Turn An 8-Track Player Into An Equally Useful CB Radio

Bellsound understood the need of the 1979 driver & lo-fi audio bug. 8-track was still on the scene, but what if you still wanted to be part of the CB radio technology scene? (for those kiddies who don't know what CB is, think of it as a static filled analog of Twitter without the irritating 140 character limit)

Instead of rewiring a car to prepare for the power of the Citizen Band, the Bellsound C-8 fit a whole CB radio inside an 8-track compatible adapter. Chuck the whole device into the Craig 8-track in your stylin' El Camino, and you can tell the whole convoy to stick to double nickel because there's a bear in the air.

"Smokey and the Bandit" lingo aside, I had no idea that this kind of thing existed. I've seen plenty of 8 track adapters that played conventional cassettes, but none that were actually a little broadcast station. It sounds like a neat solution to adding CB to your car, but you'd still need a wire running to an aerial so it's not a completely clean fix. Does this also mean that you could CB enable other 8 track appliances, like your phony fireplace stereo or educational robot 2-XL?

Unfortunately you could only use one of these super-70's abilities at a time. That means that you couldn't be listening to an 8 track of Conway Twitty while at the same time you were telling all your good buddies that you were listening to Conway Twitty. Life is full of tough decisions like that.

P.S. to all those websites that like to borrow our content, thanks for spreading the word about Retro Thing - just please don't refer to this commercially available 70's product as a "hack". It makes me crazy when you guys do that.

[thanks to Pocket Calculator Show for the picture.]