Mystery solved: Remember the 8 Track FM radio converter?
Sunday morning, I attended the Sainte-Foy flea market in Qui(C)bec City. When I'm in QC, I love attending this particular market because of the amazing variety of things for sale. It's a proper community event.
As I was browsing the various tables, I happened upon one of these:
Talk about a blast from the past!
Yesterday, I posted a cropped photo of this radio and it was quickly identified as an 8 Track FM radio converter by Ken (N2VIP). Steve Yothment found the same unit under a different brand and Bill Lee even found a Futura branded unit on the Internet. Of course, many others figured out this was an 8 Track to FM radio converter. Impressive sleuthing!
These radio tuners were popular in the days of the mobile 8 Track players-in that time period right before FM was standard in car radios, but 8 Track was somewhat prevalent.
My father had a similar FM radio converter for his 1966 Chevy pickup. As a kid, I thought the thing was fascinating! You simply inserted the unit into the 8 Track player and voili!, FM radio!
I never quite understood how the FM reception was so decent considering there was no external antenna of any sort.
The rear of the converter looks like an 8 Track cartridge minus the magnetic tape.
Taking a closer look at this particular FUTURA brand converter, I'm impressed with the number of features on such a compact front end:
- Analog FM dial
- Red LED stereo tuning indicator
- AFC OFF/ON switch
- DX/Local switch
- A wide, vertically-oriented tuning knob
I'm curious: how many Post readers had an 8 track FM radio converter in their vehicle? Or, did you ever have an Audio Cassette to 8 Track converter? Please comment! Also, you should check out some of the comments from our previous post.
And thanks for being sports about my "Mystery radio challenge"-I knew savvy Post readers would ID this tuner in no time!