When watching Guardians of the Galaxy, seeing the Walkman and listening to all this music I have to admit that I became quite nostalgic. Remembering that I still have a Kenwood KX-880HX Tape deck boxed in the basement, and a box full of old tapes, I decided to actually get it up and hook it up to my audio system.

Note that I bought this tape deck 26 Years ago, so I suspected it not to work anymore. What was I wrong. Connected, put a tape in it, hit play - and awwwwwwwww.....
My memories came back while listening to my own Awesome Mix tapes. Note that I have named them Private Top I, II, III, IV, V ... etc.
Needless to say that I have quite a lot of these (more than 120 tapes). Even some dedicated Car-Mix tapes were in that Box.

I really started thinking about this. Realizing that after 26Years that hardware still works and these old recordings bringing a quite awesome audio experience. Which hardware that is built nowadays, is still able to work 26 years after ? Except space-probes probes, none come to my mind. Especially still looking so good after that time.

Update:
I started Digitizing my Private Top tapes. Sadly, some are not working nice anymore. They are shifting on the heads and the sound is bad. Thing is, all Maxell XLS-II Tapes are still working. All TDK SA-X and even the very expensive at that time - Metal based tapes, are providing a real bad listening experience. But the quality the old Maxel XLS-II Tapes provide is amazing. Especially if you have used a good Vinil disk as source. The comparison of a same song from a CD or from the itunes store just makes you realize how much detail and amplitude we have lost through the CD Digitization in 44.1KHz. Only alternative really are loss-less FLAC or SACD's at this time.