I had a huge run on my Quantegy 456 tape and most of it is gone. I still have a quantity of other Quantegy tape such as 457 (same formulation as 456) and 406 1/2" along with the Quantegy 600 series which makes an excellent tape for home or professional use. Plus I still have a good quantity of NOS tape.  Later I will be putting some slightly used tape on here at a good price. I've also lowered the price on many existing tapes.

What's neat about some of the old tape for recording music in your home studio is that you may get a slightly different sound than the standard tapes of today.  Guitar Player magazine highlighted a guitar player that did his album on a 4-track cassette deck!  Not sure I'd want to do it that way but searching for your own sound is a good chunk of the fun.

I also have quality used r2r tape for a decent price in 7 inch and 10.5 inch along with the DAT format. I also have a few of the hard to get metal cassette tape NOS.

Shipping will be via USPS mail.  No warranty or return on tapes.  Click on any image to get a full size picture.

Quantegy 499 Grand Master. 1/4" x 2500'. Metal Reel. Tape Box. Brand New!  $74.95. Only five (5) one (1) left in my Private Stock and then they're gone  forever!

Quantegy 456 Grand Master. 1/4" x 2500'. Metal Reel. Tape Box. Brand New! $54.95. SOLD OUT! 9-15-08

Quantegy 406. 1/2" x 2500'. Metal Reel. Tape Box. Brand New! $59.95. Only one (1) left!

Quantegy 457 Pancake - NAB hub.  1/4" x 3600'. No Reel!  Same formulation as 456 but on a thinner tape.  Brand New!  Just slip it on your empty reel (3 - 6 screws to deal with) and you're ready to go!  $49.95. Two (2) left!

Me in 1979.

5-01/09

Turns out that my buddy Bob had a chance to ride a Kawasaki ZR-1 with the Turbo back in the day. Basically he said it was more power than anything he'd ever ridden and scared the s__t out of him. So if you saw a little guy around the Great Lakes Naval Base (IL) in the early 80's hanging on to a crotch rocket for dear life, it was probably him.

Dead Animal in the Road Story

This is another story with my buddy Drew and his Kawi 550 - see other story on right.

We decided to go camping out in western WI so we packed up and tooled down the road.  After a while, Drew wanted to ride my Kawi 1000. Since he'd gotten his early crashes out of the way, I felt that was ok. Besides I wanted to wring out his 550! So we pulled over and swapped bikes on a two lane road.

Everything was going great - I was putting the 550 thru it's paces and Drew was ahead of me doing OK with my bike.  Suddenly I spotted a huge bloated animal right in the middle of the road. I don't know what it was, probably a big raccoon or something similar. But it had laid there in the sun for at least a day so it was pretty ripe. Of course a huge dump truck was coming our way.

Y'know how sometimes you can foresee what is going to happen and everything moves in slow motion? You guessed it. That dump truck saw us and the dead animal and decided to run over it!

I saw that Drew was going to get by the body before the truck hit it but I knew I was going to get splattered. I lifted my feet up and sure enough - that damn truck hit the bloated body as I was going by it. Ker-Splat! Like toothpaste from a tube.  Guts, brains, fur etc was sprayed all over Drew's bike but miraculously I was missed!

There was a rest stop a mile ahead and by the time I got there I was laughing so hard I could hardly control the bike. Poor Drew looked at all the offal cooking on his engine and exhaust. I told him it was time to swap bikes back and gee, "I hope there's some paper towels in there for you to clean off your bike." All was not lost though as Drew got "lucky" on the camping trip with some gal he met. Took his mind off the mess for awhile.  I swear I could smell that dead animal for months afterwards.

Click on any image to get a full size picture.

Here's my Kawasaki KZ-1000.  Except for the Kerker 4-into-1 exhaust, this bike was stock. Can you believe it in 1980?  And the sucker would do a 12 second 1/4 mile. It would top off somewhere around 140 mph if you could stand the June bugs whacking ya. I once had it up to 65 mph in 1st gear.  Also did a wheelie at 60 mph coming onto a freeway ramp in second gear.  YOWSAH!  Counter-steering and speed shifting w/o the clutch really makes a difference!  (If you don't know what these terms are - you'd better find out, they can save you).  Nothing like having your ol' lady on the back, going into a cloverleaf with the pegs scraping the road.

Later I changed the shocks for racing along with the handle bars and steering bearings on my 1000.  It then handled like a 750 according to every one I allowed to ride it. Amazing what a few things can do to make a 650 LB bike handle like a 500 LB one. (Still didn't handle like my Bonnie but what did back then other than some Italian bikes and customs?) Later on Kawasaki incorporated some of these changes at the factory.

I know bikes are much faster today but this is one of the ancestors along with the YamaHondaKawaSuki's and other bikes that got fast bikes to where they are today. The KZ-1000 also came in a turbo charged   ZR-1 version (I think that's the right number) that would do 180 mph right from the factory. In 1980 yet. I saw one at the bike store - real mean looking sucker. The place I bought most of my bikes built custom racers so they were into speed.  They had a nice Norton Trident I just drooled over every time I was there. Another great one was the Honda CBX 6 cylinder 100+ HP.  I read that was the bike that got the insurance companies changing their policies.

Previous to this bike, I bought a brand new Triumph Bonneville 750 (see left).  They weren't making them anymore but the bike shop had new ones in the crate. It was a nice handling and looking bike but under powered compared to my Bonnie 650 that I had in the Army.  Could do wheelies with that one real easy. Probably detuned for smog purposes. My buddy Bob liked my new Bonnie so much he bought one too.  Later when I bought the Kawi, he bought a 750 also.

I also convinced my beer/guitar buddy Drew from work to buy a new Kawasaki 550 - 4 cylinder. Man was that a little screamer! He decided after a short time learning to ride to impress his girlfriend. She was on the back as he pulled into his drive way.  He goosed it too much and did a wheelie.  She fell off on her butt, he lost control and ran into the side of his house - taking some of the siding with him and bending his front forks!   Man was that funnier than hell!  I went to the bike bone yard and scored some forks for him and we slipped em on and it looked like new. He never tried to impress anyone again.  Next time will be the dead animal in the road story. (see left).