Techmoan Investigates the 8-Track Cartridge & buys a Brand New 1975 Pioneer 8-Track Recorder

Oh man, memories. I bet a lot of guys here have never even seen one of these.

LMAO: Yeah the memories I actually enjoyed that video, meaning I watched through to the end
... But even back in the day I hated "8-Track" although having been spoiled by the sound from reel-to-reel that's not too surprising ...
... But hey, my best-bud loved his 8-Track which had loads of play in his, this roadster --->

That must have been the 1970's. Nothing like the "CLUNK" of the heads moving.

... and the double tracking also drove me nuts ...
LOL, I also laughed at the tangled mess after a tape repair that went wrong as it's happened allot to me
...

I was a reel to reel guy also w00d. I had a couple machines back when I owned a recording studio. One was a 2 channel 1/4 inch half track, which meant you couldn't turn the tape over and record the other direction like most consumer machines. Crosstalk was practically nonexistent. The other machine was a 1/2 inch 8 channel.
Recording was done on a 20 input channel mixing board and assigned to a 8 channel bus for the master reel to reel. Mixing and effects were done and the final mix down to the 2 channel reel to reel. I had several patch bays for the effects rack to route send and receives for the instrument channels. What a tangle of phone plug cords that used to be! Fun times indeed. Trying to remember how patches were setup from one session to another then back again sprouted an entire industry of it's own.
Both tape machines ran at 15 IPS and had SMTPE locating for synchronizing to film or video. I used to get a kick from fast forwarding or rewinding to specific points and watching those babys fly! They were scary fast. They both had super fast positioning plus dynamic and mechanical braking so even if you rewound all the way you didn't get the tape slapping around and breaking. In fact the tape seldom ran off the reels because they would slow down then brake and stop before the zero time point which was typically a minute or so into the leader tape. Sensors on the tension roller arms made sure there was never too much stress put on the tape to avoid stretching. I used Ampex 456 tape exclusively and like you said the sound sure did spoil a guy.

Big, heavy (very very heavy) and expensive. Nowadays you can do all that which we did with a single piece of digital gear that can fit in your backpack, or a app on a laptop with some outboard gear for the in-out interfacing. But I'd probably do it all over again.