True story: a friend of mine used to make copies of tapes for me by putting the microphone of one tape deck up to the speaker of another one, pressing play, pressing record then leaving the room and closing the door. He just didn’t have a deck with line-in or the right cable.
To this day, the Pet Shop Boys just don’t sound right to me if they aren’t weirdly tinny, just a bit clipped and involve an Italian family arguing faintly in the background about dinner.