, but I no longer use it for recording or much of anything else for that matter.
All my recording is now done on my computer. The audio and midi software available today for computer...